Click on each entry below for reviews and full listening links.
10 DAL SASSO BIG BAND, CHICK COREA'S THREE QUARTETS REVISITED, JAZZ & PEOPLE
Firstly before listening to anything go back to the Three Quartets album that shapes this fantastic new repertory recording from the French big band of Christophe Dal Sasso as an abiding influence and inspiration - the Chick Corea Los Angeles recorded studio album that came out in 1981 on Chick's own Stretch Records.
Full of Chick's own visionary quartet compositions, some dedicated to Duke Ellington and John Coltrane - tenorist Michael Brecker, bassist Eddie Gómez and Steve Gadd joined Chick for the recordings.
Marseilles-born composer, arranger, and flautist Christophe Dal Sasso whose big band has been releasing music since 2011 is also known for his work with the Belmondo brothers and Dave Liebman.
Soloists on this latest vibrant and stimulating recording include saxophonists David El-Malek, Stéphane Guillaume and best known of all the former late period Miles Davis sideman Rick Margitza who does the memory of Michael Brecker proud.
The recording which has warm and tactile production values - it does not sound clinical at all - includes versions of all the original album's four tracks plus some material later added on its CD release including 'Slippery When Wet' and 'Folk Song' plus Chick classic - going way back - 'Tones for Joan's Bones.'
Along with the exemplary Dan Pugach release Bianca it's the best big band release that we have heard this year.
What a fine way to dip into 1980s Chick Corea all over again interpreted with such love, wisdom, flair and spirit. And while scaled up it is all sized expertly to retain intimate listening qualities and provides lots of room for individual expression collectively distilled.
9 NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI, UNOMKHUBULWANE, BLUE NOTE
These anthems of spiritual healing couched in ancient mysticism all spiral and dance, lift and separate, invade our internal consciousness and ultimately descend into a complete communion both achieved by the bravura pianism and the prophet-like outpourings and dressing of the shaman-like vocalisations. Such an inspirational tribute then to Zulu goddess uNomkhubulwane shaped around a three movement suite that transcends language barriers and communicates by the universal language of music.
Clearly the latest and greatest yet from dazzling South African jazz pianist Nduduzo Makhathini here with US bassist of South African lineage Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere and Cuban drummer Francisco Mela.
The sound is very open and inviting. Scaling the heights Makhathini seizes and immerses himself in the panoramic view. Three is a magic number in so many ways - the trio, the cosmology, the triplet feel. And uNomkhubulwane is clearly an incredible achievement to lose yourself in and as a jazz listener be reborn by. 'Ithemba' has the kind of serene, humble, perfection that John Coltrane achieved on Impressions classic 'After the Rain' and the goddess of rain uNomkhubulwane too knows more than most about giving life in whatever figurative sense you most cherish as, clearly, does Makhathini.
8 MONTY ALEXANDER, D DAY, PEE WEE
Piano icon Monty Alexander's best album since the super enjoyable Rocksteady with Ernest Ranglin 20 years ago and one of the best albums of the year to date - serious, heartfelt yet also full of a lot of a swinging Caribbean spirit and wherewithal - namechecking ''Mr Belafonte'' along the way on 'Day O' with Parisian audience participation captures this latter joyous aspect always present at a Monty concert best, the jazz Jamaican whipping out the melodica an instrument beloved of rocksteady pioneer Augustus Pablo. Turning 80 on D-Day - a momentous day in world history when the price of failure in 1944 would have been hell on earth subjugation to the Nazis - the pianist tune selections here include a version of 1939's 'I’ll Never Smile Again,' and yin to the yang the inclusion of Charlie Chaplin classic 'Smile' that seems more than apt all ambivalence bearing in mind its bittersweet mood set aside as the album recalls a time when a smile was all that routed and ruined Europeans after years of war had left. Monty tunes 'Aggression,' 'Oh Why,' 'Restoration,' 'June 6,' and best of all the evanescent 'River of Piece' taken together are some of his best thematically conceived compositions in a long career. Not an angry album but instead full of tendresse Monty moved to the United States when he was 17 and became a favourite of Frank Sinatra's going on to play with jazz legends such as Milt Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Griffin and Benny Golson. D-Day pares things back and has US bassist Luke Sellick and London based US drummer Jason Brown.
