It will be a wonderful autumn in jazz. The first festivals are planning a world-class program on real stages. That Enjoy Jazz Festival in the greater area between Heidelberg and Ludwigshafen, for example (with Angel Bat Dawid, Theo Croker, Lakecia Benjamin, among others), the Leverkusen Jazz Days (Joey Alexander, Kenny Garrett, Lisa Simone) and that Jazz Festival Berlin (who will announce their program soon). And even if many tours have been postponed to 2022, a look at the list of new releases puts you in an extremely good mood. Here is a small selection, divided into four arbitrary genres.
Melanie Charles “Y’all don’t (rellay) care about black women”
(Photo: Verve)
Heard new jazz
Makaya McCraven “Deciphering the Message” (Blue Note on November 19th): Seldom is it so clear how differently the generation of post-hip-hop jazz hears music than on the Chicago drummer’s Blue Note debut. He has sampled recordings of legends like Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd or Lee Morgan in loops and plays with contemporaries like Joel Ross and Jeff Parker. Sounds amazingly new.
Melanie Charles “Y’all Don’t (really) Care About Black Women” (Verve on October 22nd): The singer Melanie Charles deals with the legacy of the great divas in a similarly radical manner. In collages of archive recordings, overdubs and electronics with sharp breaks and breaks, this is not only a new aesthetic, but a completely different way of hearing this legacy.
BadBadNotGood “Talk Memory” (XL on October 8th): The Canadian piano trio interpreted hip-hop classics as acoustic jazz in their early student days. And because that worked so well, they soon started working with the likes of Ghostface Killah, Tyler the Creator, and MF Doom. Now they venture into new electronics and the complex rhythmic history of Brazil and have won Floating Points, Terrace Martin and Arthur Verocai.
Theo Croker “BLK2LIFE”
(Photo: Sony)
Jazz rethought
Theo Croker “BLK2LIFE” (Masterworks on September 24th): Often enough, ambitious large-scale works have gone wrong. With his new album, the trumpeter Theo Croker wants to tell nothing less than the entire story of Afro-American culture from its African roots to the present. Despite the range of music and content, it remains a self-contained masterpiece with a lot of respect for soul and funk.
Esperanza Spalding “Songwrights Apothecary Lab” (Concord on September 24th): The bassist has declared her studio to be a laboratory and has not only worked with musicians, but also with scientists based on Albert Ayler’s maxim “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe” on a kind of healing music, but which rests very confidently in itself.
Irreversible entanglements “Open the Gates” (International Anthem on November 12th): Jazz as agitation is not new, but it was long forgotten. Nobody packs anger into music as convincingly as the punk-free-jazz quintet around the poet Moor Mother.
Andrew Cyrille “The News”
(Photo: ECM)
Jazz as usual
Andrew Cyrille “The News” (just published by ECM): It doesn’t always have to be the start of new forms. Ironically, the radical companion and drummer of the iconoclast Cecil Taylor, together with the guitarist Bill Frisell and the pianist David Virelles, found an almost classic ideal of beauty in music that one is almost relieved when he carefully breaks it up in the course of the album.
Pat Metheny “Side Eye NYC” (Modern Recordings on September 10th): Why should the guitar god renew his music? But he does, because in the trio with keyboardist James Francies he does not find any new forms, but a new energy. Even his old hits sound like they were just made up.
The Cookers “Look Out!” (Gearbox on September 24th): Should anyone have wondered what the brave craftsmen who toured so diligently in the eighties actually do, Donald Harris, George Cables and Billy Hart, for example, you will find them here in a supergroup with virtuoso Hard Bop.
John Coltrane “A Love Supreme Live in Seattle”
(Photo: Impulse)
Jazz rediscovered
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers “First Flight to Tokyo” (Blue Note on November 5th): Lost concert recordings from Japan with a hyperactive Lee Morgan on the trumpet and an extremely relaxed Wayne Shorter on the saxophone. Absolute top form.
Mankunku Quartet “Yakhal Inkomo” (Mr. Bongo on October 22nd): Tenor saxophonist Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi was considered Africa’s answer to Coltrane. His album from 1968 proves this and appears from time to time in small editions.
John Coltrane “A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle” (impulse on October 8th): The key work was inspiration for rock stars like Santana and for Bono an awakening experience. Coltrane rarely played the milestone of spiritual jazz live. So far there has only been one recording from Antibes. That’s why the missing recording from Seattle is eagerly awaited. Spoiler: Does what it says on the tin.