In the deathless words of Yuri Gagarin<\/a> (who wasn\u2019t American, but we\u2019ve always secretly wished he had been), \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.) Jane Ira Bloom, Early Americans<\/em> (Outline)<\/strong> \u2013 Hard to believe that after sixteen albums through nearly four decades, Bloom has never before walked the high wire with nothing more than a bass (Mark Helias) and trap set (Bobby Previte). She comes through just as you\u2019d expect: with bold, deep tones that swallow you whole and bright,supple phrases that recombine themselves into breathtaking shapes. From Helias and Previte, she gets the kind of backup an ace improviser deserves. They merge their rhythmic instincts with her soprano saxophone\u2019s probing, soaring voice to become one entity, totally in control of whatever they take on, regardless of tempo or mood. On the (literally) groovy \u201cSinging the Triangle,\u201d they seem to take turns at the wheel with Previte\u2019s toms assuming melodic duties with his characteristic wit and bravado. When it\u2019s just Bloom and Helias, as on \u201cOther Eyes,\u201d the colloquy is so detailed and urgent that you think you\u2019re eavesdropping on a secret plan for curing cancer, hunger and ignorance. And when it\u2019s just her, in full flight, she asserts her command of every aspect of her art whether assembling a necklace of diamond-hard chords and taking them apart (\u201cRhyme or Rhythm\u201d), burrowing deep into the contours of a classic melody (\u201cSomewhere\u2019) or blowing the blues with joyous abandon (\u201cBig Bill\u201d). It\u2019s now official and can be certified by any number of witnesses: There\u2019s no one like her. Anywhere.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2.) Wadada Leo Smith, America\u2019s National Parks<\/em> (Cuneiform) \u2013<\/strong> Having previously contained multitudes in his matchless pageant of historic landmarks (2012\u2019s Six Freedom Summers<\/em>) and his widescreen embrace of Midwest natural wonders (2014\u2019s The Great Lakes Suite)<\/em> Smith, himself a force of nature whose renown has burst into a big, blinding glow at age 76, would of course be inclined to celebrate this year\u2019s National Park Service centennial with a similarly ambitious and dauntingly variegated tour through the service\u2019s assets, both widely known (\u201cYosemite: The Glaciers, the Falls, the Wells and the Valley of Goodwill 1890\u201d) and relatively obscure (\u201cNew Orleans: The National Culture Park USA 1718\u201d). Don\u2019t expect either a Copland-esque procession of soaring, meaty strings or a rustic stream of acoustic guitar riffs cueing your awe over big rivers, big mountains and bigger skies. Smith has a way of swelling the American heart that\u2019s distinctly his own; his horn, by turns plaintive, coarse and slashing as Miles Davis\u2019 once was, assumes an even heavier, more rugged tone\u00a0to keep up with his voracious impulse to take in the colors, textures and elements of his subject\u2019s landscapes, even when he\u2019s mostly imagining what they\u2019re like. (\u201cYou don\u2019t need to visit a park,\u201d he says in the liner notes, \u201cto write about a park.\u201d And there\u2019s something about his submission to the imaginative muse that overpowers your literalist\u2019s skepticism.) His instrumental voice fuses effectively with that of cellist Ashley Walker and the rest of his Golden Quintet, with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg and, most especially, drummer Pheeroan akLaff, seems to take on added strength and power from the music\u2019s robust challenges. It\u2019s not an easy hike. But if you give in to the arcane beauties and shape-shifting aspirations of Smith\u2019s muse, you\u2019ll remember most, if not all, of what your inner ear sees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3.) Fred Hersch Trio, Sunday Night at the Vanguard<\/em> (Palmetto)<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019ve been here before with this group and we know from previous experience that they come to kill every time they show up downstairs on 178 Seventh Avenue South in Manhattan. So what\u2019s different this time? Maybe because, as the title says, it\u2019s Sunday night and as every Village Vanguard habitu\u00e9 knows, Sundays are when performers wind up their six-night engagements. While critics always show up Tuesdays for the opening-night sets, the Sunday closers can be less-heralded occasions when the ensembles, after a hard week\u2019s work, are at once locked in tight and empowered to let loose. Hersch tweaks expectations from the jump with an appropriately spry-and-whimsical treatment of \u201cA Cockeyed Optimist,\u201d a Rodgers-and-Hammerstein chestnut that isn\u2019t often put through the jazz colander. The