Herschtory in the making
7 FRED HERSCH SILENT, LISTENING ECM
A solo piano album recorded in a Lugano studio during May last year: Seven originals of the great American pianist - whose sound is a key influence on his former pupil Brad Mehldau - on 'Little Song' at the beginning the debt Mehldau owes to Hersch stylistically in terms of touch and a specific darting triplet feel in the first few bars is significant. It's like seeing Mehldau's face in front of you such is the immediacy and the luminessence, a very ECM kind of word. The first 5-star solo jazz piano album of 2024 it's barkingly obvious. Herschtory in the making. How cool.
Begs shuttling back and forth immediately to listen to Chet Baker & Strings (Columbia, 1954) that pianist Russ Freeman writer of 'The Wind' featured here contributed heavily to. We love what Hersch does even more after soaking that lush Chet and strings treatment up and then going back to the transformation in the Hersch. But c'mere. The jazz time travelling doesn't even stop there. Cos Hersch had already recorded the tune on a 2001 Nonesuch album, Songs Without Words. That version is marginally longer, the new one begins with a more declarative and completely different opening.
Versions of Billy Strayhorn’s 'Star-Crossed Lovers,' Sigmund Romberg’s 'Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise' and Alec Wilder’s 'Winter Of My Discontent' are also on the album. Now 68 the Cincinatti born Hersch says that the title piece ''has written material at the beginning and the end, and I improvise on its motives and feel”. Spontaneous compositions among the set in the titling riff on Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) work - 'Volon', the name also for instance of a 1971 cardboard artwork; and 'Aeon' sees a Rauschenberg reference in the assembling of a work called the Aeon machine, an element of the set design for dance choreographer Merce Cunningham's work Aeon.
The line in 'Star-Crossed Lovers' also known as 'Pretty Girl' among the material is from Romeo and Juliet, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,/ a pair of star crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue 5-6) and appeared on 1957's again Bard-citing Ellington classic album Such Sweet Thunder (this time the play that the line in the album title came from was from the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream) and has been interpreted notably in recent years by saxophonist Charles Lloyd and pianist Jason Moran. Yet another Shakespearean reference is hinted at in the titling on Silent, Listening of the Alec Wilder piece 'The Winter of My Discontent' (Richard III) is a tune that Hersch began playing after meeting Wilder in 1978. Hersch has interpreted the piece before as an instrumental duo with the acclaimed soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom on their As One album released in 1985.
So all together up there with Hersch's greatest work which for us are his Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk album (Nonesuch, 1998), Songs and Lullabies with Norma Winstone and Gary Burton (2003) and the recent duo album with Esperanza Spalding, Alive in the Village Vanguard released in 2022.
6 MADELEINE PEYROUX, LET'S WALK, THIRTY TIGERS
Vintage once again clinches the deal. Madeleine Peyroux's strongest material in simply years, the American singer who rocketed to crossover jazz acclaim out of nowhere with her utterly distinctive bluesy style in the 1990s with Atlantic album Dreamland and later even more profile and sales in 2004 with the Larry Klein produced Careless Love, the best of the new songs on Let's Walk is easily 'Showman Dan' and the hard-hitting sociopolitically inspired very poetic meditation, 'How I Wish,' like a parable of post-George Floyd modern day America when we are yet to hear ''freedom ring'' - the great desire of Martin Luther King and surely all sane thinkers the world since.
Peyroux's first album in six years the beautifully pieced together video for 'Showman Dan' issued with the song gives a glimpse of performance footage, home movies and personal photos in the eponymous Dan's honour with a young, yet-to-be-discovered Peyroux in the frame.
Memories of Peyroux's longtime friend and mentor Daniel William Fitzgerald - the Showman Dan of the title, who passed away in 2017 - personalise the lightly zydeco coated album in the styling with memories of him in keeping with the singer's sometimes nostalgic, maudlin, vintage style delivered with her trademark salty ache, bittersweet tones and bluesy connotations. Personnel on this co-produced Elliot Scheiner album of Peyroux and Herington's, recorded in a Rhinebeck, New York state, studio not too far from Poughkeepsie last August and September, also includes pianist-organist Andy Ezrin who proves a little Allen Toussaint-like in places, bass guitarist Paul Frazier and drummer-percussionist Graham Hawthorne. Singers Catherine Russell, Cindy Mizelle and Keith Fluitt do backing vocals - clarinettist Stan Harrison pops up on 'Nothing Personal.' We took the CD for a bumpy drive down through the Irish border country badlands last week and it proved a great companion.
