The Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 (US)

Jazz seemed to be all over the place this year, a big tent for multimedia mixing, vociferous protest and challenges to the standard definitions of a performer’s role. Here are 10 outstanding concert experiences — nine in New York, and one in Newport, R.I., where jazz’s mainstream goes each summer to take its temperature.

KRIS DAVIS WITH BILLY DRUMMOND SubCulture, Jan. 6-7

For any jazz devotee within striking distance of New York, the year begins in earnest with Winter Jazzfest. This year, the festival’s weekend marathon brought over 100 bands to roughly a dozen venues across two nights. The best thing I heard was a duo from the pianist Kris Davis and the drummer Billy Drummond. They’re an uncommonly good match: Her playing is dense and richly stacked; his is fluid, letting the gentle persuasion of his ride cymbal lace the music with momentum. (They appear together on two tracks from Ms. Davis’s 2016 album, a collection of duets titled “Duopoly.”)

HARRIET TUBMAN The Cell, Jan. 11

A month before the release of “Araminta” — a stern, turgid and mysteriously funky collection — the trio Harriet Tubman played to a packed house at this low-key performance space in Chelsea. J.T. Lewis’s drums and Brandon Ross’ electric guitar helped give the songs a fortified structure, but Melvin Gibbs’s distorted bass was the thing that overtook you: Somewhere between Krautrock, doom metal and dub, it became a space your body could disappear into.

LAURIE ANDERSON AND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE The Town Hall, Feb. 23

The performance artist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Laurie Anderson performed here for the first time with the jazz bassist Christian McBrideand the cellist Rubin Kodheli. For an hour she played brightly articulated violin and affecting synthesizer harmonies in light-footed exchange with her new compatriots, pausing here and there to deliver deadpan stories of childhood and unsettling reflections on the abuse of power.

DARIUS JONES WITH FARMERS BY NATURE, ARTIFACTS TRIO Judson Church, May 29-June 3

More than 20 years after its founding, the Vision Festival — celebrating improvised music and its cousins across artistic disciplines — remains one of New York’s most essential art events. On one evening, I heard two sets that stopped me cold. The alto saxophonist Darius Jones guested with the all-star trio Farmers by Nature (the pianist Craig Taborn, the bassist William Parker and the drummer Gerald Cleaver). His round, spiked-syrup sound did battle with the church’s acoustics, plowing straight to your ears before getting sucked into the rafters. Then the Artifacts Trio took the stage, taking a different approach: Nicole Mitchell’s flute and Tomeka Reid’s cello met with Mike Reed’s cymbal-heavy drumming to make an aqueous sound that allowed itself to be warped and melted and spread about by the room.

SHABAKA AND THE ANCESTORS Le Poisson Rouge, June 26

The British tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings brought a five-piece configuration of the Ancestors — his collaborative project with a crew of South African musicians — to the same Greenwich Village club where they had played during Winter Jazzfest five months prior. The band’s politically minded music is danceable, generous and casually propulsive: It’s easy to happen upon it at a festival and like it. But here, running its own show, the band hit a new level — particularly thanks to Mr. Hutchings’ relentless, thick-toned soloing and the semi-operatic vocals of Siyabonga Mthembu.

TYSHAWN SOREY AND JEN SHYU The Stone, July 5

Mr. Sorey, a drummer and multi-instrumentalist, was about to release his powerful new record, “Verisimilitude,” when he settled in for a five-day run at the Stone. Night 1 he played with Jen Shyu, also a multi-instrumentalist as well as a vocalist and movement artist. He ranged from bells and other percussion to a makeshift didgeridoo and a MIDI keyboard; Ms. Shyu played stringed instruments and sang, often lifting and folding her limbs to the music. Often, Ms. Shyu sang a note and Mr. Sorey matched her just one step up, creating a troubled resonance, giving your ear two options and insisting that you not choose one.

VIJAY IYER SEXTET, JOANNE BRACKEEN, CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT Newport Jazz Festival, Aug. 4-5

Mr. McBride’s first year in charge of booking the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island was more or less an unqualified success. Here are some highlights I didn’t get to mention in the review: the Vijay Iyer Sextet showcasing knotty, brittle tunes from its debut disc, “Far from Over;” Joanne Brackeen playing solo piano in an intimate room, moving from the rich, scattering abstraction of “Green Tea Soy Latte” to the boogie-woogie joy ride of “Knickerbocker Blues;” and Cecile McLorin Salvant, singing a slow, luxurious rendition of “Sophisticated Lady,” embracing the song’s pathos even while questioning its premise.

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN H0L0, Aug. 29

Mr. McCraven, a Chicago-based drummer, producer and beat maker, has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality. Recently he’s been traveling to various cities, pulling together musicians and executing one-off performances that he tapes (presumably for later use). Mr. McCraven isn’t an esoterica guy, but he’s certainly obsessed with resonance and charge and the weight of sound. At H0L0, a dark basement in Ridgewood, Queens, he convened a team of string and mallet players — the vibraphonist Joel Ross, the harpist Brandee Younger, the cellist Tomeka Reid and the bassist Dezron Douglas — to create bristling, bulbous music with an electric pulse.

MATANA ROBERTS Roulette, Sep. 14

With an intergenerational sextet convened in a circle onstage, the alto saxophonist Ms. Roberts projected images reflecting on police violence, patriotism and resistance for the multimedia presentation “Breathe ...” Meanwhile the group played free-form music of plain-stated beauty, each musician acutely attuned to the utterances of the others. At one point, an image of the girlfriend of Philando Castile — who died after being shot by an officer in front of her — haunted the screen as Ms. Roberts let out a blooming, dolorous melody, escaping the embrace of the whispery synthesizer underneath her. Hearing her play, feeling the heft of those images in that quiet room, listeners became acutely aware of the fragility of their own breath.

BILL FRISELL AND THOMAS MORGAN The Jazz Standard, Dec. 7

Mr. Frisell, a luminary New York guitarist, this year released “Small Town,” a duets album with the younger bassist Mr. Morgan. On the album, a radiator warmth pervades everything; at this show, you got more direct access to the materials: the trebly, yellow hue of Mr. Frisell’s guitar and the exposed earth tones of Mr. Morgan’s bass. They played two tunes from the album, including a ravishing take on Paul Motian’s “It Should’ve Happened a Long Time Ago,” but they also detoured unexpectedly into standard jam-session repertoire. There was a slinky version of Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy,” then a wily deconstruction of “Giant Steps.” The set ended somewhere in between — on a pop cover that reflects perfectly Mr. Frisell’s creative credo, and feels apt today: “What the World Needs Now.”

from www.nytimes.com