spiraling variations Hersch\u2019s piano applies to the melody makes you wonder why this is so and then you realize, once again, that it\u2019s because Hersch may be one of the few pianists of his generation with the open-hearted imagination to re-invigorate mid-20th-century Broadway grandeur for post-Millennial jazz heads. Along with bassist John H\u00e9bert and drummer Eric McPherson, Hersch builds upon this frisky beginning with a couple of classics from the jazz repertoire (\u201cWe See,\u201d \u201cThe Peacocks\u201d); some of his own compositions (\u201cThe Optimum Thing,\u201d \u201cCalligram,\u201d \u201cBlack Wing Palomino\u201d) that deserve to be part of that repertoire and, of all things, a ruminative, fireplace-glow cover of Sir Paul McCartney\u2019s \u201cFor No One.\u201d Hersch\u2019s liner notes say he and his partners were \u201cin the zone\u201d on this Sunday night last March. He\u2019d know. All I know is that I had an especially hard time keeping it all out of my player \u2013 and my head \u2013 for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4.) Henry Threadgill Ensemble Double Up, Old Locks and Irregular Verbs<\/em> (PI)<\/strong> \u2013 For a change, this year\u2019s Pulitzer Prize winner for music is letting his sax and flute sit this dance out while leading two pianos (Jason Moran, David Virelles), two altos (Roman Filiu, Curtis McDonald), a cello (Christopher Hoffman), a tuba (Jose Davila) and a drummer (Craig Weinreb) in a four-part suite paying tribute to the late Lawrence \u201cButch\u201d Morris (1947-2013), Threadgill\u2019s fellow Vietnam War vet and partner in avant-garde insurgency and orchestration. The band is a typically eccentric gathering, but it is by no means Threadgill\u2019s strangest combination of instruments. And if the dense musical collages assembled by the composer are as inscrutable and idiosyncratic as ever, they are also less forbidding; the angular dynamics and static-but-surging momentum urgently aligned with the wary-to-yearning-to-anxious mood swings of the present day. Indeed, I think Old Locks and Irregular Verbs<\/em> is Threadgill\u2019s most emotionally accessible work since Where\u2019s Your Cup?<\/em>, his 1996 Columbia album with Very Very Circus. And it couldn\u2019t have come at a better time for him \u2013 and for our jittery selves needing the reassuring possibility of discovery and adventure in an uncertain future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5.) Allen Toussaint, American Tunes<\/em> (Nonesuch)<\/strong> \u2013It may not quite fit into whatever gets categorized as \u201cjazz\u201d in its ever-marginalized marketing niche; not as neatly as 2009\u2019s incandescent, expansive Bright Mississippi<\/em> where Toussaint got to wander through a smoke-filled, twilit museum of 20th century black music with the likes of Don Byron, Nicholas Payton, Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman and Marc Ribot. But even with a relatively smaller guest list of notables (Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens), this album, whose concluding sessions were cut a month before Toussaint died in November, 2015 while on a European concert tour, is a deeply moving valedictory for an epoch-making legacy. No other pianist, living or dead, could apply his ironwork-ornate flourishes and mosaic-tile detail to such chestnuts as \u201cI\u2019m Confessin\u2019,\u201d \u201cViper\u2019s Drag,\u201d \u201cRosetta\u201d and \u201cWaltz for Debby.\u201d No one could better evoke the resilient, inexhaustibly vivacious spirit of his home town when rolling through \u201cMardi Gras in New Orleans,\u201d \u201cBig Chief\u201d and \u201cHey Little Girl\u201d; just as no one else could have written \u201cSouthern Nights,\u201d whose solo rendering here is sweet-and-sour enough to sting the eyes. But you should save your tears for the finale: his vocal performance of Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cAmerican Tune,\u201d which goes down, especially this season, like both commiseration and a blessing, even when you\u2019re stopped dead in your tracks by the plaintive, unadorned manner with which he sings: \u201cStill when I think of the road\/we\u2019re travelling on\/I wonder what went wrong\/I can\u2019t help it, I wonder what\u2019s gone wrong\u2026\u201d And I wonder how we\u2019re managing to go on without him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6.) Darcy James Argue\u2019s Secret Society, Real Enemies<\/em> (New Amsterdam)<\/strong> — On the most elemental level, I can (almost) see conservatives\u2019 point when they keep insisting that government isn\u2019t your mother. But government also isn\u2019t, or shouldn\u2019t be, that creepy uncle who insists on hanging around your bedroom, listening in on your phone conversations, reading