• Floating Points & Pharaoh Sanders – Promises. This unusual collaboration has been almost universally hailed as a late-career masterpiece for Sanders, the one-time terror of the 60s avant-garde who has mellowed into something like elder-statesman status (see reviews in the New Yorker, Pitchfork, and the New York Times). Richard Williams’ review calls it less challenging than some earlier jazz-meets-ambient work, such as the great John Tchicai With Strings, which is fair enough. But it’s still strikingly lovely.
• Morwell Unlimited – Dub Me. Somehow this didn’t grab me when I first listened to it a decade or so ago–whoops, mistake. Perhaps that’s because it’s quieter and more pared-down than an a lot of dub. In fact it is a masterpiece of minimalism, one of King Tubby’s finest efforts. I picked this up back when the Blood & Fire reggae reissue label was still going strong and its CDs were still in circulation; it’s harder to find now (the link is to Deezer).
• Sonic Youth – Simon Werner a Disparu. These instrumental jams are the last studio recordings Sonic Youth made before they broke up in 2011. They were my favorite band back when I was a Young Alternative Dude, and the chime of their detuned guitars can still bring a smile to my face. There’s nothing too groundbreaking here, but if you like the spacey bits of other SY albums then this will also be enjoyable.
• Stan Getz – Captain Marvel. Chick Corea, may he rest in peace, played electric piano on this 1972 date, and his fusion-y Return To Forever band made up with the rest of the sidemen. But the resulting sound bears little resemblance to other offspring of Miles Davis’ electric period: it’s a rare example of electric jazz without rock gestures, just that gorgeous Getz tone throughout.
• Edgard Varèse – “Density 21.5.” Originally composed in 1936, this solo flute piece has had a strange afterlife as a symbol of the potential for cross-pollination between jazz and classical music. A copy of the score with a signed dedication from the composer was found among Eric Dolphy’s papers in the Library of Congress, and Dolphy reportedly performed it at a 1962 concert. Among the many losses from Dolphy’s tragic early death in 1964 is the fact that we will never hear his take on it. The original 1950 recording of the piece is spooky, but actually does not sound too radical compared to the vocalized sounds Dolphy would develop in his own flute playing.

• Django Reinhardt – Renown And Resistance 1937-1943. Django’s recordings with his string-band group the Quintette du Hot Club de France are legendary, and rightly so. But he played in many different contexts, and this collection brings together a mass of recordings of him with other swing-era musicians. One of the highlights is a session with Rex Stewart and Barney Bigard from the Ellington band; together they make some of the best small-group swing on record.
• John Zorn – More News For Lulu. The original News For Lulu album was a landmark of the 1980s avant-garde, taking on traditional hard-bop tunes with a very untraditional lineup: Zorn on alto, George Lewis on trombone, Bill Frisell on guitar. This live recording is even better, the players more assured and adventurous.
• Duke Ellington – Piano In The Background. A somewhat obscure session that delivers the opposite of what the title promises: it’s a feature for Ellington’s often-underrated piano playing. The repertoire is largely familiar territory for the band but Ellington’s solos lift the playing out of the ordinary. The 1960s were a great decade for Ellington: two years after this he would record the stunning piano-trio masterpiece Money Jungle.
• Steve Lacy – Blinks. A terrific, exciting live recording from a great working band. The rhythm section of Jean-Jacques Avenel and Oliver Johnson push the horn players (Lacy and his longtime partner Steve Potts) to startling heights.
• Archie Shepp – Blasé. Of most interest on this 1969 Paris session are the first two tracks, in which Shepp brings in two harmonica players and the adventurous vocalist Jeanne Lee to improvise alongside his rough-edged tenor. The result feels like a glimpse of a possible new musical genre, a sort of free blues.

