2022 began off rather well. A bunch of nice albums got here out in January, together with alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’ The seventh Hand; bassist Luke Stewart’s The Bottom; the Matthew Shipp/Michael Bisio duo Flow Of Everything; 2 Blues For Cecil by the trio of trumpeter Enrico Rava, bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille; John Zorn and Bill Laswell’s first assortment of duos, The Cleansing; and Historic Music Past Tense Future, an archival recording by Peter Brötzmann, Parker, and Milford Graves. I hosted a streaming occasion on New Year’s Day, the Burning Ambulance Festival, that included performances from bassist William Parker, saxophonists Muriel Grossmann, Rodrigo Amado, and Patrick Shiroishi, pianist Lisa Ullén, drummer Gard Nilssen’s trio Acoustic Unity (see the listing under), and plenty of different musicians from the worlds of jazz, avant-garde improv, noise, and digital music. In February, my e-book Ugly Beauty: Jazz In The twenty first Century, which I’d spent most of 2021 writing, got here out. The yr held unimaginable promise.
And actually, it turned out to be a really robust yr for jazz. There have been a variety of main deaths, sadly; we misplaced saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Charles Brackeen; trumpeter Jaimie Branch, pianists Ramsey Lewis, Fred Van Hove, cellist Abdul Wadud, organist Joey DeFrancesco, vibraphonist Khan Jamal; and three key figures from Miles Davis’s electrical period: bassist Michael Henderson, percussionist James Mtume, and Betty Davis, the funk singer who launched Miles to Jimi Hendrix, modified his private model, and impressed two key albums, Filles de Kilimanjaro and Bitches Brew. But each month noticed a string of spectacular albums that pushed the music ahead, and key reissues and archival releases, essentially the most notable of which, for me anyway, have been Cecil Taylor’s The Complete, Legendary, Live, Return Concert At The Town Hall NYC November 4, 1973, Albert Ayler’s Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings, the Pyramids’ AOMAWA: The Seventies Recordings, and bassist Sirone’s Artistry.
Writing this column all yr allowed me to speak to some good musicians and folk working in and round jazz, together with saxophonist Nubya Garcia; Markus Müller, creator of a historical past of the FMP label; pianist Nduduzo Makhathini; Moor Mother; Thyrone Tommy, director of the film Learn To Swim; drummer, educator, and activist Terri Lyne Carrington; bassist Eric Revis; and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. Their ideas and views gave me rather a lot to consider, and expanded my very own concepts about jazz — I hope they did the identical for you.
But let’s get to it. Here are the very best jazz albums of 2022, and 10 runners-up, listed alphabetically.