Curt's Jazz Cafe

There are good and bad things about writing a mid-year “Best of” list, as I did last July: It cuts down your work at year’s end but it also makes it harder to pare that year end list down to a precious few, especially in a year like this, that was filled with great jazz albums, especially on the instrumental side.

Enough of my whining. Here now, is a list of my favorite albums, released in 2017, that I first heard between July and December. As with the previous list, I’ve split them into instrumental and vocals. They are listed in alphabetical order, by album title, not in order of preference. Because all of these living jazz artists would appreciate your support, clicking on the album title will take you to a place where you can purchase the album, with delivery in some cases, before Christmas.

Instrumental

Vocal

We will feature a closer look at each of these discs in several posts, over the remainder of the year.

And lest we forget (and we shouldn’t). Here are the albums that were included in our first “Best Of 2017” post, back in July:

Vocal 

• Dance of Time – Eliane Elias (Concord)
• Nightintales – China Moses (MPS)
• Petite Afrique – Somi (Okeh)
• A Social Call – Jazzmeia Horn (Prestige)
• What Time Is It? – Giacomo Gates (Savant)

Instrumental 

• Akua’s Dance – Akua Dixon (Akua’s Music)
• Back to Earth – Farnell Newton (Posi-Tone)
• Boundary Issues – Chris Greene (Single Malt)
• Brothers Under the Sun – Steve Nelson (HighNote)
• Made in America – Bobby Watson (Smoke Sessions)
• The Music of John Lewis – Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, feat. Jon Batiste and Wynton Marsalis (Blue Engine)
• Post Cool: Vol 1; The Night Shift – Carol Morgan (Self-Produced)
• Reach – Christian Sands (Mack Avenue)
• Sabiduria – Eddie Palmieri (Ropeadope)
• Serenade for Horace – Louis Hayes (Blue Note)
• A Tribute to Art Blakey [EP] – Tony Allen (Blue Note)

Tracks from all of these albums will be featured, starting on Wednesday, December 27, as we celebrate the Year in Jazz, on CurtJazz Radio, as it returns to the new Live365.com. We are on the air now, with our JazzMas Party (Holiday Jazz), until then. Click HERE to listen. It’s free.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

Until then, the jazz continues.

This entry was posted on December 19, 2017 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Best Jazz Albums of 2017, curtjazz radio with tags ahmad jamal, antonio adolfo, behn gillece, best jazz of 2017, blue note all stars, brenda navarrete, carmen lundy, cecile mclorin salvant, christian mcbride, dave stryker, jazz at lincoln center orchestra, kamasi washington, kellye gray, lizz wright, mark guiliana, matt wilson, ori dagan, unhinged sextet. 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.