Darius Jones – Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilent Eye) (AUM Fidelity)
Alto saxophonist and composer Darius Jones occupies an essential lane in jazz in 2024. He is in the middle of building a substantial body of work (nine volumes in a linked epic, as well as other collaborations) that is connected by a beautiful and powerful sensibility even as his projects are highly varied. Legend of the e’Boi is a date for trio (saxophone, Chris Tordini’s bass, and Gerald Cleaver’s drums) that stands firmly next to recordings for solo saxophone, a cappella vocal ensemble, chamber string quartet (plus drums and alto), jazz quartet, and quartet with a featured singer.
The trio format may be the one to which Jones most often returns, as it offers both the freedom and personal voice of being a featured soloist using his uniquely bold and pliant saxophone sound and the tools of composition/orchestration that a great rhythm allows. Legend can be hard-toned and even ominous (“No More My Lord”, for example, where Chris Lightcap’s bass drones under the leader’s cries of anguish and release) but also playful (“We Outside”), ferociously swinging (“Another Kind of Forever”), and richly melodic (“We Inside Now”). At every turn, your ears must acknowledge that Jones’s alto sound may be the music’s purest and most emotional one today. – Will Layman
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse)
Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has been marvelous recently, and his quartet album this year, Transfiguration, is smashing. This recording, however, finds him with a very different kind of quartet: the Washington DC-based Messthetics, a trio of guitarist Anthony Pirog, bassist Joe Lally, and drummer Brendan Canty. The latter two were the rhythm section for the punk band Fugazi, but the groove supplied here is as responsive and compelling as any jazz group.
Lewis’ tenor saxophone is burly and bold enough to rock, and Pirog has every intriguing harmonic surprise beneath his fingers that you would expect of, say, Bill Frisell or Nels Cline. As you can hear on a track like “Emergence”, the result is a rave-up of excitement or, as “Fourth Wall” proves, something more like a form of chamber jazz. This is the farthest thing in the universe from gloopy “fusion”, but more like the combination of rock and jazz you always dreamed of: solid and propulsive but open to a world of conversation and exchange. – Will Layman
Matt Mitchell – Zealous Angles (Pi)
Matt Mitchell is a Swiss Army Knife of creative versatility, and his identity as a composer and conceptualist can be edgy and lit with humor. This recording presents him in an acoustic piano trio with bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss, which does not tone down Mitchell’s taste for compositional adventure but does allow us to hear him with greater clarity. “angled languor”, for example, sounds like a Bill Evans track from the future — independent bass movement against impressionistic drums and the leader’s watercolor piano harmonies.
“apical gropes” features an architecture of supporting structures — a strong bass line, a toggling set of consonant harmonies, and the occasional walking groove — that disappear into a cloud above your head. Most of the performances are as short as a pop song, generating systems of rhythmic and/or harmonic logic of their own. “synch” is under three minutes, but it quickly creates a head-spinning idea and then allows the trio to improvise within that space for a riveting moment — leaving your wanting more. I hear the whole album as a series of spinning, fizzy magic tricks — probably not for every listener, but genuinely intriguing and not excessively dissonant or weird. Mitchell’s music is so rich in ideas and constant transformation that it rises above mere abstraction and becomes addictive. – Will Layman
Nala Sinephro – Endlessness (Warp)
You’ll never find Nala Sinephro shying away from extensive concepts. Having debuted to critical acclaim in 2021 with Space 1.8, the composer and multi-instrumentalist widens the scope of her already expansive work with the new release Endlessness. Inspired by existence itself, Endlessness is a work of vast cosmic cycles, a suite in which the electric and the acoustic roll together in symphonic jazz music of heroic proportions.
Grand as it is, though, Endlessness is far from forbidding. Quite the opposite: it’s inviting, and the nigh-incomprehensibility of its subject matter is emerging in elements that build organically rather than overwhelm. Along with a stellar ensemble of players, Sinephro creates energy and matter note by note from a languid beginning through to an explosive end: musical baryogenesis, a gradual but unstoppable filling of space with sonic substance. – Adriane Pontecorvo
Ches Smith – Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic)
Drummer, percussionist and composer Ches Smith has jazz chops for days, but he is part of a scene that defies the obvious by creatively blending tonal jazz, harmonic freedom, electronics, classical “new music”, and traditions from around the world. Labels mean nothing. Laugh Ash works most of those influences into something that makes magical sense. The band includes both a string trio (violin, viola, cello) and a quartet of horns from the New Jazz world: Anna Webber’s flute, Oscar Noriega on clarinets, James Brandon Lewis on tenor saxophone, and trumpeter Nate Wooley. Shara Lunon adds vocals (in the ensemble and sometimes with her lyrics), with bassist/keyboardist Shazad Ismaily creating atmosphere and groove that accompany the leader’s electronics and variety of percussion.
