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Slate ‘s jazz critic Fred Kaplan writes that on the album The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, the 86-year old Charles Lloyd “blows the tenor sax and flute here with flair, clarity, passion, and swing, propelled by an unwavering appetite for risk-taking.”
Of the 14 diverse websites researched for the critics’ choices for best jazz albums of 2024, his album was named on seven of them, more than any other.
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…..It’s time for our annual compilation of “Best of” jazz recordings, this time for 2024. Several “Best of” lists can be found on the Internet, and the goal of this post is to present those jazz albums oft-mentioned by a broad set of publications and critics.
…..These 15 albums hardly constitute a comprehensive assessment of the “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” lists, but it does provide some guidance about 2024 recordings critics generally seemed to agree about, and suggest we check out more thoroughly.
…..The recordings are listed in the order of those receiving the most critic mentions as compiled from 14 websites, and may include a link to an artist or record company website, as well as to a critic’s more complete review of the album. Readers will also discover that a song from each album is available for listening. The websites utilized to compile this list are found at the conclusion of this post.
…..As always, the list features an eclectic mix of listening experiences, and, along with the many other great 2024 recordings that didn’t make this list, is evidence that the present (and future) of jazz music is in good hands.
Enjoy!
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Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher
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The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow/ [Blue Note]
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“Lloyd’s set oscillates between two reflective modes: melodious pop ballads and unnerving free improv. ‘First,’ ‘Defiant,’ ‘Tender Warrior’ and ‘The Water Is Rising’ seduce the ear with Jason Moran’s enveloping piano and Brian Blade’s soft backbeat, then ‘The Lonely One’ and ‘Late Bloom’ creep up on you with eerie abstraction. It’s a peculiar, compelling blend that extends even to the tributes: the spiky bebop of ‘Monk’s Dance,’ the elusive free-jazz lacework of ‘The Ghost of Lady Day,’ and ‘Booker’s Garden,’ a mystical Afro-accented salute to another great Memphis musician from his childhood, Booker Little. It’s one of Lloyd’s best.”
-Chris Pearson/The Times
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“Still one of the most consistent, prolific performers in jazz at age 86, California’s sage saxman and flutist stretches out on an impressionistic double album strengthened by the deft support of drummer Brian Blade, bassist Larry Grenadier, and, especially, returning pianist Jason Moran. His keys lend tonal colorations throughout (and briskly sprayed notes to ‘Monk’s Dance’) that balance the contemplative air. “
-Paul Robicheau/The Arts Fuse
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“Monk’s Dance”
[Universal Music Group]
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Breaking Stretch/ [Pyroclastic]
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“Across three albums in four years, the vibraphonist Patricia Brennan has built up her sound from a sparse and reflective solo statement to a teeming sonic metropolis. Her latest is a septet effort that’s as challenging as it is danceable, recalling the fantastical constructions of big thinkers such as Henry Threadgill and Steve Lehman as it interweaves dazzling ensemble passages with bracing solos from the leader, the saxophonists Mark Shim and Jon Irabagon, and the trumpeter Adam O’Farrill.”
-Fred Kaplan/Slate
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” Breaking Stretch contains nine dazzling Brennan tunes that allow her seven-piece band to play all sorts of ways using voicings full of beauty and tension for a front line of three horns: trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and saxophonists Mark Shim and Jon Irabagon. Irabagon will turn your head 360 degrees one way and 720 back the other way with his wild leaps and uninhibited tone on alto and soprano saxophone — seeming like a musical gymnast working the uneven bars.“
-Will Layman/Pop Matters
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“Los Otros Yo”
[The Orchard]
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Compassion/ [ECM]
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“After decades of multi-generic acclaim, the polymathic pianist/composer Vijay Iyer continues to show how far one of the most familiar formats in jazz can evolve in his superb new trio with double-bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey – players who implicitly trust improvisation’s moment-by-moment revelations live and “out in the world”, as Iyer calls it. He plays a beautiful homage to Chick Corea (via Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed”), and to composer Roscoe Mitchell, alongside fine originals including the moving “It Goes,” a tribute to murdered Mississippi teenager Emmett Till. Melodically alluring, rhythmically invigorating, deviously dazzling music.”
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“Compassion is inseparable from the state of the world it’s being released into–’The unease I experience making art in times of suffering never goes away, nor should it; that tension shapes the creative process at every stage,’ Vijay says in an essay accompanying the album. Having toured together since releasing [previous album] Uneasy, the trio’s chemistry is even stronger on Compassion, and they continue to convey so much through these instrumentals. Vijay’s piano playing in particular is dripping with emotion.”
-Andrew Sacher/Brooklyn Vegan
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“Overjoyed”
[Universal Music Group].
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Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers
Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens/ [Red Hook]
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“Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist/organist Amina Claudine Myers are both illustrious alums of Chicago’s seminal Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. This seven-song album pays tribute to New York’s famed park with some of the most lovely and absorbing music I heard all year in any genre.”
