The Best Jazz Albums of 2014
Here, once again, are my picks for the year's best jazz albums...it's been a terrible year for much of the world, but a very good year for the salve of jazz.
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Fred Kaplan
Masterpieces by Ellington, Finally, on Vinyl
For five years in this blog space, I've been urging, begging, audiophile record labels to reissue Masterpieces by Ellington, to my mind Duke Ellington's finest (and finest-sounding) album, on vinyl. Now Chad Kassem of Analogue Sounds has done it, and his QRP pressing is the jaw-dropper of the year...
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Frank Kimbrough, Quartet
Frank Kimbrough is a protean artist; his voices are myriad, adaptable to the occasion, as a musician, bandleader, sideman, and composer. His new CD, Quartet (on the Palmetto label), is his first album as the leader of a foursome. (The other albums under his name have been solos, duets, or trios), and it's among his most inventive.
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A Jazz Thanksgiving in New York City
Maria Schneider, photographed by Jimmy & Dena Katz
It’s Thanksgiving time, and New York jazz fans know what that means. No, not the Macy’s parade down Broadway or the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. The really big shows for our crowdannual traditions for a while noware the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra at the Jazz Standard and Jason Moran’s Bandwagon Trio at the Village Vanguard.
Kenny Barron & Dave Holland: The Art of Conversation
Pianist Kenny Barron and bassist Dave Holland have massive chops, and a lot to say, so their new duet album, The Art of Conversation (on the revived Impulse! label) is everything the title suggests.
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Ethan Iverson & Ron Carter at Mezzrow's
Friday night, I saw one of the finest, most intimate jazz sets I'd seen in a while: Ethan Iverson and Ron Carter playing duets at Mezzrow, a small new jazz club in Manhattan's West Village...
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The New Standard (and Joe Ferla's last thing)
Joe Ferla is the preeminent jazz recording engineer of our timeor, I should say, was, as he recently decided to retire from the profession, after more than 42 years and nearly 400 albums, to run his attention to playing guitar. (I haven't heard him do that, but I hope he's good.) His last-released album, The New Standard, is out on CD and double-LP on the Rare Noise Records label, and it stands not only as another specimen of superlative sonics but also Ferla's return to analog.
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Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue from Music Matters Jazz
Music Matters Jazz is going 33. As all high-end vinylphiles know, MMJ is the LA-based company that's been reissuing classic Blue Note albums cut at 45 rpm, spread out over two slabs of 180 gram virgin vinyl, encased in a gatefold cover that meticulously reproduces the original's artwork on the outside and gorgeously reprints session photos of the musicians on the inside.
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But now, after doing this with 112 titles, the company's proprietors, Ron Rambach and Joe Harley, are re-reissuing some of the greatest Blue Note titles on single-disc LPs cut at 331/3rpm . . .
R.I.P. Charlie Haden
Photo: 2010 by Steven Perilloux
Charlie Haden, one of the great jazz bassists, died this morning, at age 76, after a long illness.
Fred Hersch, Floating
Fred Hersch's Floating (on the Palmetto label) is his strongest album in a decade (you'd have to go back to his 2006 solo disc, In Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis, to match the energy) and maybe his strongest trio album ever.
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