Curt's Jazz Cafe

Let’s start with a confession: I got to hear fewer jazz albums this year than in any year in the past two decades. Which is a shame, because there was a TON of worthwhile music released during the year. My crazy schedule in 2016 often limited me to snippets or tracks from discs that I vowed to get back to, but never did.  So, here’s my list of the best albums that I actually got to hear during the year. Also, there’s a track from an extremely promising young artist, who needs to put more on the market, ASAP; a couple of outstanding 2015 releases that didn’t catch my ear until 2016; and finally, a few of the many fine 2016 releases that I plan to catch up with in January:

2016’s most compelling single in search of an album:

• “Chicken Day” – Harvey Cummings II

Two 2015 albums (heard in 2016) that deserved to be on last year’s list:

• Back to the City – Amos Hoffman (CD Baby)
• Some Morning – Kim Nazarian (CD Baby)

Probably excellent 2016 albums that I look forward to hearing as soon as possible:

This entry was posted on January 3, 2017 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Best Jazz Albums of 2016, Uncategorized with tags adam o'farrill, amos hoffman, Best jazz of 2016, bill charlap, black art jazz collective, branford marsalis, brian charette, Brian Lynch, catherine russell, DE3, ed cherry, etienne charles, freddie hendrix, gregory porter, gregory tardy, harvey cummings ii, jack dejohnette, jimmy garrison, kenny barron, kenny garrett, kim nazarian, marcus strickland, marquis hill, mary halvorson, matt wilson, melissa aldana, melissa morgan, Mimi Jones, music, norah jones, orrin evans, pedrito martinez, ralph peterson, ravi coltrane, rene marie, renee rosnes, Robert Glasper, roxy coss, tom harrell, tyshawn sorey, Warren Wolf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.