It makes me remember something told to me back in the 1980s by a very wise man named Jerry Gordon, founder and manager of Philadelphia\u2019s hallowed and still much lamented Third Street Jazz: \u201cThere\u2019s no middle ground on organs. People either love them or they don\u2019t.\u201d Jerry would know since Philadelphia has a legitimate claim to being \u201cthe jazz organ capital of the world\u201d<\/a> and indeed, one of the organists on this list has deep Philly roots, deeper even than those of Sun Ra, another organ player who called Philadelphia home and whose massive, unparalleled body of work Jerry would later help curate for Evidence Records.<\/p>\n If anybody occupied Jerry\u2019s nonexistent middle, I was sure it was me, even if I could never avoid such music because as far as my dad was concerned, organ jazz was Dah Joint. This was especially true in the 1960s when he was looking for something to make the rec room jump at odd hours of the night. Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Groove Holmes, Charles Earland, Shirley Scott\u2026those were all his peeps, his boon pals and drinking buddies. Not that I didn\u2019t jump up and down to Jimmy Smith by my own self in those years, but I had so many more outlets for musical comfort and joy. So \u201clove,\u201d as Jerry characterized it, had little to do with it.<\/p>\n Still, as much as Dad would find the basic trappings cozy and familiar, I can\u2019t say for sure whether he\u2019d be able to hang long with these two organ albums. They swing hard, but they also aim high. As much as he liked to jump, Dad likely wouldn\u2019t want to go as high as these two albums. As I say, more on them later.<\/p>\n I suppose that having jazz organ front center aligned somehow with a need I had from jazz and from culture in general to go hard and aim directly at the heart of things. The music that grabbed me the most this past year didn\u2019t dwell on stuff too much, but showed commitment, energy and drive. In plain terms, these albums all followed the ancient bandleader\u2019s imperative to \u201cHit It!\u201d And that was enough for me.<\/p>\n There was too much else to think about this past year \u2013 and also not a whole lot of thinking to go with it. So, if passion was there to be had, my sense of things was that it had better be engaged, tough and above all smart to know where it was going and how it wanted things said and done.<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s hit this!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.) Etienne Charles, Carnival: The Sound of a People, Vol. 1<\/em> (Culture Shock)<\/strong> \u2013 I like gumbo. No, I don\u2019t. I love<\/em> gumbo. I especially love it when its ingredients are scraped, plucked, dug up, mashed, dashed and liberally strewn into the pot with seeming abandon, but also \u2013 and always \u2013 with instincts homed in on what combinations will at once surprise, awaken and enchant the senses. Charles, a trumpet tyro from Trinidad, has made it his business to collect musical seasonings and spices from all over the Caribbean to create mind-body release music redolent of their cultural origins while intent on illuminating the region\u2019s complex history. His previous work, including 2013\u2019s Creole Soul<\/em> and 2017\u2019s San Jose Suite<\/em>, gave off rushes and thrills while disclosing the calculation and intelligence behind them. On Charles\u2019 full-bore inquiry into the festival music of his native land, the erudition isn\u2019t as conspicuous, but the eclecticism is. And the rush invigorates from the jump as an on-site recording of Trinidadian street musicians laying down a rollicking, swiveling beat is amped up by some slash-and-burn post-bop inventions of Charles, also saxophonist Brian Hogans pianist James Francies, guitarist Alex Wintz, percussionist D\u2019Achee and drummer Obed Calvaire and others. David Sanchez adds his agile tenor sax to the simmering pot on other tracks and the leader himself kicks in some percussive support, even a cowbell, to the proceedings. This is the enrapturing and beautiful album one long suspected Charles is capable of delivering and maybe the best part of the whole deal is that this is only \u201cVol. 1.\u201d Here\u2019s my bowl. More, please.