-George Varga/San Jose Mercury-News
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“Central Park at Sunset”
[Virgin Music Group]
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Francesca [Intakt]
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“Even when David Murray first arrived in New York around 50 years ago as an upstart saxophonist and bandleader, he seemed like an old soul, communing with the roots of jazz while thriving on its cutting edge. So he’s a natural fit for the elder-statesman role he plays on ‘Francesca,’ alongside three outstanding younger musicians — the pianist Marta Sánchez, the bassist Luke Stewart and the drummer Russell Carter — who seem intuitively connected to his love of vigorous swing and grittily exuberant improv. The results feel like quintessential Murray, whether on the swaggering, extroverted ‘Am Gone Get Some’ or the title track, a waltz that starts off restrained but soon bursts with emotion.“
-Hank Shteamer/New York Times
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“Francesca”.
[Virtual Label LLC]
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Technically Acceptable/[Blue Note]
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“Ethan Iverson may be best known as the pianist in the Bad Plus, the trio that made a big splash in the early 2000s by fusing jazz idioms with pop tunes by Blondie, Nirvana, Aphex Twin, and ABBA, but he’s been coming into his own since 2017, when he quit the band, in order to explore traditional jazz and 20th-century classical more deeply, and especially since 2021, when he signed with Blue Note. This is his second album with the label, and it can be said he’s arrived. It’s a sketchbook of an album, few tracks longer than four minutes, carving a theme, swirling a couple of variations, then moving along. Some tunes have the playful wit of the Bad Plus. Others cover the waterfront. ‘One,’ an Iverson number, has the hardcore swing vibe of a Kansas City blues by Basie. He winds up with a through-composed sonata, but not before covering ‘’Round Midnight,’ with Rob Schwimmer coaxing its melody on a theremin, which sounds remarkably like a woman singing.”
– Fred Kaplan/Slate
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‘Round Midnight
[Universal Music Group]
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Run the Gauntlet/[Pyroclastic Records]
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“This is an album where the leader of many wide-ranging ensembles plays in the traditional piano trio format yet continues to break boundaries. The title track is a romp of rhythmic variations, potent licks, and irresistible grooves — both daring and ass-shaking. Davis’s compositional imagination and improvisational bent is to create music that toggles between harmonic adventure and the post-bop logic of Herbie Hancock.
“There is as much lush, sumptuous music here (‘Beauty Beneath the Rubble’, which may remind you of some great Keith Jarrett recordings) as there is a thumping adventure (‘Knotweed’). But every note here is keenly felt. Bassist Robert Hurst may be associated with his time with the Marsalis brothers, but he sounds reborn and liberated as he teams with drummer Johnathan Blake in a pliant groove. The recital is all the richer for Davis’s interest in reaching inside her piano to generate new textures and rhythmic power.”
-Will Layman/Pop Matters
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“Run the Gauntlet”.
[The Orchard]
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The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis/[Impulse!]
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“In a post Nels Cline world, it’s not so uncommon to find a guitarist equally versed in jazz and punk rock. But few bridge those worlds as gracefully as Anthony Pirog, who acts as the fulcrum in this trio-plus-one formation uniting the Messthetics — his group with Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, the rhythm section of Fugazi — with James Brandon Lewis, the consistently riveting saxophonist. The alliance feels natural and unfussy, marked by sturdily memorable compositions and inspired, often incendiary improvising.”
-Hank Shteamer/New York Times
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“L’Orso”
[Universal Music Group]
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Matthew Shipp Trio
New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz/[ESP-Disk]
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“Matthew Shipp takes his trio — bassist Michael Bisio, drummer Newman Taylor Baker — into a dark and ominous realm on New Concepts In Piano Trio Jazz, blending free jazz and modern chamber music and in the process creating something genuinely unsettling, in the best possible way. It swings, too.”
Phil Freeman/Stereogum
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“Sea Song”
[!K7]
[Non.
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Endlessness/[Warp]
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“Nala Sinephro’s music is both reserved and adventurous. It shyly beckons the listener to enter its space, then it soon reveals itself to be illuminating and transportive, full of spirit and in awe of the beauty of the universe. Space 1.8, her 2022 debut, was a mesmerizing fusion of spiritual jazz and ambient music that felt both celestial and earthly. The 2024 follow-up Endlessness is another cycle with each piece bearing a consecutively numbered similar title (appropriately enough, ‘Continuum’). Its cast includes returning guests such as keyboard player Lyle Barton and saxophone visionary Nubya Garcia, in addition to others such as black midi drummer Morgan Simpson and trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey, as well as string ensemble Orchestrate.”
-Paul Simpson/All Music
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“Continuum 1”
[IIP-DDS]
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Eagles Point/[Edition]
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“If jazz had a fantasy league it would produce a line-up like this. Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau, John Patitucci and Brian Blade are unsurpassed in their time, each a top-class musician. It’s a 21st-century equivalent of the all-star roster Miles Davis’s second quintet now presents to us, and the music Potter and co play here isn’t dissimilar: pared-down postbop of gentle lyricism laced with yearning. All that’s missing is the trumpet.
