By Friday, the 13: Counting down a baker's dozen of the year's best jazz on CD

To start with, it’s not just 10. Think “baker’s dozen,” and you’re on the money.

 

We live in a world preoccupied by lists, and also with the number 10: apparently, we never outgrow our first fascination with the amount of fingers or toes most of us possess at birth. I had to limit my list of the year’s best jazz recordings to decimal restrictions when I voted in Rhapsody.com’s nationwide poll of jazz critics (formerly the Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll), which will go on line shortly after the new year. But having spent too much time agonizing over the handful of discs I had to lop off my official “Best Of” ballot, I placed looser restrictions on my own column.

 

Besides, triskaidekaphilia is something of a family tradition. 

 

So over the next few days, I’ll be rolling out the 13 discs I most highly recommend from the year just ending – along with another couple dozen that certainly deserve notice and attention, and might easily have found their way into the top echelon some other year.

 

In listing only jazz discs, I’m bucking a trend; such an enterprise is now pretty old-school. More and more music critics, for outfits ranging from music mags to the New York Times to blogs and web sites, make no such distinctions among genre. 

 

For a prime example, see Seth Colter Walls, who earlier this month posted his “100 Great (Not Best!) Songs of 2011” along with “50 Favorite Albums” from across the spectrum. For another, see “The 100 Best Albums” – from classical to folk, rock, ethnic, and jazz (but no hip-hop) – compiled by Ted Gioia, the fine pianist and gifted author. (He’s one of the best music writers of our time; get his West Coast Jazz to see how a jazz history should read.)  

 

I have great admiration for these guys (and, closer to home, Peter Margasak at the Chicago Reader), who have opened themselves to, and in many cases acquired expertise in, so many genres. I’m not sure how they manage; I have enough trouble listening – really listening, absorbing, paying attention – to just the new jazz releases each year. (And even then, I never get to them all; I spent much of December playing catch-up with dozens of noteworthy albums.) 

 

In addition, I readily admit, I just don’t care about that  many other genres.

 

I enjoy plenty of what we in the U.S. chauvinistically call “world music,” but I think that's partly because much of it contains some element of improvisation. (Once I’ve heard a Cambodian pop-song rhythm repeated for three minutes, I’ve received that information – I don’t need any more.) I find most current American pop to be depressingly, stupendously dull: all sizzle, no steak. I love some of the indie-rock I get to hear, but not enough to seek out the good examples among the solipsistic pretenders.

 

And I don’t care for rap. I respect those examples that rise above the genre, but in general, I don’t like the genre. And you know what? That’s OK. As a white, suburban-raised 60-year-old, I’m hardly the target audience for rap or hip-hop. I belong to a generation that hip-hoppers rail against, the way rock bands of my college years set their sights on my parents’ values. 

 

I recognize the idiom’s technical innovations, in terms of complex beats and grunge-darkened harmonies, and that allows me to appreciate its influence on such vital modern jazz artists as Steve Coleman, pianist Jason Moran, and the outspoken trumpeter Nicholas Payton. (More  on him later.) I don’t begrudge those who dig hip-hop; but I have no direct experience with its subject matter, or the environment that spawned it, or the collective consciousness it speaks to. It would be ridiculous for me to offer opinions about it – much less weigh them against those of people who focus much of their time sampling the vast array of hip-hop releases. 

 

I don’t like it when dilettante criticasters start lecturing about jazz; it would be hypocritical to interlope on a conversation in which I similarly have no right to engage.

 

And that’s why, in true old-school fashion, I present my list of the best (in my opinion) jazz albums for 2011 (though I use a pretty liberal definition of jazz). Here are numbers 9 through 13; look for numbers 5 through 8 tomorrow.