• Briano Eno, Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Cluster & Eno. The product of an extended collaboration in a rural German retreat, this 1977 album still stands as one of the better things any of these electronic-music luminaries have done. It’s more melodic and interesting than the pure background of the ambient music Eno would develop a few years later, and more consistently beautiful than much of Cluster’s previous work. These delicate miniatures are more attractive to me than the more rock-like songs on their follow-up effort, After The Heat.
• Andrew Hill – Smokestack. Although Andrew Hill’s run of mid-60s albums on Blue Note is some of my favorite jazz ever recorded, I did not really appreciate this one the first few times I encountered it. It’s an oddball lineup — piano, two basses, drums — and the compositions are dark and twisty. Listening to it again recently, I abandoned all previous reservations; it’s great stuff, a distillation of Hill’s inimitable style.
• Geri Allen – Etudes. Another pinnacle of modern jazz piano, with brilliant accompaniment from Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Her version of “Lonely Woman” sounds perfectly natural on piano, a real accomplishment; Ethan Iverson calls it “the first truly acceptable version of Ornette Coleman’s most famous ballad with piano in the lead.”
• Vin Gordon – African Shores. The British saxophonist Nat Birchall is not the only jazz musician to have fallen in love with reggae music. But he may be unmatched in his commitment to playing reggae in a respectful idiomatic style, without letting jazz preoccupations with individual virtuosity get in the way of the music. He produced and played on this new late-career album by the great Jamaican trombonist Gordon, who delivers indisputably excellent instrumental reggae throughout.
• Pete Rock – Center Of Attention and The Original Baby Pa. A time capsule from the golden age of hip-hop: these albums were recorded in 1995 but went bafflingly unreleased at the time. Pete Rock’s beats are excellent, and provide many fine headnodding moments in his classic style, even if the rapping is not always as interesting as the production.
• Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings E&F Sides. The sequel to one of the best jazz recordings of 2018, and very much more of a good thing. The casual vibe and accessible rhythms of this project disguise McCraven’s radical rejection of the usual strategies of the jazz avant-garde: there are few extended solos or complex compositions here. Instead he favors a collective groove, atmosphere and interlocking parts.

• Coleman Hawkins – The Middle Years: Essential Cuts 1939-1949. Out of all the classic tenor players, Hawkins has been the slowest to grow on me. His bluff, aggressive tone didn’t initially appeal, and I have to say Lester Young is still my president. But the unceasing daring and invention on display in these classic recordings finally won me over.
• Curlew – Bee. One of the gateway drugs that first got me into jazz; I saw one of their shows in the early 1990s, when I was still an alternative-rock kid, and it really expanded my horizons. That era of the band is captured well on this 1992 album, which I hadn’t heard in a long time. Now that my ears have been trained by a couple more decades of jazz listening, Curlew is actually too rocky and aggressive for me. But Davey Williams’ guitar pyrotechnics and Tom Cora’s amplified cello playing are still a blast.
• Gigi Gryce – Nica’s Tempo. I did not come to this obscure mid-50s jazz record with particularly high expectations, but it blew me away. In fact it’s one of very best recordings of this era of modernist jazz. Gryce’s arrangements are the highlight, there are a couple of wonderful vocal numbers by Ernestine Anderson, and some surprising quartet tracks with Thelonious Monk.
• Bill Dixon & Tony Oxley – Papyrus Vol. I & Vol. II. Two hours of improvised trumpet and drum duets is not the kind of thing I usually go in for: a bit too close to avant-garde self-punishment. But this music is not punishing and is often outright gorgeous: Dixon extracts an unbelievable range of sounds from his trumpet.
• Tony Allen – A Tribute to Art Blakey. I found out about this little session for Blue Note from Tony Allen’s obituary, which is always a sad way to come to appreciate an artist. I didn’t know much about his post-Fela Kuti work, but this is pretty damn good. Allen’s drumming is just amazing, entrancing without being overbearing.
• Gregory Isaacs – Slum In Dub. A classic piece of dub from 1978, every track is a gem. Isaacs’ name is on the cover, and some of the rhythms come from his Cool Ruler album, but there is almost none of his singing to be heard. It’s mostly a fine piece of echoey rhythm work by Prince Jammy and King Tubby.
• Junius Paul – Ism. Certainly one of best jazz recordings of 2019 (it dropped in November). A sprawling, glorious mess, whose long jams and eclecticism are reminiscent of one of those double albums from the 1970s. The music spans the gamut from free bop to funk, all grounded by Paul’s monstrously rhythmic bass playing.

It’s been hard to keep up with all the losses that the pandemic has dealt us. But I had a particular admiration for Lee Konitz, who died this week at 92 from complications of Covid-19.

What’s really impressive about Konitz is not just the length of his career–he was born only seven years after Charlie Parker, who has now been dead for 65 years–but its remarkable diversity and creativity. He played with everyone and in every context, and always sounded like himself and almost always found something new to say.

Many great Konitz recordings are not mentioned in the obituaries (the best ones are David Adler’s for WBGO and John Fordham’s for The Guardian), which is more an indication of the incredible depth of his discography than anything else. His most recent album–Old Songs New–just came out in November. Ethan Iverson’s deeply personal appreciation of Konitz rightly highlights his playing in Paul Motian’s On Broadway project, which is one of my favorites as well.

