11 best jazz albums of 2015
Your guide to the best jazz albums of 2015. Updated weekly
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1:14PM BST 10 Apr 2015
Comment
The best jazz albums of 2015 will be regularly updated with picks from jazz critic Ivan Hewett and culture editor Martin Chilton. You can get more jazz news and reviews on our Telegraph Jazz Facebook Page.
KENNY WHEELER: SONGS FOR QUINTET (ECM)
The fine trumpeter Kenny Wheeler died in September 2014 and this lovely album was recorded at Abbey Road nine months before he died. There is some sweet flugelhorn from the Octogenerian and particularly fine support from tenor saxophonist Stan Sulzmann. John Parricelli (guitar), Martin France (drums) and Chris Laurence (bass) complete the classy quintet.
The CD comes with two impressive booklets with photographs of the quintet and of Wheeler's time with ECM. The album's nine tracks are full of sensitive ensemble playing and supple rhythms, and it finishes with the poignant Nonetheless. Songs for Quintet is an excellent testament to a Canadian-born star who did so much for jazz in the UK.
Martin Chilton
Martin Chilton
JACK DeJOHNETTE: MADE IN CHICAGO (ECM)
Jack DeJohnette brings together colleagues of 50 years standing – pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, sax players Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill and young cellist and bassist Larry Gray – and the range of expression these five players draw from their instruments is astonishing.
Ivan Hewett
BOB DYLAN: SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT (COLUMBIA RECORDS)
Bob Dylan pays tribute to the jazz songs of Frank Sinatra, as he takes beautiful material written by such greats as Rodgers and Hammerstein and completely inhabits them, reimagining Some Enchanted Evening with the wistful intimacy of someone peering back through the mists of time. Neil McCormick
TROYKA: ORNITHOPHOBIA (NAIM JAZZ RECORDS)
Ornithophobia is full of many-layered soundscapes which are often suggestive and aurally seductive, if somewhat chilly in emotional tone. Pianist Kit Downes, guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Josh Blackmore make the line-up, but often it seems as if we’re hearing half-a-dozen players, thanks to the clever guitar loops and over-dubbed synth lines. Adding his own touch of suggestive magic to all this is producer Petter Eldh, but thankfully he doesn’t sap the energy and drive of the playing, which is considerable.
This energy comes from the deliberate mismatch between the hectic, pattering drum patterns and the repeating riffs, which are always arithmetically ingenious, if as hard and angular as steel girders. When heaped up into layers they almost defeat the ear’s attempts to unscramble them. It could all be too much, but there’s usually a moment when the pieces break out of their self-created labyrinth – as in the opening number Arcades, where the music emerges unexpectedly into a wide-open harmonic space. In the closing number Seahouses (the Northumberland coast is another theme in this album), the pattern is reversed. Gentle synth. chords fade into one another, like layers of mist on an early morning sea, but over the horizon something threatening and super-fast eventually approaches. Overall this album is musically intriguing, and full of ear-tickling sounds, but only rarely loveable.
IH
IH
AARON GOLDBERG: THE NOW (SUNNYSIDE RECORDS)
The Now is a very polished album, divided between Aaron Goldberg's own compositions, a few jazz standards, and some delightful reworkings of Brazilian songs.
IH
EMILY SAUNDERS: OUTSIDERS INSIDERS (MIX SOUNDS)
There's no doubting the strong vocal technique of Emily Saunders, who trained in Jazz Voice at Trinity Conservatoire, and her phrasing is one of the pleasures of her second album. The nine original jazz numbers, which range across jazz ballads and Sixties soul jazz, allow for strong instrumental solos from a band comprising the excellent Byron Wallen on trumpet along with Trevor Mires (trombone), Bruno Heinen/Steve Pringle (keys), Dave Whitford /Paul Michael (bass) Jon Scott (drums) and Fabio De Oliveira/ Asaf Sirkis (percussion). Highlights include the crisp voice-and-piano ballad You With Me and the optimistic Summer Days. Those who like their jazz sultry and languid will enjoy the album although it will be interesting to see if Saunders brings more fire into future work.
MC
REBECCA FERGUSON: LADY SINGS THE BLUES (RCA RECORDS)
Rebecca Ferguson's run through of Billie Holiday classics could have been bolder but she sings with sass and feeling.
NM
JOE ALBANY: AN EVENING WITH JOE ALBANY (STEEPLECHASE RECORDS)
Something of a rarity. There are 17 tracks on this concert recorded at the Cafe Montmartre in Copenhagen in May 1973, when American bebop pianist Joe Albany (who died in 1988) was 49. April in Paris shows off his skill for embellishing a tune; I Can’t Get Started is less assured. Nevertheless, a welcome chance to hear an original jazz musician, who played Charlie Parker.
MC
PETE OXLEY AND NICOLAS MEIER: CHASING TALES (MGP RECORDS)
Guitar duos are reasonably rare in jazz yet the difference in styles from Pete Oxley and Nicolas Meier is the strength of the album as they come together in a mostly acoustic album. Chasing Tales shows off their elaborate, harmonically rich melodies and clever solos. Two masterly guitarists creating an array of changing moods.
MC
WILD CARD: ORGANIC RIOT (TOP END RECORDS)
Wild Card are a fine live jazz act and they manage to capture their gig energy on Organic Riot. The album blends hard-bop, Afro, Latin and Funk, all held together by producer and French-born guitarist Clément Régert. He and organist Andrew Noble (and drummer Sophie Alloway) are joined by some strong guests, including Graeme Flowers on trumpet and Roberto Manzin on tenor saxophone. Natalie Williams sings well on Feeling Good and Wash Him Out. The longest track, at more than eight minutes, is Flood and it's full of treats.
MC
ALEXANDER VON SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO: FEATURES (INTAKT RECORDS)
This CD must be in the running for the Least Appealing Title for a Jazz Album prize, but fortunately the contents are livelier than the packaging. The ponderous liner notes tell us the album is a summary of how far the trio has come in 45 years playing together, which is evidently a very long way indeed. The three players – pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens – are veterans of the ‘free jazz’ scene. Some devotees of free jazz make a fetish of holding any echoes of ‘normal’ jazz at arm’s length. These three have been around too long to be dogmatic, and much of the pleasure of this album lies in savouring the little hints of blues and vamping stride patterns and old-fashioned ‘licks’ that flit across the music’s surface.
The opening meditation from von Schlippenbach sounds like his take on 1950s classical modernism, but lurking inside the star-like points of sound is the ghost of a ‘jazzy’ seventh chord. Each of the following fourteen ‘Features’ is like a little character study, launching off with an idea – a repeated note, a whirling figure on the sax or cymbals – and allowing it to wander where it will. Several times a number ends with a descent down into the bass, so neatly contrived it might have been arranged in advance. The most haunting Feature is the eleventh, where Parker’s long multiphonic sound, like a bird that never needs to breathe, is framed in delicate piano and percussive commentaries. Free jazz can never be 'easy listening', but the witty, relaxed interplay on this album comes close to it.
IH
