Best of 2024: Jazz

Top 10, plus 20 (plus)

Welcome to part 1 of the DFSBP year-end roundup! Part 2, dealing with various reissues and archival releases can be found right over here; part 3, covering metal, punk, rock, etc. lives here; and part 4, my all-genres-in-play annual top 10, is over this way.

One thing I really like about making year-end lists: celebrating music that moved and buoyed me throughout the year.

One thing I really don’t like: the mistaken notion that if a given title did not make a list I publish that it means I didn’t like or even love it.

I’m hardly the first culture writer to make this observation, but it’s tough out there. There’s an enormous amount of music being released weekly/monthly/yearly, and very few outlets in which to cover it. And the critics, journalists and other sorts of commentators who are doing their best to keep tabs on it tend to be spread quite thin. Still, the music is why we’re all here, so we do our best!

All of which is to say that at the end of a given year, it’s important to me to make space to recognize additional titles in various genres that hit me hard this year. First up this December, in a multi-part round-up published on my blog in previous years but now living here on Substack: jazz.

Let’s start with my personal favorites. Go here to read an annotated list of the top 10 new jazz albums of 2024, from where I’m sitting, via a New York Times gift link. It was an honor to put this together, and I anguished over the final selection somewhat. Namely, whether to include many of the titles I’ll call out below instead of the ones I ultimately went with. But I stand by my picks, and I submitted the same list of 10 records in the same order to the annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. Those are as follows — with Bandcamp links where applicable, a convention that holds throughout this post — and at the Times link, you’ll find links to my prior coverage of many of the artists and albums in question.

1. Tarbaby, You Think This America (Giant Step Arts)
2. David Murray Quartet, Francesca (Intakt)
3. Tyshawn Sorey Trio, The Susceptible Now (Pi)
4. Louis Hayes, Artform Revisited (Savant)
5. The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse!)*
6. Patricia Brennan Septet, Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic)
7. Luke Stewart Silt Trio, Unknown Rivers (Pi)
8. Frank London/The Elders, Spirit Stronger Than Blood (ESP-Disk)
9. Melissa Aldana, Echoes of the Inner Prophet (Blue Note)
10. Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few, The Almighty (Division 81)

*I wrote press materials for this release, after having covered both Messthetics and JBL, and the fledgling stages of this collaboration, favorably in the past.

Before we dive into the honorable mentions, I want to call out an upcoming event, which is the 2024 edition of “The Year in Jazz: A Critics Roundtable,” Nate Chinen’s annual December dialogue on what’s transpired in the genre, taking place on Zoom tonight, Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, and viewable in real time by paid subscribers of Nate’s crucial Substack newsletter, The Gig. Nate has been kind enough to ask me to participate this time around, along with Lauren Du Graf, author of the Grammy-nominated liner notes for the recent archival Alice Coltrane release The Carnegie Hall Concert and another writer whose work I greatly admire. So please join us there and then if you’re so inclined! Go here for more info.

And now, a rundown of a bunch of other jazz titles that impressed me this year. I’m putting numbers on these just to give this post some kind of shape, but I want to emphasize up front that the ranking is pretty arbitrary and that all are equally worth your time, as far as I’m concerned, along with all titles mentioned in passing below the “main” picks.

11. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem)

True working bands cultivating their own particular languages and vibes are something of a rarity these days, which makes this document — born out of a long-running L.A. residency by guitarist Jeff Parker’s quartet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose, the latter of whom I’d never heard, or even heard of, before this project, and who has proved to be a revelation — all the more precious. Ethereal and funky in turn, this is music to get blissfully lost in (as I have during both recent spins of this album and an excellent early-December gig at Brooklyn’s Public Records), and evidence of a potent new career chapter from a musician who has been making key contributions to regional scenes for close to 30 years. (See also this Parker-heavy Shfl rundown I recently put together on the ‘90s Chicago underground.)

A lot of thoughtful and illuminating coverage of this one has been hitting the web lately — see Brad Farberman’s Tidal interview with Parker and Mark Richardson’s Pitchfork review. As many fellow scribes have pointed out, the members of this band also made valuable contributions elsewhere, including solo albums by Johnson and Butterss, and the debut from SML, a band including both Johnson and Butterss.

12. Dan Weiss, Even Odds (Cygnus)

A deservedly acclaimed drummer, I’d argue that Dan Weiss is still underrated as a bandleader. All his projects, from the long-running trio with Jacob Sacks and Thomas Morgan to the mighty Starebaby, are worthwhile, and this is another winner: a trio with Miguel Zenón and Matt Mitchell that shows off all facets of Weiss’s art, from the brainy and kinetic to the spare and heartfelt.

You can also hear Mitchell and Weiss together on Mitchell’s fine, mind-bending latest, Zealous Angles, one of a slew of strong 2024 piano-trio discs. (See here for a rundown and below for more.)

