And the REST of the Jazz GRAMMYs go to . . . .

By the time you read this second installment of my predictions for the jazz categories in the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards®, you won’t have to wait very long to learn if I got it right. The “pre-telecast” Awards Show, at which the jazz awards will be presented, streams live on the GRAMMY site from 3 till 5:30, Chicago time. (The national telecast begins at 7 PM on WBBM-TV here in town.) 

 

In the first part of this analysis, I wrote about one significant change in this year’s awards process: the winnowing of categories from 109 to 78. I also promised to explain how the second such change – which you likely haven’t heard much about – could affect the vote totals, specifically in the Jazz Vocal slot. 

 

Here goes:

 

In previous years, GRAMMY voters were required to choose a number of genre-specific “fields” – such as jazz, rock, classical, rap – in which to mark their ballots; having specified these genres, each voter could then vote for any or all of the categories within, which ranged from one, such as World Music, to eleven, as in Classical. (You can find a list of all this year's GRAMMY nominees here.)

 

But starting with this year’s GRAMMYs, voters instead were told to choose a set number of individual categories, regardless of genre, encouraging a degree of cross-disciplinary voting. 

Hypothetically, this would allow a voter with little interest in classical music to vote only for the one symphony recording he heard last year, without using up one of his limited “fields.” That may not happen often, and it may not affect all that many categories, but I do think it will have an impact on at least a few – which brings us to:

 

 

 

Who should win: Tierney Sutton Band, American Road (Telarc)

 

Who will win: Karrin Allyson, ’Round Midnight (Concord)

 

Why: You can’t go wrong here: any winner from this especially strong batch of nominees will deserve the honor, no questions asked. 

 

Early analysis might have favored the album The Mosaic Project, an all-female, all-star omnibus from drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who herself sings on only a few of the tracks. But with guest divas like Dee Dee Bridgewater, Esperanza Spalding, Cassandra Wilson, and Dianne Reeves – all past winners – that’s not really an issue. Veteran songstress and first-time nominee Roseanna Vitro turned heads with a terrific take on the music of Randy Newman, and I imagine that his name on the disc will help make her a contender as well. You also can’t count out another past winner, Kurt Elling, whose album The Gate signaled a new direction, superbly realized with the help of producer and pop legend Don Was. 

 

Each of these artists made one of the best albums of their careers; but Tierney Sutton made the album of her life. Working with her longtime band (in which she rightly considers herself a member of a quartet, rather than a singer-plus-rhythm), Sutton wove together the various and seemingly discordant threads she has spun over the last decade. These include a sunny swing and a clear view of the storm clouds lingering on every horizon; conveyed by her crystalline vocal instrument, in brilliantly intense arrangements, she invests songs from “Summertime” to “America The Beautiful” to the 19th-century folk relic “Wayfaring Stranger” with layer upon layer of complex emotion.

 

For all that, I do think that this year’s cross-genre voting will bring Karrin Allyson’s ’Round Midnight her first GRAMMY, no less deserved for this masterful collection of classic ballads at a variety of tempos. It too is a wonderful album, and probably my first choice almost any other year. More important, though, it broke through the “jazz barrier,” gaining adherents beyond the core audience – Elysa Gardner, a pop critic at USA Today, named it “Album of the Year,” above discs by Emmylou Harris and Raphael Saadiq – and here's where the new voting regs will make a difference. I predict enough fair-weather jazz fans will take a walk on the wild side and put it over the top.

 

 

 

 

Who should win: Randy Brecker, “All Or Nothing At All” from The Jazz Ballad Song Book (Half Note)

 

Who will win: Chick Corea, “’Round Midnight” from Forever (Concord)

 

Why: Corea will win for the same reason he’ll win the GRAMMY for “Best Jazz Instrumental Album”: the voters love him, as proved by the 16 of these things he’s won over the years. I don’t mean to imply that he’s undeserving. At 70, he still summons up a combination of control, inspiration, lyricism, and technique that make him one of the most persuasive jazz soloists, and among the most influential piano stylists, in jazz history.