your mail and letting rich people with giant-squid tax shelters follow you around while you buy things. This is the world we\u2019ve been living with for most of this \u2013 as I referred to it earlier \u2013 dismaying century so far; full of night sweats in broad daylight, cynical whistling-in-the-dark and equivocal behavior by those who\u2019ve known too much for too long. So why, you wonder, would you want to listen to a whole damn album summoning up this dark matter? Because Darcy James Argue is a wicked-smart conjurer of phantasmagoric narratives grounded in real-life mystery. (See 2014\u2019s Brooklyn Babylon<\/em> for further enlightenment.) And his 18-piece Secret Society kicks ass\u00a0and proves itself worthy of its name by enabling its leader to put forth a gnomic, allusive, brassy and insinuating musical soundtrack you can apply to any noir mind-movie your paranoia can summon to life. It\u2019s the kind of story I wish someone of Argue\u2019s boundless energies and bountiful vision didn\u2019t have to tell. But, as many have observed of Edward Snowden\u2019s transgressions, I suppose somebody<\/em> had to do it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 7.) Joshua Redman & Brad Mehldau, Nearness<\/em> (Nonesuch)<\/strong> \u2013 These two guys have been all but joined at the hip since Mehldau served in Redman\u2019s quartet along with drummer Brian Blade and bassist Christian McBride. (Yes, that actually happened. Only one 1994 album, but, as you\u2019d imagine, it remains a good, if retroactively undervalued one.) Redman and Mehldau have supported and inspired each other in the intervening years to the point where one is tempted to refer to them as the Huck and Tom of their generation of jazz musicians. I hope you\u2019ve noticed that I did not say \u201cHuck and Jim\u201d and if you\u2019ve read the books and been paying attention to their respective career arcs, it wouldn\u2019t be hard to decide which is Huck and which is Tom. Or would it? Never mind. What you need to know about these live duets from five years ago is that they get off to a bit of a ragged start on \u201cOrnithology,\u201d but soon meld together in rapturous communication on Mehldau\u2019s \u201c\u201dAlways August.\u201d Here and throughout the rest of the album, you\u2019re aware of how much each of them has grown into their respective styles; Melhdau\u2019s piano unfurling sheets of rich harmonies while Redman, on tenor and soprano, shows how impressively he\u2019s contained and controlled that prodigious talent that got everybody excited more than two decades ago. And he can still level you when he wants to; most especially on a stunning extended solo break he takes on \u201cThe Nearness of You,\u201d throughout which he doesn\u2019t seem to take a breath \u2013 except, maybe, your own. Mehldau likewise makes your eyes grow big with his own derring-do on \u201cIn Walked Bud.\u201d But they\u2019re at their most potent when putting their heads together on Mehldau\u2019s originals, notably the easy-rolling (at first) \u201cOld West.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8.) Kenny Barron Trio, Book of Intuition<\/em> (Impulse!\/Universal)<\/strong> — Sometimes, maybe most times, you just want music to come across like sunlight shimmering along the nearest available body of water, the undulations so soft and sweet that you don\u2019t care how far or how high you\u2019re floating. At 72 years young, Barron may be the undisputed living grand master of jazz piano. He is, without dispute, his idiom’s t most agile communicator in whatever setting or at whatever tempo. With bassist Kiyoshi Kitigawa and drummer Johnathan Blake, the group he\u2019s been leading in nightclubs and concert halls for most of the past decade, Barron delivers a state-of-the-art smorgasbord of straight-ahead pleasure, much of it braced by the Latin and Brazilian rhythms that highlight his tuneful dynamics. The table is set from the start with \u201cMagic Dance,\u201d whose soft bossa-nova beat is Barron\u2019s happy place; happy enough, in any case, for him to tempt fate with a flurry of arpeggios that settle soon enough into an easy-does-it samba. His homage to Bud Powell, \u201cBud-Like,\u201d surges into Afro-Cuban overdrive while his fealty to Thelonious Monk is served with two of the Enigmatic One\u2019s lesser-known pieces, \u201cShuffle Boil\u201d and \u201cLight Blue.\u201d In each of these, Barron doesn\u2019t try to out-Monk Monk so much as let his own graces impose their own manner of wit and mischief into their workings. It\u2019s one of those records (and I have at least one of them every year) that doesn\u2019t reinvent the wheel, but reminds you why and how wheels work so beautifully.