Here are a few of the other Konitz recordings that have particularly stayed with me:

• The Lee Konitz Duets (1967). A radically diverse and surprising jazz album, offering an early taste of the range of partnerships his career would encompass.
• I Concentrate On You: A Tribute To Cole Porter (1974). Gorgeous, intimate duets with bassist Red Mitchell.
• We Thought About Duke (1994). One of the most interesting Ellington tributes ever recorded; a collaboration with Franz Koglmann and other European avant-gardists.
• Some New Stuff (2000). A characteristically modest title for an outing that uncharacteristically focuses on Konitz’s original compositions rather than standards. The high-energy rhythm section of Greg Cohen and Joey Baron push his playing to new heights.
• Jugendstil II (2005). A masterpiece of improvisational counterpoint. Konitz shines in this darkly minimalist trio with tenor saxophonist Chris Cheek and French bassist-composer Stephane Furic Leibovici.
• Owls Talk (2010). Konitz and the saxophonist Alexandra Grimal entwine complex, moody lines, backed by elders Gary Peacock on bass and Paul Motian on drums.

• Kim Kashkashian – J.S. Bach: Six Suites For Viola Solo. This adaption of Bach’s cello suites for the viola is beautifully played, and succeeded in making me hear these classic pieces differently.
• Art Ensemble of Chicago – We Are On The Edge. Like basically every Art Ensemble album, their 50th anniversary celebration is a pretty mixed bag–but the high points are indeed very high, and the recording is gorgeously clear. The two surviving founding members have gathered a huge cast of Chicago jazz stars around them, making for a very different sound than their past recordings (the string players in particular stand out).
• Jackie McLean – Action. One of a series of outstanding albums the great vibes player Bobby Hutcherson (RIP) made for Blue Note in the 1960s, in groups variously led by himself, the trombonist Grachan Moncur III, and alto player McLean. All of the albums are worth hearing, this one is especially fine.
• Espen Aalberg – Basement Sessions Vol. 4 (The Bali Tapes). These joyful jam sessions, led by the Norwegian drummer Aalberg, hark back to the enthusiasm for world music that swept the jazz world in the 1960 and 70s. A worthy addition to the very short list of attempts at jazz-gamelan fusion.
• Masada String Trio – The Circle Maker. John Zorn’s decades-long Masada project produced both a distinctive set of themes for jazz improvisation, and distinctive ensembles to play them. The unique sound of the Masada String Trio–violin, cello, bass–is perhaps the best match of ensemble with this “radical Jewish” repertory. I’ve been listening to all of their recordings again recently, and this may be the most consistent.

I listened to over 250 new recordings this year–new to me, that is, not necessarily newly released in 2019. This is a highly subjective list of the ones that really stood out, in alphabetical order:

• Joshua Abrams – Mandatory Reality. Long, gorgeous, slow pieces from a large ensemble, mixing jazz improvisation with African drones and minimalist patterns.
• Don Byas – Giants of the Tenor Sax. Byas bridged the swing and bop eras, and his style on tenor sax marries the best of both eras: a gorgeous tone and great invention. This out-of-print CD is the only place I have found all of Byas’ legendary 1945 duets with bassist Slam Stewart; his other work is available on various anthologies.
• Bill Dixon – Intents and Purposes and Tapestries For Small Orchestra. These two suites, from 1967 and 2009, bookend Dixon’s long career. Although he gets amazing sounds out of his trumpet, Dixon is also a composer of genius, creating complex moody soundscapes that are like nothing else in jazz.
• Gamelan Pacifica – Nourishment. The Seattle-based gamelan ensemble’s 1994 recording Trance Gong was a landmark in combining Indonesian modernism with American new music; this 2015 disc has more excellent and intriguing work.
• Charlie Haden – The Ballad of the Fallen and Not In Our Name. Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra is a famous piece of radical 1960s jazz, but these two follow-up albums are even better: true classics of large-ensemble writing. Carla Bley’s arrangements and clever transformations of classical and Latin American sources are the highlight.
• Keith Hudson – Playing It Cool. Dark, rhythmic dub experiments from 1981. Almost everything I’ve heard by Hudson is essential: funky and strange in equal measures. 
• Frank Kimbrough – Monk’s Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk. All 70 Monk compositions are given full and respectful readings by a jazz quartet. Kimbrough’s clever arrangements and Scott Robinson’s promiscuous multi-instrumentalism ensure variety.
• Lee Konitz – The Lee Konitz Duets. A startlingly original and diverse recording that matches Konitz up with several different partners. It still sounds completely fresh 50 years later.
• Warne Marsh – Ne Plus Ultra. A masterpiece of jazz counterpoint. I’ve always loved Marsh’s ability to play off other horn players, and this pianoless quartet recording from 1969 has beautiful interaction between Marsh and altoist Gary Foster.
• Myra Melford – Snowy Egret. Melford’s compositions take many surprising turns while remaining very listenable. Another great bunch of contemporary jazz compositions is played by a similar lineup of trumpet, guitar, piano, bass and drums on Jonathan Finlayson’s Moving Still.
• Paul Motian – On Broadway Vol. 1,2,3,4,5. Motian’s transformations of the old warhorses are startling and beautiful. Altogether a major musical accomplishment by one of the most distinctive drummers in jazz.
• Herbie Nichols – Herbie Nichols Trio and Love, Gloom, Cash, Love. I am late in discovering these classics, but not too late, thankfully. Every one of Nichols’ tunes is a gem. All of Nichols’ too-scarce recordings are also available on this compilation, and Ethan Iverson’s appreciation is a good listeners’ guide.
• The Savory Collection 1935-1940 – A huge pile of great jazz from the swing era, most of it unheard since it was first broadcast on the radio.