13. James Carter, UN (J.M.I.)

I’m thankful that the streaming algorithm revealed this one to me a few months back, because I haven’t heard a word about it elsewhere. An unvarnished solo bari-sax set from a virtuosic and marvelously expressive player. Could register as an oddity but instead feels raw and just plain riveting, finding Carter fully at ease in this unusual format.

14. Elephant9 with Terje Rypdal, Catching Fire (Rune Grammofon)

Rypdal, the genre-blurring ECM guitar legend, joins forces with a like-minded Norwegian trio for a live set, recorded back in 2017 but newly released, that feels like a gritty, groovy trip back to 1974. A total blast, and a must for any prog and/or fusion head.

15. Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers, Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook)

Spacious and profoundly lovely duo magic from two AACM masters, old friends who had never previously recorded together. So much intent in every note here. (Wrote a bit about this one in the NYT Fall Preview.)

16. The Heavy Hitters, That’s What’s Up! (Cellar)

The best way I can describe this one is that it’s exactly what you’d want to hear during a night out at a classy mainstream-jazz temple like Smoke. Immaculately swinging, soulful stuff, in other words, courtesy of six players with decades upon decades of combined bandstand experience: co-leaders Mike LeDonne (who wrote most of the material) and Eric Alexander, plus Vincent Herring, Jeremy Pelt, Alexander Claffy and the great Kenny Washington on drums. Tight ensemble arrangements, inspired solos, the works.

It was a good year for this kind of summit-meeting session in a straight-ahead vein, with the above joined by the Black Art Jazz Collective’s Truth to Power (also featuring Pelt, whose Griot book series I was proud to spotlight earlier this year) and Solid Jackson, an appealing new effort from MTB — the collective of Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner and Peter Bernstein — following up Consenting Adults, an album recorded 30 years ago this month. (Speaking of Bernstein and Mehldau, I also loved the guitarist’s recent Better Angels, featuring Mehldau as well as the great Al Foster.)

17. John Zorn, Ballades and Ou Phrontis (Tzadik)

In a year where he also found time to reunite PainKiller, release a great live album by his New Masada Quartet and continue his ongoing collaboration with contemporary-classical singer Barbara Hannigan, Zorn also furthered one of his most rewarding current projects — a piano trio featuring Brian Marsella at the keys, Jorge Roeder at the bass and Ches Smith on drums — with two new discs. As with the earlier Zorn efforts by this group, Suite for Piano and The Fourth Way, these albums zero in on an enchanting space between the classic jazz piano trio and Zorn’s exacting compositional world. Hearing these players execute the complex written music and then blast off from it is an absolute thrill.

As mentioned above, it’s been a staggeringly good year for the piano-trio format, in just about every conceivable corner of jazz. In addition to the Zorn efforts above and the Tarbaby and Sorey discs cited on the top 10, Kris Davis’s Run the Gauntlet and Marta Sánchez’s Perpetual Void both get my highest recommendation, and though it’s only a few weeks old, Jamie Saft Trio Plays Monk has already caught my ear in a major way.

One more P.S. here: These Zorn efforts were only part of a typically impactful year on record for Smith, who also released a brilliantly bizarre intergenre effort (art pop meets electronica meets contemporary classical?) under his own name, Laugh Ash; turned up as one third of Weird of Mouth, a hyper-intense free-improv trio with saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and pianist Craig Taborn, on their debut for Otherly Love, an exciting, eclectic new label founded by musician-producer (and my longtime friend) Stephen Buono; and held down cellist Erik Friedlander’s intricate and hard-grooving Dirty Boxing.

18. Wendy Eisenberg, Viewfinder (American Dreams)

Like Smith’s Laugh Ash, this is another one that resists any kind of easy classification, to its great credit. Anyone keeping tabs on avant-garde music in recent years already knows that Wendy Eisenberg is a force in the interlocking spheres of progressive punk, exploratory jazz, unconventional songwriting and more. These styles and more collide here, in what feels like a magnum opus to date for this guitarist, singer and all-around subcultural luminary.

Accept When, Eisenberg’s duo effort with saxophonist Caroline Davis, is also excellent (was lucky enough to catch this project live at Tubby’s, thanks to my friend Clifford Allen’s crucial ongoing Kingston, NY, series So, What Do You Think?). And in the vein of the Jeff Parker–verse cited above, these Eisenberg efforts connect with a nexus of outstanding work adjacent to and including the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, another band I was very happy to witness in person this year, documented on the recent live release Four Guitars Live. That cornucopia also included Shane Parish’s magical covers disc Repertoire and Ava Mendoza’s deep and singular solo art-blues opus The Circular Train.

19. Jon Irabagon’s Outright!, Recharge the Blade (Irabbagast)

Jon Irabagon has been churning out compelling work through his own Irabbagast label for some time now. All his recent releases are worthwhile, including Survivalism, a wild solo effort for the tiny soprillo sax, but this one, the latest from his long-running Outright! band, really grabbed me. A riotously fun “inside/outside” set that’s at times aggressively weird and off-kilter, at others disarmingly lovely and even romantic. Just great, ear-catching stuff with a heavy cast including the aforementioned Weiss and Mitchell, plus bassist Chris Lightcap and trombonist Ray Anderson.