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2.) James Carter Organ Trio, Live from Newport Jazz<\/em> (Blue Note)<\/strong> \u2013 It\u2019s been almost twenty years since Carter, a fire-breathing, bottom-voiced avatar of croon-and-holler saxophone, last took a deep dive into the repertoire of gypsy guitar legend Django Reinhardt. And it\u2019s been almost ten years since he\u2019s released an album of any kind. As if to remind us of what we\u2019ve been missing, Carter audaciously re-engages with Reinhardt\u2019s music and brings along his power backup of organist Gerald Gibbs and drummer Alex White. Thus, two raucous traditions \u2013 the red-hot \u201cjazz manouche\u201d of 1930s-1940s Parisian bars and the smoky-blue hardbop of 1950s-1960s uptown nightclubs \u2013 were in each other\u2019s arms at Carter\u2019s 2018 Newport Jazz Festival appearance and the clinch proved intoxicating, even transformative. Unlike 2000\u2019s Chasin\u2019 the Gypsy<\/em>, Carter\u2019s not here to pay homage, but to revitalize such Reinhardt chestnuts as \u201cLe Manoir De Mes Reves,\u201d \u201cAnouman\u201d and \u201cMelodie Au Crepuscule\u201d with soulful strutting and hard-rock shouting. The trio opens \u201cCrepuscule\u201d with a grinding vamp borrowed from Bill Withers\u2019 \u201cUse Me,\u201d drawing the crowd to their side and keeping it in their pocket with Gibbs\u2019 spirited riffing and Carter\u2019s bait-and-switch inventions. While Carter can still blow the doors off any nearby building with his sky-scraping honks, bleats and wails, his deep tone on tenor, alto and soprano sax is supple and lustrous at any tempo or altitude. The smoldering, bewitching variations he makes on \u201cPour Que Ma Vie Demeure\u201d induce both terror and awe and apply a diamond-hard exclamation point to this triumph for Carter, for Newport and for tradition, wherever it can be salvaged and recombined.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3.) Branford Marsalis Quartet, The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul<\/em> (Marsalis Music)<\/strong> \u2013 Through the years, nay, decades he and his family have held presumptive dominion over the national jazz discourse, Branford has always been my favorite Marsalis grumpy-pants: testy, feisty, dryly funny and brazenly confrontational with his peers over what jazz music really is and what the public really wants from it. Whether in dispute or agreement with his tirades, I\u2019ve often found them livelier than his music, however solidly crafted and polished in presentation. There\u2019s been no doubt that he and his bandmates \u2013 pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner \u2013 have as keen a rapport with each other and with their audience as any working combo. But there hasn\u2019t been a full-blown album that evokes what this rapport can achieve at its best. Until now. Something about this one pulls hard on your coat and ramps up the unit\u2019s commitment and drive. Every member brought their A-game for this session to the point where it\u2019s hard to single out, say, Calderazzo\u2019s sweet, steady-rolling changes on his pieces \u201cCianna\u201d and \u201cConversations Among The Ruins,\u201d or Revis\u2019 combustible compositions, \u201cDance of the Evil Toys\u201d and \u201cNilaste.\u201d Faulkner, the relative newbie in the group, contains and advances the apparatus with a fiercely applied command of weight and balance belying his youth. And the leader seems more locked in than usual, playing with blazing verve and urgency that enhance his habitual ingenuity. To get the full impact of this group\u2019s high-spirited interaction, you need only listen to its exuberant rendition of Keith Jarrett\u2019s \u201cWindup\u201d that, appropriately, brings this set home. Many moons ago, Marsalis showed his drolly churlish side speaking of Jarrett\u2019s own prickly-pear personality, insisting even then that he had nothing whatsoever against Jarrett\u2019s music, proving that even the hardest-shelled curmudgeons can call upon their generosity when properly inspired.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4.) Abdullah Ibrahim, The Balance<\/em> (Gearbox)<\/strong> \u2013 At 85, South Africa\u2019s greatest living jazz artist finds himself deep in the winter of\u2026not discontent exactly, but of wistfulness that stops just short of melancholy. His piano still dances with as much command of space and time as it ever did. But it now takes its time, forsaking much of the whirling-dervish momentum of Ibrahim\u2019s youth with a more deliberate pace that nonetheless resolutely forsakes caution. The sepulchral mood of \u201cDreamtime\u201d at first throws you off. But as soon as his seven-piece band Ekaya kicks in full gear on \u201cJabula\u201d, Ibrahim gets frisky enough with the beat to let you know he\u2019s nowhere near ready to slip into the shadows. He remains as open to riding the rugged and unfamiliar in rhythmic combinations as he ever was and as moving as his performance is of \u201cSong for Sathima,\u201d the paean he wrote for his late wife, vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin, there\u2019s a grand and open-hearted spirit to the recital that envelops multitudes. Now more than ever, it\u2019s possible to hear — and feel — what got Duke Ellington all het up when he first heard the Artist Formerly Known as Dollar Brand (a name he still uses on the cover of this one, though not as prominently).