What a great year of music! Terrific albums just keep coming, and 2024 was one of the best in recent years for exciting music. After much consideration (and I do mean much, since I had about 50 titles I thought were all very worthy), here are my choices. They are listed alphabetically by artist name since I’m not about to start deciding which was “best”. These are the recordings I’ll come back to.
I’ll be playing music from a bunch of these in the January 8th show, so you can have a little preview listen before you rush over to Bandcamp.com and let your credit card have fun. (Album titles are linked to the appropriate Bandcamp page.
Angelica Sanchez, Barry Guy & Ramon Lopez * Live At Jazz d’Or (Maya Recordings) USA/UK/France
Anna Webber Simple Trio * SimpleTrio2000 (Intakt) Canada
Darius Jones * Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity) USA
Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few * The World Is On Fire (Division 81) USA
Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp * Magical Incantation (Soul City Sounds) USA
Izumi Kimura, Barry Guy & Gerry Hemingway * Six Hands Open As One (FSR)
James Brandon Lewis Quartet * Transfiguration (Intakt) USA
Jason Stein Trio * Anchors (Tao Forms) USA
Joachim Kuhn French Trio * The Way (ACT Music) Germany/France
Joe Fonda * Eyes On The Horizon (Long Song) USA
K. Curtis Lyle, Rakalam Bob Moses & George R. Sams 6 * 29 Birds You Never Heard (Balance Point) USA
Kris Davis Trio * Run The Gauntlet (Pyroclastic) Canada
Liba Villavecchia Trio & Luis Vicente * Muracik (Clean Feed) Spain
Luis Vicente Trio * Come Down Here (Clean Feed) Portugal
Luke Stewart Silt Trio * Unknown Rivers (Pi Recordings) USA
Matt Mitchell Trio * Zealous Angles (Pi Recordings) USA
Matthew Shipp Trio * New Concepts In Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk) USA
Neon Dilemma * Neon Dilemma (Klaeng) Germany
Patricia Brennan * Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic) USA
Roberto Ottaviano, Danilo Gallo & Ferdinando Farao’ * Lacy In The Sky With Diamonds (Clean Feed) Italy
Satoko Fujii & Natsuki Tamura * Aloft (Libra) Japan
Steph Richards * Power Vibe (Northern Spy) Canada
Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers * Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook) USA
William Parker, Cooper-Moore & Hamid Drake * Heart Trio (AUM Fidelity) USA
plus another eight wonderful albums that I really like:
David Leon * Bird’s Eye (Pyroclastic) USA
Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten & Exit Knarr * Breezy (Sonic Transmission) Norway
Ivo Perelman, Mark Helias & Tom Rainey * Truth Seeker (FSR) USA
Marilyn Crispell & Harvey Sorgen * Forest (FSR) USA
Old Mountain with Tony Malaby * Another State Of Rhythm (Clean Feed) Portugal
Peter Evans * Extra (We Jazz) USA
Steve Coleman & Five Elements * Poly Tropos/Of Many Turns (Pi Recordings) USA
Thumbscrew * Wingbeats (Cuneiform) USA