Jazzwise Albums of the Year Poll winners announced
If
a learned friend informed you a year ago, dear readers, that the album
of 2015 might possibly be a triple concept album by a previously unknown
artist who insisted on giving the whole shebang a title so toweringly
grand and top heavy it would have had the Trade Descriptions Act office
crawling all over it, you would have been on the phone immediately
booking said learned friend into the Priory for a somewhat extended
stay. Welcome then to LA-based saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s debut triple album, The Epic:
a gloriously expansive, sense-tickling spiritual jazz masterpiece
encompassing three CDs, 17 tunes, a 10-piece band, a 32-piece orchestra,
a 20-piece choir and 172 action packed minutes (count’em) that had
writer Kevin Le Gendre awarding it a 4 star recommended
accolade when he reviewed it in the May issue. And judging by the
colossal amount of votes the album racked up in our critics poll, he
wasn’t the only writer whose block was severely rocked.
Here are the top three albums as voted for by Jazzwise’s
team of esteemed critics – to see the full Top 20 of both New Albums
and Reissue/Archive Releases, plus each writer’s personal Top 10s, subscribe here to save money and get a fantastic jazz CD FREE…
1 Kamasi Washington The EpicBrainfeeder
“Moving from hard swing to funk to some of the digital age
sensibilities scoped out by Thundercat, this is an album of progressive
present day thinking that willfully acknowledges its debt to the past,
as befits the ongoing relationship between the two. So if there is a
sample of a Malcolm X speech it is relevant to the current political
debate: There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim. There is something
very right about the premise and execution of this work.” (Extract from Kevin Le Gendre’s original Jazzwise review)
2 Maria Schneider Orchestra The Thompson Fields Artist Share
“This programmatic set of eight original compositions by Maria
Schneider, evoking her childhood and early adolescent memories of the
middle west, is a work that is both profound and memorable. Schneider,
who delights in breaking open the rigid structure of cyclical forms in
jazz with writing that explores theme, variation, development and
recapitulation is also a master of shifting tonal densities – one glance
at the doubles the reed section have to contend with, plus a brass
section all doubling on flugel horns, means some of the tone colours she
dreams up are breathtaking.”
(Extract from Stuart Nicholson’s original Jazzwise review)
3 Loose Tubes Arriving Lost Marble
“Here’s the highly-anticipated third and final instalment in the ‘live’
trilogy of recordings from Loose Tubes’ farewell residency at Ronnie
Scott’s in 1990. Following on from Dancing on Frith Street in 2010 and
Säd Afrika in 2012, the new CD Arriving comes with a few unexpected
bonus tracks that wouldn’t have figured in the series’ curator Django
Bates’ initial plans for the set. It’s a very significant addition:
they’re compositions commissioned by BBC Radio 3 from the already
legendary Ronnie’s 30th anniversary comeback residency last year by the
newly-resurrected Loose Tubes. Although they seem to mark the end of the
reconciliation, the title Arriving suggests otherwise; Loose Tubes
could, let’s hope, be around for a while yet. With eight further gems
from the original Tubes repertoire, the band’s musical palette is as
idiomatically broad as its musicians were diverse. If you’ve got the
first two CDs then this one’s a no brainer. But listening to both 1990
and 2014 versions, it becomes clear that this is one reunion that isn’t
just dependent on celebrating past glories.”