 

This category is the only one that honors a specific jazz track, as opposed to an entire album, and you often find some blurring of boundaries between this award and the one that goes to “Best Album.” (In fact, all but one of these nominated solos comes from one an album nominated separately.) The sentimental favorites are Sonny Rollins, still going great guns at 81 (!) and Fred Hersch, the pianist who returned after a life-threatening coma to record a stunning solo piano album at the Village Vanguard. 

 

But for me, the choice is veteran trumpeter Randy Brecker, who distills the mainstream jazz concept to its essentials, then tosses in a lifetime’s worth of ornament and filigrees, creating a balanced (but not placid), exhilarating (but not overdone) improvisation worth hearing time and again.

 

 

Unlike 2011, when Esperanza Spalding livened up the event, none of the “Big Four” GRAMMY categories (for album, record, song, and new artist) sports a jazz nominee. But a few other categories do; and this year, two in particular might as well be in the Jazz Field, since every nominee comes from the jazz world (even though these categories are open to every genre except classical).

 

 

 

Who should win: John Hollenbeck, “Falling Men” from Shut Up And Dance (BEE Jazz)

 

Who will win: Gordon Goodwin, “Hunting Wabbits 3” from his Big Phat Band's That’s How We Roll (Telarc)

 

Why: I don’t see cross-genre voting having much impact here: the category is pretty low-profile, so it should attract mainly voters who actually know the music and how to judge it (i.e. composers and arrangers). Hollenbeck, a jazz and new-music percussionist, has carved his reputation from a series of brilliant albums, filled with exotic and labor-intensive writing, for a variety of ensembles – including large jazz orchestra, as is the case here. On “Falling Men,” he uses jazz instrumentation to propel the piece’s clockwork machinations away from dry theory and toward genuine ecstasy.

 

The other nominees each have their charms, and one of them even has some hometown appeal: “Life In Eleven,” written for Béla Fleck’s band by Fleck and Chicago harmonica wizard Howard Levy. Still, I’ll place my bet on Goodwin’s slick little divertissement, the latest in a series of delightfully frantic, short-attention-span, cartoon-musicbagatelles inspired by the adventures of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. (And nothing says GRAMMY like Merrie Melodies, right?)

 

 

 

Who should win: Bob Brookmeyer, “Nasty Dance” from The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s Forever Lasting – Live in Tokyo (Planet Arts)

 

Who will win: Gordon Goodwin, “Rhapsody In Blue” from That’s How We Roll (Telarc)

 

Why: It’s not just that Goodwin has won GRAMMYs before; and it’s not just that his arrangements have achieved an almost legendary stature among big-band musicians. To top it off, on this arrangement he took a highbrow tack, reworking George Gershwin’s certified icon of American classical music, albeit one with enough jazz provenance to allow his taking liberties. That makes for a pretty unbeatable combo, and augurs well for a Goodwin double-dip on Sunday.

 

Still, Brookmeyer’s legacy as an arranger and composer, built since the 1950s, came to the fore whenever he wrote for The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (which arose from the ashes of the big band founded by Thad Jones & Mel Lewis in the 1960s), and it drives my own vote in this category. This may well be the last Brookmeyer piece recorded during his lifetime – he died last year – and that could send some votes its way. (The same dynamic will not influence votes for fellow nominee Clare Fischer, who also died within the last two months but after the awards voting deadline.) 

 

 

A couple of jazz artists also received nominations in the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists: Vince Mendoza for a track from his album Night On Earth, and the Tierney Sutton Band for their version of “On Broadway” from American Road (see above). But with recordings by Sting, Tony Bennett, and Barbara Streisand also in the running, they won’t stand a chance. Mark down Jorge Calandrelli and his arrangement of “Who Can I Turn To” for Bennett and Queen Latifah (from the album Duets II), on your scorecard, and take it to the bank.

 

 

Once again, all these awards will be announced at the GRAMMY pre-telecast, streaming tomorrow at Grammy.com/live, starting at 3.