There's a fullness in ten years. A lot of work, if rather relentlessly done, can really make a discernible impact. Ten years ago, folks were making all the talk as rather cyclically that jazz was dead. It was such an exhausting conversation. Folks were around making this music, obviously. It couldn't be that dead. The problem was in the awareness and the tweaking of the … [Read more...]
Anthony Dean-Harris’ Favorite Jazz Albums of 2016
I had love and specific passion this year. I felt more detached, as many of my dispatches have noted over the last year but particularly in this week of assessment. I felt a listlessness about even completing this list, yet the need to communicate was still there. The need for completeness (in a task that can never be completed) still gnaws at me. I still had to express my … [Read more...]
Nextbop’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2016
There's no universal theme or overall consensus in jazz this year. No overblown hype machine, no clamoring for a seemingly agreed upon savior, no important trendsetting bucking of past conventions to take on new ones. Artists made art this year, as they do every year, and in the realm of jazz, they made art together. Collaborators collaborated, improvisors improvised. We, … [Read more...]
Jaimeo Brown Transcendence – ‘Work Songs’
Most modern producers/songwriters seek to highlight the triumphs of American culture; Jaimeo Brown Transcendence's Work Songs invokes the way music was influenced under the most dire of circumstances. The follow up to the 2013's Transcendence debut, drummer Jaimeo Brown and guitarist Chris Sholar weave jazz and hip-hop so tightly the boundary between the two might as well not … [Read more...]