The question of where jazz is headed in the 90s has been around now since the mid-80s (and I expect the question of 21st-century jazz will start crossing lips before Arbor Day). Will the 90s be a decade of further consolidation? More “neoclassic” (read: recycled hard bop) bands of youngsters? Has the new-age slant lost its sway?
Luckily, they didn’t have anything to do with the year’s best albums.
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John Carter, Shadows on a Wall (Gramavision). The name of the album is also the name of a single piece in six movements: the finale of clarinetist/composer John Carter’s epic cycle of five suites designed to trace the history of the African people brought to America. Structured around lyric poetry also written by Carter, and performed brilliantly by an octet featuring cornetist Bobby Bradford, violinist-vocalist Terry Jenoure, and keyboardist Don Preston, the piece chronicles the post-Civil War black migration north, from the siren lure of the cities to the healing force of the church to the irrepressible energy that bubbled up in the jazz tap dancers of the 20s and 30s. But the music needs no such programmatic cues to succeed utterly. The group sounds larger than it really is, due to Carter’s mature exploitation of principles of arrangement laid down by Duke Ellington and Count Basie–specifically, Ellington’s ability to blend tonal colors in unexpected ways, and Basie’s fondness for “riff” playing, in which the band prods and pushes each soloist with rhythmically sharp interjections. It’s a monumental and challenging work.
Miles Davis (and Palle Mikkelborg), Aura (Columbia). It’s Miles’s name on the cover, but this album really belongs to the Danish trumpeter/composer/arranger/conductor Palle Mikkelborg, who conceived and constructed this 65-minute work. (It comprises ten sections, named for different colors, with the purpose of conveying Davis’s musical “aura.”) Recorded in 1984 but released only this year–the delay reportedly irked Davis enough for him to sever his three-decade relationship with Columbia Records–the album finds Davis in particularly good form: in other words, he plays with notable tact and precision the same solos he’s been playing all decade. But Mikkelborg’s composition is revelatory. Really an episodic concerto with trumpet soloist, it shows Mikkelborg in complete command of his far-flung material, blending acoustic instruments and electronics in an often-gorgeous palette. Aura pairs Davis with an orchestrator on a par with Gil Evans, whose late-50s collaborations with Davis remain landmarks in both their careers.
Duke Ellington, The Private Collection, Vol. 10 (Saja). Ellington was constantly dragging his band into recording studios while they were on the road, documenting even those compositions that had yielded apparently definitive recordings earlier; so all ten volumes of this CD-only series, drawn from the Ellington estate, contain valuable and memorable tracks. But this one offers a bonus: all nine sections of Black, Brown and Beige, the gargantuan “serious” work Ellington premiered at Carnegie Hall 47 years ago this month. The only other complete recording of the work is the one made at that Carnegie Hall debut. In general the performances here are more polished, and they display a great deal of feeling–though they’re not quite so brash as those on the original. In short, it’s an older and wiser Black, Brown and Beige, and a chance to hear Ellington rethink one of his greatest accomplishments.
Wynton Marsalis, Crescent City Christmas Card (Columbia).
Robin Eubanks and Steve Turre, Dedication (JMT).