The result is music that is equal parts carefully notated intricacy, funky groove music, and 21st-century jazz, with improvising that is the farthest thing from a throwback. This may be the album on this list that sounds the least like “jazz”, but most decidedly represents the music’s ability to gobble up other styles and turn them into art. – Will Layman
Tyshawn Sorey – The Susceptible Now (Pi)
Sorey put together this trio featuring Pianist Aaron Diehl a few years ago, and it seemed initially to be the drummer/composer’s vehicle for steering away from his reputation as a somewhat forbidding or abstract New Jazz conceptualist. The first two recordings were of compositions from jazz forefathers — it was Sorey’s “standards trio” to borrow the moniker associated with Keith Jarrett. This third recording, with Harish Raghavan now on bass, is my favorite of the group. The non-Sorey tunes are now more abstract and contemporary, coming from the Joni Mitchell/Mingus album (“A Chair in the Sky”), Brad Mehldau, McCoy Tyner, and a European pop artist, Daniel Gunnarsson. Each track is long and languorous (no less than 15 minutes), and they blend into each other as a lengthy suite of music presented with a soulful ease. – Will Layman
Igmar Thomas’ Revive Big Band – Like a Tree It Grows (Soulspazm / SCHMTCS)
Igmar Thomas’ Revive Big Band take on the jazz standard “Thelonious”, which Thelonious Monk was thoughtful enough to name after himself in a respectful and innovative way. The famous two-note opening melody is punched out with grit and finesse, shifting between sections without a drop of sweat showing. Nicholas Payton, one of the most respected trumpeters in the industry, comes in with a wild solo that enters like a trombone and keeps modulating upward before reaching glorious and intricate high notes. The band return to end things up, and you’d think it’s done, right?
Uh, no. Thomas and the band then take on “Thelonius”, a track off Common‘s Like Water for Chocolate album. This song, dreamed up by the late, great J Dilla, had nothing to do with the Monk tune in its original configuration. (The name came from Dilla’s rhyme hook: “It’s the Thelonious / Super microphonist.”) However, Thomas finds a way to integrate that two-note theme into the J Dilla/Common track, melding together two songs that only shared a (slightly differently spelled) title. To take things to the next level, Talib Kweli comes in to drop a casually incisive verse rhyming “patience”, “amazin’”, “hatin’”, and “Nicholas Payton”—layers upon layers upon layers, y’all. – Matt Cibula
Tryp Tych Tryo – Warsaw Conjunction (Lanquidity)
The new trio of Wojtek Mazolewski, Tamar Osborn, and Natcyet Wakili as Tryp Tych Tryo is yet another reminder of the greatest strength of contemporary British jazz—it is a multicultural melting pot perfectly merged with the jazz tradition. The variety of sounds emerging from this scene is astonishing, but it has lacked the Slavic element so far.
It’s hard to believe that a complex and diverse structure like that did not come to life with a strictly fixed plan or at least with a conceptual framework but based on the free improvisation of people who had not spent much time together before entering the studio. Undoubtedly, it’s the result of many years of feeding intuition, absorbing the jazz, Nigerian, and Slavic traditions, absorbing Afrobeat, Yass, and many others, as well as everything that is happening in music today. Tryp Tych Tryo don’t swim in the spring of their inspirations but only fill the canteen for a further journey into the unknown. – Jarosław Kowal
Fay Victor, Herbie Nichols SUNG – Life Is Funny That Way (AUM Fidelity)
Life Is Funny That Way is the most astonishing recording of vocalist Fay Victor’s impressive career, particularly if you want to understand how a tradition can be simultaneously embraced and used as a launching pad for pure escape velocity. It is the latest in a string of projects devoted to the compositions of pianist Herbie Nichols, and it brings Victor’s original lyrics to the music. She and her band conjure these songs with exceptional warmth. The rhythm section of bassist Ratzo Harris, drummer Tom Rainey, and pianist Anthony Coleman can lift the tunes with the nimble and galloping swing Nichols’ own trios possessed. Excellent solos from Michael Attias (on alto and baritone saxophone) round out a terrific band.
Victor and her band are at their most distinctive when deconstructing Nichols’s music so that it sounds comfortably beyond his 1950s style. Fay Victor is the rare singer who can demonstrate and interact with the deep vocal tradition while delving into the daring freedoms that have long been the province of instrumentalists to explore. And she does all of this while telling stories with her lyrics as well. To top it off, her vocal tone and control have never sounded better. This is the best vocal jazz record of the year. – Will Layman
Kamasi Washington – Fearless Movement (Young)
Fearless Movement, Kamasi Washington’s first studio release in six years, continues expanding his influence range. Half of the album’s 12 tracks emphasize instrumental jazz, while the others encompass a wealth of influences, from classic soul to contemporary rap. Harmonized voices carry the melodies, wafting in and out of tunes like a Greek chorus shining encouragement on the vocal and instrumental soloists.
Kamasi Washington likens the set to a dance album. “It’s not literal,” he explains in a press release. “Dance is movement and expression, and in a way, it’s the same thing as music – expressing your spirit through your body.” Although some of the music does inspire dance literally – soul and funk-inspired tracks pop up across the set – much of the record explores movement across cultural space and time. – Peter Thomas Webb