'Me and the Mosquito' is amusing and live is bound to tickle the audience. The bilingual Madeleine sings French on 'Et Puis.'
Out on 28 June
5 JO HARROP, THE PATH OF A TEAR, LATERALIZE
Cherry pick ruthlessly for maximum enjoyment. But quality albums such as The Path of a Tear only come along once in a blue moon. In addition to 'Beautiful Fools' there's another Jo Harrop/Ian Barter co-write on the album which is significant given that Barter gelled so well with Chester-Le-Street's finest on the initial single - the other song that they worked on is called 'Stay Here Tonight'. Ian played guitar on Amy Winehouse album Frank and wrote the lyrics and co-produced Dermot Kennedy's glorious 'Couldn't Tell.'
Produced by Larry Klein in the States and who has also delivered up the excellent recent Tutu Puoane album Wrapped in Rhythm Vol 1 and who also plays bass guitar on The Path of a Tear - the title track song itself is a Jo & Greg Soussan co-write. Input from another jazz musician from County Durham is pianist Paul Edis who has worked with Jo extensively. The twinkling Paul's input to 'Never Lonely in Soho' works well. And this is where erstwhile Diana Krall jazz guitar legend Anthony Wilson is so perfect. The location of the song, familiar to many habitués of Soho jazz clubs is at the heart of the jazz village on the corner of Old Compton Street and Greek Street.
The album covers are Leonard Cohen's 'Traveling Light' - it's on You Want It Darker; the Elton John and Leon Russell gem 'If It Wasn't For Bad' is also a significant presence of the Lateralize release. And just as well chosen - from 'The Galway Girl' writer Steve Earle - 'Goodbye' from the mid-1990s covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris and Curtis Stigers since makes it on. The drummer-percussionist on the album is sessioneer Victor Indrizzo whose rolling 1-2-slam of the cymbal-3 beat fill at the beginning of 'Traveling Light' is super tasty; Jim Cox is on keys and the double bassist is David Piltch who is on a range of notable k. d. lang recordings particularly k. d.'s spinetingling homage to Canada - Hymns of the 49th Parallel.
4 AMARO FREITAS Y'Y PSYCHIC HOTLINE
Walk with the spirits, talk with the spirits: Even better than live, what a seance of an album - AfroBrazilian pianist/keyboardist composer all round polymath Amaro Freitas was good at Jazzahead last year especially the more Coltranian he went - but one giant leap beyond, Amazonian ''homage to the forest'' Y'Y is just about the best album we have heard all year - the album title is a word from the Sateré-Mawé dialect of the Mawé language, an indigenous language of his homeland - the brilliant title track features Birmingham Britjazz icon Shabaka Hutchings on flute of course these days in duo - he's as much a monster flautist as he is a saxophonist - with Freitas' vocal and turns into quite a thrashing stomp of a thing. Overall the album is big on serenity, with an orchestral sense that is highly original and live you only grasp a tenth of what's here. The Brazilian is a storming pianist by the way, there is a frisson to his sound - and it's not snoozy and quiet at all. Other guests include Chicago eminence the great Jeff Parker; and there's Brandee Younger, suitably celestial, on 'Gloriosa.' Another standout is 'The Glow.'
3 ODDGEIR BERG TRIO, A PLACE CALLED HOME, OZELLA
A Place Called Home's ratio of killer tracks to filler we reckon lands very high, oh 8 out of the 10 tracks - skip 'Happiness is Where YOU [their capitals] Are' which we found a bit more formulaic and the tad overly ponderous 'Where the Sun Never Sleeps'. But elsewhere and ridding all the more piddling lesser moments banished to relative insignificance it's the wisdom, sheer clarity of compositional vision - no you don't have to go to Specsavers to get all this - and deft interplay between Berg's lead piano lines and the very supportive extremely well recorded double bass (more of which later) and the stalwart drumming of Lars Berntsen.
