This was another year of riches in the best jazz and creative music, with barriers between the tradition and the avant-garde melting away.
PopMatters presents the best new jazz recordings from the winter of 2024 and reflects on the relationship of the Grammys to jazz.
Mary Halvorson’s Cloudward is a shimmering, deeply satisfying example of a jazz sextet firing on all cylinders. Prepare to be astonished.
If you’ve always wanted to get interested in jazz, jump in. Don’t approach it with fear or a sense that you don’t know enough about it. It’s just a smorgasbord of stuff to enjoy.
Jazz, born of the creative brilliance of Black American culture and now wonderfully global, is passionately alive in 2022. These are the year’s best jazz albums.
PopMatters jazz critic Will Layman rounds up the best new jazz albums of recent vintage, including some thoughts about the US festival season and the undersung virtuoso Warren Wolf.
PopMatters jazz critic Will Layman rounds up the best new jazz albums of recent vintage, including some thoughts on Paul McCartney and Ron Carter.
Creative, improvised music in the Black American tradition remains in a state of wonder and genre-crossing excitement in the best jazz albums of 2021.
Mary Halvorson's Artlessly Falling is a challenging album with tracks comprised of improvisational fragments more than based on compositional theory. Halvorson uses the various elements to aestheticize the confusing world around her.
Jazz trumpeter Nate Wooley's quartet tackles a big landscape, a big reaction, and a big chill on the complex and patient new album, Columbia Icefield.
The definition of "jazz" has never been broader, and the music has never been brighter. Two PopMatters critics pick their favorites in four modern jazz categories.
Nearly every track on Robbie Lee and Mary Halvorson's Seed Triangular surprises, and if the disc fails to cohere, the pleasure of hearing the two artists figure out what they're doing remains.