You will not want to miss those latter two, respectively, on Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye, the piercing and profoundly intense latest from another contemporary saxophone standout, Darius Jones, which features Lightcap alongside Gerald Cleaver, and on Afternoon, the alternately funky and abstract 11th effort from BassDrumBone, Anderson’s collective trio with bassist Mark Helias and drummer Gerry Hemingway, going strong for close to a half-century.

And lastly, don’t miss Irabagon’s incredible contributions to the Patricia Brennan album cited on the top 10!

20. Charles Lloyd, The Sky Will Still Be Here Tomorrow (Blue Note)

A probing and prayerful set from the eminent saxophonist, marking the debut of a new quartet that continues Lloyd’s longtime partnership with Jason Moran and brings the sterling rhythm team of Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade into the fold. Lloyd has accrued a mystical gravitas in his later years, and this record is steeped in it.

In addition to the Lloyd, as well as all the other fine saxophone-centric discs cited above, I also want to shout out Reverence, by Lloyd’s contemporary Charles McPherson, which is about as strong and forthright a statement by a jazz elder as one could hope for.

And, for good measure, here are some additional new titles that I dug very much

21. Mary Halvorson, Cloudward (Nonesuch)
Enchanting writing, perfectly matched with a magical sextet, the same one featured on 2022’s Amaryllis.

22. Happy Apple, New York CD (Sunnyside) / The Bad Plus, Complex Emotions (Mack Avenue)
Two fine new showings from the Dave King School. Any fan of either group pretty much knows what to expect from these, but that doesn’t make them any less welcome.

23. Peter Evans, Extra (We Jazz)
Super funky meeting between avant-trumpet marvel Evans and the deeply grooving rhythm team of bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Jim Black.

24. Bark Culture, Warm Wisdom (Temperphantom)
A highly intriguing Philly trio — Victor Vieira-Branco on vibes, John Moran on bass and Joey Sullivan on drums — makes its recorded debut. As with the Evans above, I love the sense of groove here, as well as the strong ensemble identity. Hope to catch them live asap.

25. Ben Monder, Planetarium (Sunnyside)
Ben Monder’s compositional opuses — see also: 2005’s Oceana and 2013’s Hydra — only arrive about once per decade, and that’s probably just as well, since they’re massive works that demand and reward plenty of attention. I’m still getting to know this one, a collection of ensemble compositions (often with vocals) and solo pieces, but it only reaffirms his status as a true contemporary visionary, operating beyond jazz or any other category.

26. Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (Impulse!)
Shabaka (mostly) sets aside the tenor and finds a new kind of floating serenity. I agree with Nate Chinen’s assessment that this is one of the most impressive statements so far in the current jazz-adjacent “Soft Radicals” movement. (See also my Pitchfork review of the album.)

27. Pat Metheny, MoonDial (BMG)
Solo Pat on acoustic baritone guitar. It’s always rewarding when a virtuoso who can play, and pretty much has played, anything leans into simplicity and beauty, as he does hard here. Transporting stuff.

28. The Headhunters, The Stunt Man (Ropeadope)
Amid the justified hoopla over the reunion of the original Head Hunters band, this fun, hard-grooving date from the band’s currently active incarnation — expertly steered by Bill Summers and Mike Clark, with Donald Harrison out front — seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Coming out of the speakers, it’s pretty much irresistible.

29. Vinnie Sperrazza Apocryphyal, Sunday (Loyal Label)
Though there are shades here of Sperrazza’s hero Paul Motian and Motian-adjacent masters like Bill Frisell, this one really carves out its own space: sometimes prickly and free, other times drolly melodic. Subtly pulls you in and keeps you rapt.

30. Advancing on a Wild Pitch (Moppa Elliott), Disasters, Vol. 2 (Hot Cup)
Another one that deserves considerably more attention than it got. Smart, swinging, stylish compositions in a charmingly retro style. Based on past work, we may be used to sly and/or surreal moves from bassist-composer Moppa Elliott, but this is just great jazz, without an obvious wink.

*****

More to come from the DFSBP Best of 2024 round-up, including mention of noteworthy jazz reissues and archival titles, and my favorite “loud” (metal, punk, etc.) and all-genre albums of the year. In parting, here are a few other jazz-related pieces I published this year, not linked above, that I’m proud of:

“A Great Day in Harlem” deep dive (New York Times)

Tim Berne at 70 (New York Times)

Jack DeJohnette on piano, life after touring and more (New York Times)

Paul Motian: guide to 25 essential albums (Shfl)

Sunday Review: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Nice Guys (Pitchfork)

Kamasi Washington on Fearless Movement and aiming for the unstoppable (New York Times)

Sonny Sharrock deep dive (Substack)

On the terror and the beauty of spiritual jazz (Substack)

Is André 3000 in His Jazz Era? (NPR Music)