Previous lists: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

• Don Cherry – Art Deco. After playing a lot of world music, flute and percussion in the 1970s, Don Cherry re-engaged with the jazz tradition in this fine 1988 recording. It’s a reunion of the Ornette Coleman quartet, with James Clay in the sax chair, that ranges from Charlie Haden playing folk tunes on the bass to a respectful take on “Body and Soul.” Clay’s playing is absolutely stellar, as Ethan Iverson emphasizes in his appreciation of this album.
• Charlie Haden – The Ballad of the Fallen. The second album by Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra project is much less well known than the 1969 original, but I think it’s even better. The fusion of jazz and Latin American folk music is more assured and convincing, and Carla Bley’s arrangements are gorgeous.
• Lee Konitz – The Lee Konitz Duets. A startlingly original and diverse recording that still sounds completely fresh 50 years later. Konitz plays duets with several musicians on different instruments, before combining everyone into a larger group session. A huge variety of sounds and styles.
• Myra Melford – Snowy Egret. A quintet featuring the wonderful Ron Miles on cornet plays Melford’s compositions just beautifully–they take many surprising turns while remaining very listenable.
• Art Blakey – The Freedom Rider. In honor of Blakey’s centennial I spent some time exploring some of the massive pile of Jazz Messengers recordings I had never got around to listening to before. This one really stood out: all killer, no filler, with Wayne Shorter and Lee Morgan in the front line. As a bonus, the cover is one of the best-ever Blue Note photographs.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so a lot to catch up on:

• The Savory Collection 1935-1940 – A huge pile of great jazz from the swing era, most of it unheard since it was first broadcast on the radio. Highlights for me so far are the tracks from John Kirby’s sextet, the jam sessions with Fats Waller, the solo piano tracks by Joe Sullivan (a rare example of extended improvisation from this period), and some sterling performances by Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter. There’s also a lot of live Count Basie, with his band at its peak.
• Dr. John – Bluesiana Triangle. I had never heard of this 1990 album until it was mentioned in a few of the obituaries after his passing in June. Of course I grabbed a copy immediately: who could pass up Dr. John playing with David Newman (who was in Ray Charles’ band back in the day) and Art Blakey! People seem to want to call it a jazz album because of the personnel, but it’s not really: as the title indicates, they are playing the blues, and wonderfully well. Rest in peace, Mac.
• Allen Toussaint – American Tunes. Continuing on the theme of recordings by now-departed giants of New Orleans music, this posthumously released session is something of a follow-up to Toussaint’s jazz album The Bright Mississippi. This one is more deliberately wide-ranging but also brilliant. Would any other piano player — could any other piano player — move so easily from interpreting Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debby” to Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief”? And his takes on two Ellington tunes, with guest vocals by Rhiannon Giddens, fulfill the promise of the title, magnificently pulling together a century of American musical tradition.
• Ari Brown – Ultimate Frontier. A stalwart of the Chicago jazz scene who should be better known, and one of very few musicians to play both sax and piano at a high level. I originally encountered his sound in Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio. This 1995 recording was Brown’s first under his own name, and is a consistently excellent of set of soulful spiritual jazz.
• Jacob Miller – Who Say Jah No Dread. One of the keystone recordings of dub reggae is Augustus Pablo’s King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown. Much of the raw material for that masterpiece came from these less well-known sessions that Pablo produced with vocalist Jacob Miller. The vocal tracks are powerful and compelling–it’s no surprise the dubs turned out so great as well.