{"id":2864,"date":"2020-12-02T14:46:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T14:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2020-12-14T16:54:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T16:54:25","slug":"gene-seymours-top-ten-jazz-albums-for-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=2864","title":{"rendered":"Gene Seymour’s Top Ten Jazz Albums for 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

With a couple of (qualified) exceptions, there\u2019s not a whole lot on this year\u2019s list that will wake the neighbors or set off cowbells and car alarms. This, somehow, didn\u2019t feel like the year for that kind of noise, though there sure was a whole lot of unwelcome noise pounding on the walls of wherever we hunkered down to Stay Safe. I would like to think that for every two or three people shut in by the pandemic who could do nothing but keep some form of broadcast news on in every room of their houses, there were one or two others determined to find in music, or any other art, some deliverance from the relentless meanness of this year. Maybe that explains why most of the items listed below emit vibes owing to the ruminative, the elegiac, even, at times, the shadowy and ethereal. If you needed swinging, swaying and rocking, you could find all that, too and I wish all three were more conspicuous than they appear to be on this list. My own impulse for breadth and adventure is otherwise mostly indulged here with the hope that you all will do likewise.

One question for further study, and by now it\u2019s a familiar one: Just what the heck is an album these days? And is that really how you all still listen to music these days? I know that\u2019s two questions and I\u2019m not going to go too deep into the weeds on either of them. Discuss. We\u2019ll talk later.<\/p>\r\n

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1.) Jimmy Heath<\/strong>, Love Letter<\/strong><\/em> (Verve)<\/strong> \u2013 Even before he began recording this gleaming array of ballads two days before his 93rd birthday and polished it to a fine gloss weeks before his death this past January, Jimmy Heath seemed infused with a magical elixir whose ingredients were known only to him. I remember watching him conduct a concert of the Queens Jazz Orchestra en route to his 90th year and his compact, five-foot-three-inch frame seemed as agile as ever; plus he was blowing his tenor saxophone with as much force (if not velocity, but you can\u2019t have everything) as he did when he was a badass young composer, arranger and leader in the 1950s. In each of these tracks, the power of Heath\u2019s playing emerges in its conceptual energy, the soft glow and austere intricacy of his thematic variations, whether on Billie Holiday\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Explain\u201d and \u201cLeft Alone,\u201d whose lyrics, written by Holiday for Mal Waldron\u2019s melody, are tenderly, fastidiously enacted by Cecile McLorin Salvant; or on Heath\u2019s own pieces, including \u201cInside Your Heart,\u201d \u201cFashion or Passion\u201d and \u201cBallad From Upper Neighbors Suite.\u201d The formidable supporting cast comprises Salvant, pianist Kenny Barron, vibraphonist Monte Croft, bassist David Wong, guitarist Russell Malone, drummer Lewis Nash, vocalist Gregory Porter (featured on \u201cDon\u2019t Misunderstand,\u201d a tune Gordon Parks wrote for his 1972 feature, Shaft\u2019s Big Score<\/em>) and Wynton Marsalis, appropriately bringing his trumpet along for \u201cLa Mesha”, composed by Heath\u2019s onetime confrere Kenny Dorham. Though properly regarded, to quote Gary Giddins\u2019 liner notes, as a \u201cstunningly elegant last testament,\u201d Love Letter<\/em> sure doesn\u2019t feel final; rather as though its leader is summoning a hard jolt of giddy-yap for the next album. Which is the kind of monument we\u2019d all like to leave behind.<\/p>\r\n

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