What is jazz?

Jazz - The year in review

by Jon Garelick

1. Olu Dara, In the World: From Natchez to New York (Atlantic). Dara had long been one of the more respected sidemen in jazz -- then he put out this solo "debut," in which he covered everything hinted at in the title and more. There's Bubber Miley-style plunger-mute cornet, country-blues slide guitar, a sexy Caribbean come-on vocal, even an urban rap for Dara's son, New York rapper Nas. Dara's offhand charm is part of his mastery -- as is his expansive vision of the jazz world.

2. Dave Douglas, Charms of the Night Sky (Winter & Winter). In past projects, Douglas has paid homage to Booker Little and Wayne Shorter without mimicry. Here he combines his trumpet with Guy Klucevsek's accordion, Mark Feldman's violin, and Greg Cohen's bass. In typical Douglas fashion, you can hear Balkan folk, Western European cabaret, and, yes, jazz. But it's really unlike anything else -- just one installment from jazz's most original contemporary voice.

3. Tom Harrell, The Art of Rhythm (RCA Victor). Harrell -- along with Dave Douglas -- has become one of the most important trumpeters around, with a dark-hued lyric approach that's all his own, a solo style that's a model of compositional logic and spontaneous invention. On The Art of Rhythm he continues to assert his importance as a writer, too. Although it's full of guest stars (Greg Tardy, Dewey Redman, Danilo Pérez, Leon Parker, Milton Cardona), this is no high-priced blowin' session. Harrell writes beautiful settings for each soloist -- mini-concertos in the style of Ellington or Gil Evans -- deploying percussion, strings, guitar, and horns for a variety of Afro-Latin jazz colors and moods. A unified, daring work.

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the year in review

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4. Sherman Irby, Big Mama's Biscuits (Blue Note). With a title like that, it's no surprise that alto-saxophonist Irby delivers a Cannonball-like buttery soulfulness. What's surprising is his ability to vary his sound and approach -- to suggest here the sighing glisses of Johnny Hodges, there the brainy linear post-bop of Lee Konitz, and there again the blistering harmonic steeplechase runs of Coltrane. And this is no empty mimicry -- Irby takes unexpected turns in every piece. He mixes trio, quartet, and quintet tracks; he covers Stevie Wonder ("Too High") without pandering, Strayhorn ("Take the 'A' Train") without hitting one tired lick. A perpetual sideman and a favorite in New York, Irby has now completed his second Blue Note CD as a leader but has yet to take his deal on the road. Maybe in 1999?

5. Pandelis Karayorgis Trio, Heart and Sack (Leo). Karayorgis combines Lenny Tristano's sense of linear propulsion with Paul Bley's conception of the piano trio as a free-flowing three-way conversation. That makes for a coiled, winding and unwinding sense of swing driven by Karayorgis's prickly lines and expansive harmonies, bassist Nate McBride's mix of gestural abstractions and deep-walking, and drummer Randy Peterson's ability to drop the downbeat anywhere, confounding expectations and drawing you into this band's remarkable pulse. The "standards" include Eric Dolphy's "Miss Ann," Duke Ellington's "Frustration," and Ken McIntyre's "Lautir."

6. The Lounge Lizards, Queen of All Ears (Strange & Beautiful Music). After 20 years, Lounge Lizards avatar John Lurie is still fighting the term he coined after the band's first gig, "fake jazz," and his own image as a stranger-than-paradise hipster icon. But he's winning. Queen of All Ears mixes the repetitive "process" music of Philip Glass with the cabaret jazz of Kurt Weill, "sex blues" derived from "Harlem Nocturne," and the West African tribal drumming of Burundi. Lurie's band has spawned an entire New York scene (Medeski Martin and Wood, Brandon Ross, most of the Jazz Passengers, Arto Lindsay, Anton Fier, and Dougie Bowne all have Lounge Lizards connections). These days, his crew includes trumpeter Steven Bernstein, tenor-saxist Michael Blake, guitarist Dave Tronzo, and drummer G. Calvin Weston. Their Paradise show in September was a boundless beauty (if a bit lopsided in pacing). And it was as real as any jazz being made.

7. Marc Ribot, Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (The Prosthetic Cubans). (Atlantic). For long-time downtown New York guitar wiz Ribot, the music of Cuban composer Arsenio Rodríguez was originally something to have fun with, but it soon turned into this beautifully textured album. The former Rootless Cosmopolitan freely adapts Rodríguez to his own purposes, modifying his 12-string to mimic Rodríguez's tres (a Cuban guitar with three sets of double strings) and attacking it with percussive glee. In a Gamelan Productions show at Harpers Ferry in August, Ribot -- with drummer Robert J. Rodriguez, percussionist E.J. Rodriguez, and bassist Brad Jones -- got a roomful of groove-band fans shouting and moving.

8. David S. Ware, Go See the World (Columbia). After seeing Ware and his quartet in a club in Paris, who should sign the 49-year-old one-time Berklee-ite firebrand to Columbia but Branford Marsalis. "He told me he really liked the melodic content of the music," says Ware. True, Go See the World is probably Ware's most accessible album, with relaxed rhythms and regular meters and a straight-faced interpretation of "The Way We Were." But Ware remains an imposing individualist -- drawing inspiration from the fire music of late Coltrane, pouring forth molten, vibrato-laden lines that threaten to melt his tenor sax. He and the rest of his quartet -- bassist William Parker, pianist Matthew Shipp, and drummer Susie Ibarra -- gave a stirring performance at Emmanuel Church as part of the Boston Creative Music Alliance season in October.

9. Randy Weston, Khepera (Verve). Composer/pianist Weston was a pioneer in drawing music directly from Africa into New York jazz. Here, with the pipa player Min Xia Fen, as well as a venerable jazz crew that includes trombonist Benny Powell, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and Ashiko drummer Chief Bey, he creates a remarkable suite that modulates in texture and mood while maintaining a seamless unity. From Fen's delicate pipa to the massed horn sound of a little big band, Weston's pan-African style is as vital and all-encompassing as ever.

10. Betty Carter. Not just a great jazz vocalist, Carter, who died in September at age 69, was one of the great figures in jazz. As an improviser, she innovated with soaring scats and syllabic manipulations that made her an equal among instrumentalists. She was also a demanding, inspiring bandleader and teacher, tutoring scores of young musicians who passed through her bands before becoming stars themselves, and constantly searching for and encouraging young talent in her annual Jazz Ahead program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She was the last survivor of the great trio of vocalists to emerge from the confluence of big bands and bebop, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae.