Here’s my list of the 10 best jazz albums of 2008. An elaboration, with 30-second sound clips illustrating my points, will appear tomorrow in my column in Slate. (Some of you may notice that I’ve mentioned most of these CDs in this blog through this year.)
Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Vol. 1 (Doxy Jazz)
Shirley Horn, Live at the 1994 Monterey Jazz Festival (Concord/
Monterey Jazz Festival)
Frank Kimbrough, Air (Palmetto)
Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kinsmen (Pi Recordings)
Carla Bley Big Band, Appearing Nightly (ECM/Watt)
Paul Bley, About Time (Justin Time)
David Murray & Mal Waldron, Silence (Justin Time)
Wynton Marsalis & Willie Nelson, Two Men with the Blues (EMI)
Steve Bernstein, Diaspora Suite (Tzadik)
Jeff Gauthier, House of Return (Cryptogramophone)
I was also among the New York critics asked to contribute to Francis Davis’ annual Village Voice jazz poll. I submitted the same list to Francis. But he also asked each of us for our favorite debut album, favorite vocal album, and top three reissues. (The Sonny Rollins and Shirley Horn albums, cited above, were recorded several years ago but were never released, so they’re regarded as “new.”) Here are my picks for those categories:
Best Debut: Noah Preminger, Dry Bridge Road (Nowt Records)
Best Vocal: Shirley Horn (see entry in Best 10 of 2008)
3 Best Reissues:
Anthony Braxton, The Complete Arista Recordings (Mosaic)
Nina Simone, To Be Free (Sony Legacy)
Maria Schneider, Coming About [remastered] (ArtistShare)
More on some of these a bit later.