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 9.) Etienne Charles, San Jose Suite<\/em> (Culture Shock)<\/strong> \u2013 This ambitious work, enacted here in twelve parts, encompasses not just one, but three San Jose settlements in three different Western Hemisphere spots: California, Costa Rica and Trinidad. What\u2019s distinctive about each of these San Joses\/St. Josephs is less important to the formidably gifted Charles than what they share and the music he fashions from his inquiries is bright, ingenious and bursting with provocative rhythmic combinations. The polyglot of Indo-African-Latin-American-European influences not only evokes the past but advances a singular new musical language redolent of the \u201ccreole soul\u201d that gave trumpeter-composer Charles the title of his potent 2013 album. Whatever you call it, as pure sound, it is gorgeous to behold with intensely committed interaction throughout from Charles, altoist Brian Hogans, guitarist Alex Wintz, pianist Victor Gould, bassist Ben Williams and drummer John Davis. The last three tracks are a mini-suite, \u201cSpeed City,\u201d in which Harry Edwards recalls his tumultuous career at San Jose State University when he helped spearhead the African-American boycott\/protest of the 1968 Olympics. At first, I thought the \u201cSpeed City\u201d trifecta differed so much from the nine previous pieces that they belonged on a different album. Over time, I\u2019ve come to think they not only belong, they\u2019re a bonus to what precedes them; mostly because Charles and the rest of his crew leave blisters no matter when or where they turn up the heat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10.) Delfeayo Marsalis & The Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Make America Great Again!<\/em> (Troubadour Jass)<\/strong> \u2013 In the most politically astute and (therefore) funniest Saturday Night Live<\/em> sketch of the late, unlamented campaign season,<\/a> Darnell Hayes (Kenan Thompson), host of an edition of \u201cBlack Jeopardy!\u201d made extra special by the participation of a white blue-collar-Trump-supporting contestant (Tom Hanks), is given the last word: \u201cWhen we come back, we\u2019ll play the National Anthem and see what the hell happens.\u201d Well, you\u2019re all encouraged to stand \u2013 or, if you roll that way, kneel \u2013 when this album begins with a stately, serious-as-a-heart-attack rendition of \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d And what the hell happens after that\u2019s<\/em> over is a raucous compound of house party, choral recital and vaudeville revue offering, as one song lyric puts it, \u201csoul food for your ear.\u201d The album\u2019s title track is played for cheeky irony with the trombone-playing Marsalis brother\u2019s narration intoned by actor Wendell Pierce with hambone slyness over an antic riff reminiscent of Mingus\u2019 \u201cFables of Faubus.\u201d The words question whether the \u201ccatchy slogan\u201d is a \u201cpragmatic proposition\u201d to \u201ca melting pot of diversity fighting a juggernaut of adversity.\u201d Did Marsalis and company know how things would turn out after the recorded this session? Feel free to ponder that as his 19-member orchestra throws down a potpourri of hard-driving arrangements whose sources range from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (\u201cSnowball\u201d) to Benny Carter (\u201cSymphony in Riffs\u201d). Final question: Is this a bittersweet send-off to the optimism that followed the election of 2008 or a defiant\u00a0hello to the dark-edged uncertainties unleashed by the election of 2016? Guess we\u2019ll know for sure in eight years, if not sooner.<\/p>\n ‘<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n HONORABLE MENTION:<\/strong> Sonny Rollins, Holding the Stage<\/em> (Doxy\/Okeh); Jonathan Finlayson & Sicilian Defense, Moving Still<\/em> (PI); Matt Wilson\u2019s Big Happy Family, Beginning of a Memory<\/em> (Palmetto); Bill Frisell, When You Wish Upon A Star<\/em> (Okeh); Roberta Piket, One for Marian<\/em> (Thirteenth Note); Chris Potter, Dave Holland, Lionel Loueke, Eric Harland, Aziza<\/em> (Dare2); Anat Fort & Gianluigi Trevisi, Birdwatching<\/em> (ECM).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Jane-ira-Bloom\"](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Jane-ira-Bloom.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Delfeayo](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Delfeayo-America-300x300.jpg\")
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![\"Catherine-Russell-Harlem-on-My-Mind\"](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Catherine-Russell-Harlem-on-My-Mind.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Larry](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Larry-Young-in-Paris-300x300.jpg\")
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