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5.) Joey DeFrancesco, In the Key of the Universe<\/em> (Mack Avenue)<\/strong> \u2013 When I first saw him as a student at Philadelphia\u2019s Settlement Music School, he was still \u201cJoe DeFrancesco\u201d pounding the hell out of an acoustic piano as if his life depended on it. (The kid playing electric bass behind him was then known as \u201cChris McBride.\u201d As you\u2019ve heard, his grown-up self is likewise better known under another first name.) Joey went on to follow in his dad\u2019s footsteps on the Hammond B-3 and became keeper of the jazz-organ tradition. This album takes his talents to an unexpected direction and, as much as I\u2019d detected way back in his prodigy period, he seems to be going all-out on this one, using all his considerable resources to probe the mystical and spiritual realms explored by African American jazz artists of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He even brought along Pharaoh Sanders, one of the key figures of that movement, to sit in on a couple of tracks, and damned if the 79-year-old Sanders doesn\u2019t sound here as nimble and propulsive as he did in his \u201cKarma\u201d period. (He even takes the late Leon Thomas\u2019 role in singing the lyrics to \u201cThe Creator Has a Master Plan.\u201d) DeFrancesco\u2019s regular saxophonist Troy Roberts plays with similar force and grace and it\u2019s always a treat to hear Billy Hart on drums with Sammy Figueroa ably in support on percussion. But as usual, it\u2019s the leader you can\u2019t wait to hear whether he\u2019s vamping and swinging with deceptive ease, comping with dexterity or surging through the changes with near-demonic energy \u2013 though on second thought, \u201cnear-demonic\u201d (a compound I think I used when I first wrote about him in his middle school days) is an inappropriate characterization for such a spiritually-based enterprise. Bright moments.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6.) Miguel Zen\u00f3n, Sonero: The Music of Ismael Rivera<\/em> (Miel) –<\/strong>– Rivera (1931-1987), also known as \u201cMaelo\u201d or \u201cEl Sonero Mayor,\u201d was a genius of salsa singing, a master of antiphonal improvisations spinning choruses within, through and above choruses with such groups as Los Cachimbos and Cortijo y su Combo, table-setters for bomba<\/em> and plena<\/em> genres. This makes him an inevitable and fertile subject of inquiry for Zen\u00f3n, who has dedicated himself to framing and extending the motifs to his native land\u2019s pop music with modern jazz motifs. Once again, Zenon, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Henry Cole find fresh, ingenious and uplifting possibilities from their source material without in any way mitigating its subtle graces. Their effervescent interaction is bracing at any pace, whether in the somber dirge \u201cLas Tumbas\u201d or in the rough-and-tumble \u201cEl Negro Bemb\u00f3n\u201d with its rapid-fire quintuplets. As effectively as the rhythm section tamps down each eccentric shift in tempo throughout the album, it\u2019s Zen\u00f3n\u2019s alto saxophone, by turns fiery and elegiac, that most enraptures in conspicuously, appropriately assuming lead vocals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 7.) Steve Lehman Trio with Craig Taborn, The People I Love<\/em> (PI)<\/strong> \u2013 Put an intense maximalist like alto saxophonist Lehman together with a dedicated minimalist like pianist Taborn and you get…well, is “harmony\u201d the word we\u2019re aiming for here? Probably not since the word assumes they meld with their personalities fully intact. Their give-and-take on \u201cIn Calam & Ynnus\u201d suggests at the very least a mutual affinity for ripping stuff apart and slamming the distended shapes back together into odd, but logical coherence. Lehman\u2019s facility for rapid-fire riffing is taken up by Taborn, who is willing to fade their discourse out and let Taborn carry the rest of their colloquy home. Here, even more than on his previous albums, Lehman\u2019s bright, bristly tone proves adaptable to a variety of contexts, whether it\u2019s Autechre (\u201cqPlay\u201d) or Kenny Kirkland (\u201cChance\u201d). He seems most empowered by a burner like Kurt Rosenwinkel\u2019s \u201cA Shifting Design,\u201d where he, Taborn, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid weave into each other\u2019s embroideries so well that you can\u2019t always tell who\u2019s keeping time. (All of them. likely.) This, to me, is the warmest, sunniest album yet from Lehman and, for that matter, from Taborn. Once again, I\u2019m hoping for seconds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8.) Nicholas Payton, Relaxin\u2019 with Nick<\/em> (Smoke Sessions) \u2013<\/strong> As a colleague said to me the other day, Payton may not appreciate being on this list at all, given his contempt for the word \u201cjazz.