The future of the genre lies in places where it’s less insular and more artistically adventurous. The 20 best jazz albums are outstanding examples of that impulse.
Linda May Han Oh’s latest album builds its central premise around the concept that humans will typically choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.
Linda May Han Oh’s Strange Heavens is concise and beautifully organized. The music is both spontaneous and carefully crafted. Not a note is wasted.
Jazz singer Michael Mayo is young but has a stunning voice and unique approach that blends tradition and his own material into one hypnotic sound.
The Vijay Iyer Trio’s new album Compassion contains some of the pianist’s most immediately enjoyable music without sacrificing any of his usual complexity.
Some of it is conventionally beautiful and some thrills by rubbing against the edges of tonality. But all of the best jazz of 2023 serves a vision.
Our jazz columnist chooses the best new jazz albums of the summer while reflecting on the passing of Astrud Gilberto and Tony Bennett.
Vijay Iyer Trio’s Uneasy is a set of modern piano jazz covering a remarkable range, featuring three brilliant musical imaginations playing well together.
Two of the top players in modern jazz make the second in a sequence of quintet recordings that presents jazz as unusually easy to love even as it maintains modern complexity.
On From This Place, Pat Metheny's recent and superb quartet is supplemented by orchestral arrangements on ten new Metheny originals.
Jazz bassist Linda May Han Oh adds a string quartet to her group to produce something wholly integrated on Aventurine.
This is trumpeter/composer Dave Douglas' second quintet, playing its repertoire from memory in eight sets in four nights. Dazzling.
