★★★★☆What will the future of jazz sound like? Kamasi Washington meets Snarky Puppy, if The Birth of Us, the track that launches Logan Richardson’s latest, is anything to go by. It’s a cosmic collage
(High Note)
Storytelling trumpeter Pelt boldly crosses genres and ages with agile contemporary bop, ballads and spoken word passages
Bridge building in a fragmented age ⦠Jeremy Pelt in 2018. Photograph: Gari Garaialde/Redferns
Bridge building in a fragmented age ⦠Jeremy Pelt in 2018. Photograph: Gari Garaialde/Redferns
Fri 26 Feb 2021 04.00 EST
Jeremy Pelt, a trumpet virtuoso who could have dropped without blinking into classic 1960s Blue Note sessions cut years before he was born, has interlaced his familiar mix of agile contemporary bop and elegant ballads with spoken-word passages on African American jazz life, edited from his own interviews with musicians across the generations. Peltâs inspiration here is the west African griotsâ oral history tradition â but if he has invoked those ancient methods to inspire and inform musicians of colour in 21st-century America, this is nonetheless a jazz album for everyone. Pithy themes and punchy soloing are d
Top 10 jazz albums of 2020
By Jon Garelick Globe Staff,Updated December 24, 2020, 10:00 a.m.
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âUNANIMOUS SOURCESâ Jeff Albert
The random shuffle of livestreaming WWOZ from New Orleans revealed this gem from veteran trombonist Jeff Albert: fast-walking-bass swing topped with free-bop horn solos; gritty funk grooves (with the essential baritone sax of Dan Oestreicher); and assenting horn choruses and themes of anthemic uplift.
âLIFE GOES ONâ Carla Bley/Andy Sheppard/Steve Swallow
The great composer Carla Bley, now 84, delivered this third disc with trio-mates Sheppard (saxophones) and Swallow (bass) and herself on piano. The three suites of tunes are unhurried, lyrical, bluesy, informed by Bleyâs sly sense of humor, elegiac and airborne.