\u201d He prefers the acronym, \u201cBAM\u201d for \u201cBlack American Music\u201d to define what he does. As if to drive the point home, the album includes his composition, \u201cJazz is a Four-Letter Word,\u201d inspired by the title of Max Roach\u2019s unpublished autobiography and if you want to know what he and Payton mean, the late drummer\u2019s recorded voice is there to explain, both in full and in sampled bits. It\u2019s one of the highlights of this two-disc live trio recording, an unvarnished triumph of multi-tasking as the one-time trumpet prodigy proves himself to be a master of acoustic and electronic keyboards, capable of even comping his horn solos, which are as powerful, vibrant and pulsing with narrative energy as ever. (His singing of \u201cOthello\u201d and \u201cWhen I Fall In Love\u201d isn\u2019t as masterly, but his downy phrasing suggests he\u2019s on to something nonetheless.) One suspects he\u2019d try being his own rhythm section someday. But at least for this laid-back marathon session, he is fortunate to have bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington at his back. They\u2019re not related to each other, but share years of veteran savvy, impeccable timing and implacable focus. As with the Marsalises, Payton isn\u2019t shy about courting controversy and he has in like fashion used whatever rancor he arouses as fuel for his forward progress. However you feel about his pugnacity, he\u2019s at peace with it \u2013 and you should be, too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 9.) Wadada Leo Smith, Rosa Parks: Pure Love\u00a0<\/em>(TUM)\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 The peerless and, at 77, apparently tireless Smith previously paid tribute to Rosa Parks and the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott seven years earlier in his epochal opus Ten Freedom Summers<\/em>. He takes what he characterizes as the boycott\u2019s \u201c381 Days of Fire\u201d and unfurls from its core an oratorio in Parks\u2019 honor with seven songs, three singers (Min Xiao-Fen, Carmina Escobar, Karen Parks), a string quartet, a brass trio (including Smith\u2019s trumpet), two percussionists and some electronic sound mixing. Smith also augments this blend with excerpts from recordings he made about fifty years before with fellow \u201ccreative music\u201d insurrectionists Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins and Steve McCall. The music may not be \u201ceasy,\u201d but its message is elemental: a plea for simple justice in the face of fear and loathing. Not to put too fine a point on this, but given the imperatives of the present day, such a testament would be worth the investment of those who are closest to you \u2013 and especially those who aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10.) Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III\u00a0<\/em>(ACT)\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 One of the treasures of European jazz has put out three gorgeous albums in more than a decade and still aren\u2019t as famous as they should be on these shores for emitting some of the most transfixing sounds on the planet. The great Galliano (as I\u2019ve come to call him, mostly because it sounds cool) remains a formidable paragon on the accordion and related gadgets. But what\u2019s become apparent over time is how he\u2019s made his virtuosity merge so seamlessly with Fresu\u2019s plangent horn and Lundgren\u2019s dulcet keyboard. They collectively merge their distinctive voices so as to now seem to speak as one delicate, riveting entity. Both the familiar (\u201cWindmills of Your Mind,\u201d \u201cLove Theme from \u2018The Getaway\u2019\u201d) and the not-so-familiar (Lundgren\u2019s \u201cRonneby,\u201d Galliano\u2019s \u201cLetter to My Mother,\u201d and Fresu\u2019s \u201cHuman Requiem\u201d) are rendered in short takes, densely packed with rich melodic invention and tightly contained passion. Some might dismiss it all as \u201cpretty,\u201d but you can pass by \u201cpretty\u201d with ease. These guys make the kind of terrifyingly beautiful music that stops you in your tracks if you\u2019re not careful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n HONORABLE MENTION : Steve Davis, Correlations\u00a0<\/em>(Smoke Sessions),\u00a0Anat Fort Trio, Colour<\/em> (Sunnyside), Matthew Shipp Trio,\u00a0Signature\u00a0<\/em>(ESP)<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n BEST VOCAL ALBUM<\/strong> HONORABLE MENTION; Annie Addington, “In a Midnight Wind” (Annie Addington)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Etienne-Charles-Carnival-The-Soul-of-a-People-300x300.png\")
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\n Ed Palermo Big Band, A Lousy Day in Harlem<\/em> (Sky Cat), Anat Cohen Tentet, Triple Helix<\/em> (Anzic)<\/strong>Toni Freestone Trio, El Mar de Nube<\/em>s (Whirlwind)<\/strong>
\n Fabian Almazan Trio, This Land Abounds with Life (Biophilia)<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Catherine-Russell-Alone-Together.jpg\")
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\n Catherine Russell, Alone Together<\/em> (Dot Time)<\/strong><\/p>\n
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