 

 

#13 – Starlicker, Double Demon (Delmark). Starlicker comprises three of Chicago’s edgier improvisers; that they also qualify among the music’s movers and shakers on a national scale is a bonus, one which has helped land this album on a number of Top Ten lists. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz exploits the hard, percussive aspect of his instrument, which sometimes complements and sometimes contrasts with the primal drumming of John Herndon (a founding member of the post-rock band Tortoise). These two set up shimmering curtains of sound, above which the cornet of Rob Mazurek (recently repatriated after several years living in Brazil) shrieks and flutters on six high-octane tracks. The vibrant musicianship provides the nuts and bolts, but the odd timbral grouping – the cornet’s gold, the vibraphone’s silver, and the trap set’s earth tones – is what closes the deal.

 

 

#12 – Jason Adasiewicz’s Sun Rooms, Spacer (Delmark). No, you’re not seeing double: it’s another Delmark release starring Jason Adasiewicz (who shows up yet again later on my list; to paraphrase Sinatra, he had a very good year). Adasiewicz’s no-holds-barred approach to the vibraphone pays little heed to the work of such mainstream virtuosi as Gary Burton or Stefon Harris; instead, his playing recalls recordings of the late Walt Dickerson, who in the 70s picked up the avant-garde torch that Bobby Hutcherson abandoned in the 60s. Within any two tunes you’re likely to hear Monk-like tone clusters, slam-dance dissonances, and dreamy reveries. In his trio Sun Rooms, Adasiewicz grounds his intensity in the coolly collected rhythm section of bassist Nate McBride and drummer Mike Reed; they build on last year’s debut – which gained plenty of poll support around the country – to construct a program that balances incandescence and mystery.

 

 

#11 – BassDrumBone, The Other Parade (Clean Feed). I wrote the liner notes to this one, and in some polls, that would disqualify me from listing it. Tough noogies. My minimal participation in the album’s production had nothing to do with the quality of the music – lean, muscular, telepathically linked performances from a trio that has worked together, on and off, for more than three decades. The group’s punning name states the lineup: Mark Helias on bass, Gerry Hemingway on drums, and Ray Anderson on (trom)bone. That each is a marvel of technique should go without saying; less obvious, perhaps, is how they continually switch roles, while mixing and recombining the most visceral emotion and sparkling intellect. With three compositions by each of its three members, the album offers a vibrant reflection of the band itself, as well as a sharply honed valedictory on their long and fruitful history. And it swings like hoppin’ hell.

 

 

#10 – Ambrose Akinmusire, When The Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note). The 28-year-old trumpeter scored an unusual twofer in this year’s Jazz Journalism Awards – up-and-coming artist and best trumpet – largely on the strength of what many took to be his debut album. In fact, he had a small-label release back in 2007; but it hardly prepared listeners for this project, which seems to have sprung full-grown from the combined consciousness of Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard. Co-produced by pianist Jason Moran, the album recalls the grand Davis quintet of the mid-60s, especially in the delightful friction between the taut repertoire and the loose-limbed intimacy of its execution. That’s a pretty good place to start: for all his impact on modern music, few trumpeters have actively explored the legacy of Davis’s revered mid-60s band. In this scenario, tenor man Walter Smith III and wunderkind pianist Gerald Clayton admirably fill the roles originated by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. And Akinmusire blends Davis’s elliptical phrasing with Hubbard’s flashy pyrotechnics, with expectably strong results. 

 

 

#9 - Fred Ho and the Afro-Asian Music Ensemble, Big Red (Innova). Admittedly, I’m a sucker for Asian-American jazz, especially when it comes in the guise of a multi-saxophone front line – in this case, alto, tenor, and the leader’s baritone – and the swaggering rhythms that Charles Mingus bequeathed to modern jazz. And I do love a good comeback story: off the scene for several years as he’s valiantly fought advanced colon cancer, Ho this year released two albums that reaffirmed his warrior nature and esthetic obstinacy. But forget all that, and the music of Big Red still leaps from the loudspeakers like a hungry tiger. The album stars the veteran Japanese altoist Masaru Koga and tenor man David Bindman, on epic compositions that stretch from 11 to 16 minutes each; it also incorporates Asian and African drumming; the traditional Korean kayagum (analogous to the Japanese koto and the European zither); and Ho’s fierce, politically charged, and wholly contagious passion.