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 March to May 2024 in the realm of piano jazz. We also reflect on the legacy of the late David Sanborn.
Our jazz columnist chooses the best new jazz albums of Autumn 2023 while reflecting on a new documentary, Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity.
Some of it is conventionally beautiful and some thrills by rubbing against the edges of tonality. But all of the best jazz of 2023 serves a vision.
Will Layman rounds up the best new jazz albums and cocoons with jazz documentaries, Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues and Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes.
PopMatters jazz critic Will Layman rounds up the best new jazz albums of recent vintage, including some thoughts on Paul McCartney and Ron Carter.
Matthew Shipp, Allen Lowe, Gerald Cleaver, and Kevin Ray are East Axis, a free improvising jazz band that never sound harsh or lost on Cool with That.
Codebreaker is the sound of jazz pianist Matthew Shipp gliding on autopilot, letting his subconscious do the talking.
Whit Dickey, William Parker, and Matthew Shipp push, pull, and roll their weight around in equal measure, making Village Mothership as unique as it is difficult.
Free improvising saxophonist Ivo Perelman, pianist Matthew Shipp, and drummer Whit Dickey spin listenable joy out of thin air. Jazz originality doesn’t have to be forbidding.
During the new-year season of best-of-the-year lists, I find myself looking backward—even at a year as difficult as 2020. Time was dilated—I thought I had too much of it but, as usual, there was too little for all the great music.
Here are six of the key jazz trends of the last 20 years, defined by 20 of the best 2020 recordings that made us see, again, why this music is in midst of such a thrilling patch of creativity.