Inspired by the remote island of Rolla, a very long way from Oslo, where pianist Oddgeir Berg's father was born, the album is ''about the magic of nature, the spaces hidden in memory, and the bonds that family provides.'' Yes such Moonpig like greeting card tweeness actually makes sense against the odds. And the album comes over ''just like that'' as another magic man comic genius Tommy Cooper had as his catchphrase.
Maybe the presence of bassist Audun Ramo, for 'tis he at last, who was very good on Aadal's Voyager makes a difference. A-ha, it does. Oh and go find what Aadal, like the OBT no strangers to playing UK jazz clubs despite zero name recognition to the as per usual badly informed wider world given rubbish mass media indifference, are capable of doing.
Certainly with the pianist-composer's mother diagnosed with cancer - paid tribute to on 'Song for my Mother' - and a lot of personal soul searching, introspective mood metamorphoses into a piece of art that has the ability to move. 'As We Wander Around' with its lapping melodicism and beautifully weighted drum accompaniment is a real achievement. 'Circles' is also lightning in a bottle. All Berg's previous albums registered nary a flicker on our radar. Shoot us. But tracks from this just attract us like a moth to a flame instead. And no, the cheque isn't it in the post. The trio don't sound like the far more complex Helge Lien Trio or godfathers of Eurojazz trios everywhere the much loved Swedes e. s. t who can do much more vaulting and elaborate proggy baroque things with the trio format if required than found anywhere here for that matter.
But if you love both amazing trios especially their more gentle side then you will be hitching a lift to A Place Called Home and seek solace as well as save shoe leather dropped off in the middle of their nowhere to discover a sound only they know chilling in beyond-parky northern climes inspirationally. And yet further proof presents itself with this forthcoming release just how savvy jazz indies with good taste win. As opposed to the spreadsheet Phils who often overdose A&R wise on gloss and dross at the expense of enlightenment at the majors. By contrast the North Rhine-Westphalia based Ozella issue a sublime statement reached through the sheer quality of the compositional minds and skill in the playing at work and nothing else intervenes.
Berg is a bit of a romantic but not too much of a doomy one. Trust us we have worshiped at the shrine of Shelley. And there are times here we think in his approach of another naturalistic minded monster player from Norway the polymath genius Ketil Bjørnstad whose ideas are often far more elaborately expressed nevertheless. Inspired by this album we paused to listen to Ketil's 1990s classic The Sea, to go even deeper having enjoyed A Place Called Home and feeling bereft about what to play appropriately next.
2 GONZALO RUBALCABA AND HAMILTON DE HOLANDA, COLLAB, SONY MUSIC BRAZIL
Collab highlights include a so very tender version of the Charlie Haden classic 'Silence' that goes back to 1980 ECM album Mágico on which the great Ornettian Haden appeared on with Norwegian master Jan Garbarek and the Brazilian guitarist-pianist genius Egberto Gismonti, a piece that Gonzalo Rubalcaba also interpreted so luminously on 2015's Haden memorial album, Charlie.
Share this new experience deep down inside: Afro-Latin, jazz and Brazilian sounds from Cuba piano great Rubalcaba whose 1990s classic album The Blessing with Haden and Jack DeJohnette still stands the test of time is here on a Miami studio recording with Brazilian 10-string mandolin master Hamilton de Holanda.
But there's so much more. Rubalcaba tunes, De Holanda tunes, a lovely feature by harmonica ace Gabriel Grossi - de Holanda's bandmate on 2017's Casa de Bituca - on Stevie Wonder's 'Don’t You Worry 'Bout A Thing' and a very fine vocal turn led off by inspired vocalese from the great João Bosco on his own co-write 'Incompatibilidade de gênios' conversationally accompanied by de Holanda.
1 TUTU PUOANE WRAPPED IN RHYTHM Vol. 1 SOUL FACTORY
A deeply stirring and powerful collection of songs from Belgium residing South African singer Tutu Puoane written in collaboration with her husband Belgian pianist Ewout Pierreux, produced by Larry Klein, themed around the poetry of Lebo Mashile whose In A Ribbon of Rhythm Puoane has long since found inspirational. Mashile's work tackles themes such as life in the new South Africa and dwells on such issues as the place of women within the societal fabric of the Rainbow Nation. Among the personnel are guest Larry Goldings whose Hammond organ sound pops up vividly on 'Illicit Love.'
Tutu Puoane, photo: via Bandcamp
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