“‘Dream of Home’ and ‘Cloud Message’ have the pained circumspection that Wayne Shorter brought to Davis’s band. This emotional landscape, at once intriguing and challenging, is something a soloist can explore, as Potter does, or work against, which Mehldau opts to do. The pianist’s gentle probings are a stimulating contrast to the leader’s interrogations.”
-Chris Pearson/The Times
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“Dream of Home”
[The Orchard]
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Mary Halvorson
Cloudword/[Nonesuch]
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“When the American composer/guitarist Mary Halvorson, a gifted alchemist of musical transmutations, released Cloudward in January, it already sounded bound for the best of the year – as her work had done in 2022 with the albums Amaryllis and Belladonna. Halvorson’s early inspirations were Jimi Hendrix and Anthony Braxton, and both the guitar as a sound source, and structural ideas on the cusp of improv and contemporary chamber music, continue to guide her. This enthralling sextet set mixes rich brass harmonies, rough-hewn distortion, jazzy riffing, intricate real-time jamming and subtle grooves and counterpoint; Laurie Anderson briefly guests on effects-violin. Cloudward was appropriately titled to celebrate the band’s sense of liberation about resuming live music after the pandemic – Halvorson’s joy at that rings out in these vivid pieces”
Chris Pearson/The Times
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“Halvorson’s compositions on Cloudward are impressive. She accounts for individual players’ strengths as soloists while counting on them as ensemble players. She grafts and threads striated post-bop harmony, edgeless dissonance, and kinetic drama simultaneously, then blurs the edges expressionistically in crafting a detailed, multivalent, resonant, deeply satisfying whole from seemingly disparate individual elements.”
-Thom Jurek/All Music
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“The Tower”
[Nonesuch]
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Odyssey/[Concord Jazz]
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“The London jazz scene has been on fire these past few years, and Nubya Garcia has played no small role in keeping it ablaze. In the four years since her 2020 bandleader debut Source, the saxophonist/composer has lent her talents to an array of other recordings, and now she returns with her sophomore album, Odyssey. Picking up where its predecessor left off, it honors jazz traditions and looks to the genre’s future all at once. At times, Nubya and her core band of Joe Armon-Jones (keys), Daniel Casimir (bass), Sam Jones (drums) offer up spiritual jazz compositions that are every bit as timeless and compelling as Nubya’s late ’60s/early ’70s-era forebears. At others, she brings in guest vocalists Esperanza Spalding, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Richie to experimental with neo-soul and R&B; branches out into dub/reggae (“Triumphance”); dips her toes into modern classical (“Water’s Path”); and repurposes elements of hip hop and electronic music in a live-band setting. It’s an album that reminds you why Nubya Garcia became a rising crossover star in the first place.”
-Andrew Sacher/Brooklyn Vegan
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“Water’s Path”
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Portrait/[Verve]
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“Samara Joy’s fourth album, 2024’s Portrait, is a lushly rendered octet showcase for the Grammy-winning singer’s broad jazz virtuosity. Co-produced by Joy and veteran trumpeter Brian Lynch at New Jersey’s legendary Rudy Van Gelder studios, the album finds Joy backed by her touring ensemble… The result is a little big band album in which Joy’s shimmering, ascendent vocals are both framed by and nicely integrated into the octet arrangements. As on her past records, she strikes a pleasing balance between warm interpretations of the American Popular Songbook and jazz standards where she adds her own lyrics, transforming the song into something even more her own.”
-Matt Collar/All Music
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“Reincarnation of a Lovebird”
[Universal Music Group]
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Tyshawn Sorey Trio
The Susceptible Now/[Pi Recordings]
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“Tyshawn Sorey’s current working group — featuring the pianist Aaron Diehl and the bassist Harish Raghavan — might seem like one of the most straightforward projects yet from the drummer-composer, a trailblazer in both the jazz and classical avant-gardes. But on the trio’s quietly stunning third album, a series of extended and reimagined covers that pull you in with a tractor-beam intensity, Sorey’s love of Morton Feldman’s radical sparseness is just as evident as his appreciation for the classic piano-bass-drums format, which has rarely felt so patient or enveloping.”
-Hank Shteamer/New York Times
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Click here to be taken to the Bandcamp site for this album, where samples can be heard
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The lists and reviews utilized for this feature can be accessed by clicking on the links below:
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Click here to read “The Best of ‘The Best of’ in 2023 Jazz Recordings”
Click here to read “The Best of ‘The Best of’ in 2022 Jazz Recordings”
Click here to read “The Best of ‘The Best of’ in 2021 Jazz Recordings”
Click here to read “The Best of ‘The Best of’ in 2020 Jazz Recordings”
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Click here to read The Sunday Poem
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