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.
Jazz critic Will Layman has been listening to classical piano and Afro-Cuban music in various forms. The best new jazz this month is also strong and extensive.
New Jazz guitarist Miles Okazaki brings back his brilliant quartet for a follow-up to and transformation of 2017's Trickster, daring some new challenges and sometimes coming through with answers on The Sky Below.
The program recorded here across two sets at the legendary New York club is immaculate in sound and conception—as good a summary of the core idea of Steve Coleman's music as we will ever have.
The best and most exciting jazz of 2017 is increasingly happening at the intersection of different streams of music. Reveling in a diversity of influences and therefore a kind of complexity makes it "art music", inevitably.
