Linda May Han Oh, Ambrose Akinmusire, Darcy James Argue, and Branford Marsalis named among Stereogum’s Best Jazz Releases of the Decade.
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Real Enemies
(New Amsterdam, 2016)
Composer and arranger Darcy James Argue is just one of a small school of musicians who are revitalizing big band orchestration for the modern era. Each of the Secret Society’s three albums to date has been a conceptually unified large-scale work, and this is the ensemble’s darkest music to date. It tackles themes of Cold War paranoia, creating an alternate soundtrack to a spy thriller that plays out only in your mind. The rhythms are stealthy, the horns creep up like a tail you can’t quite shake; heard on headphones, this is music that’ll have you looking over your shoulder.
Listen | Spotify
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Branford Marsalis Quartet – Four MFs Playin’ Tunes
(Marsalis Music, 2012)
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis keeps his long-running quartet — currently featuring pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Justin Faulkner — busy on the road, and occasionally they stop into a recording studio. This album was Faulkner’s first with the group, after joining in 2009, and it lives up to its title. These are tuneful compositions, and they swing hard, because Revis is an absolutely masterful bassist who journeys back and forth between conventional post-bop and avant-garde experimentation without blinking, and Faulkner is one of the most thunderous drummers since Elvin Jones. These guys are monster players, and this album kicks ass.
Listen | Spotify
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Linda May Han Oh, Aventurine
(Biophilia, 2019)
Recorded in 2017, this album combines a jazz quartet (saxophone, piano, Oh’s bass, drums, and occasional vibes) with a string quartet and five vocalists singing wordless melodies. The resulting music is a stunning vision of chamber jazz, something like a tornado striking a flowerbed — a mosaic of colors rises into the air and spins wildly, swirling around and around in a way that’s both mildly disorienting and utterly captivating. It’s a culmination for Oh, whose music has been getting more intricate with each release. Her blending of traditions is much more than a dry technical exercise, though; it’s almost swooningly romantic.
Listen | Spotify
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Ambrose Akinmusire, The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint
(Blue Note, 2014)
Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s third album featured longtime collaborators — Walter Smith III on sax, Sam Harris on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass, Justin Brown on drums — plus guitarist Charles Altura, the OSSO String Quartet, and vocalists Becca Stevens, Theo Bleckmann, and Cold Specks. He’s not a fire-breathing trumpeter; he often seems to be murmuring to himself. And the lyrics seem like internal monologues even as they demand sympathy for suffering people, from homeless men to victims of gun violence to convicted murderers. This album may require several listens to fully sink in and reveal itself, but when it does it’s astonishingly powerful.
Listen | Spotify
Read the full list at Stereogum.com