2008: The Year in Recordings

One afternoon hanging out with a good friend and fellow writer in the Crescent City during my November completion of the Randy Weston book manuscript for our publisher (Duke University Press) we started speculating on the various end-of-the-year lists we’d been called to participate in.  For me that included the JazzTimes magazine, and Francis Davis’ Village Voice respective year-end "critics" polls.  My friend threw up his arms and wondered aloud how one even arrives at such a list given the dearth of comprehensive listings of the releases of a given year.

    Thank goodness I have a ready solution to this personal conundrum – my radio playlist file.  Thanks to a year-long stint of program subbing on air at the Crescent City’s great radio station WWOZ (www.wwoz.org), and particularly to several months of alternating hosting with the superb Maryse Dejean the Sunday evening new release program "What’s New", I was blessed with a ready index of my favored new releases for the year.  

    I won’t be so bold as to label this some sorta "best of" list — and one will readily ascertain that the numbers are a bit uneven, there’s no particular ordering, and certainly no top 10 or top 25 or whatever arbitrary number — so here are some ’08 releases and reissues worthy of your attention:

 

Recommended 2008 Releases

 

 

New Releases

 

Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Doxy

 

Joe Lovano, Symphonica, Blue Note

 

Catherine Russell, Sentimental Streak, World Village

 

Charles Lloyd, Rabo de Nube, ECM

 

TK Blue, Follow the North Star

 

Esperanza Spalding, Esperanza, Heads Up

 

Jenny Schienman, Crossing The Field, Koch

 

Dafnis Prieto, Taking The Soul for a Walk, Zoho

 

Sumi Tonooka, Long Ago Today, Kindred Rhythm

 

Jose James, The Dreamer, Brownswood

 

Dr. Michael White,

Blue Crescent

,

Basin Street

 

Gilfema +2, Obliq Sounds

 

Evan Christopher, Django ala Creole, Classic Jazz

 

Robin Eubanks, EBB Live Vol. 1, REM

 

Marty Sheller Enemble, Why Deny, PVR

 

Conrad Herwig, The Latin Side of Wayne Shorter, Half Note

 

Cassandra Wilson, Loverly, Blue Note

 

Rosa Passos, Romance, Telarc

 

Eric McPherson, Continuum, Smalls

 

Jaleel Shaw, Optimism

 

Vijay Iyer, Tragicomic, Sunnyside

 

Elio Villafranca, The Source In Between, Ceiba Tree

 

Adam Rudolph, Dream Garden, Justin Time

 

Corey Wilkes, Drop It, Delmark

 

Danilo Perez, Across the Crystal Sea, Universal

 

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Live at the Village Vanguard, Planet Arts

 

Kurt Elling, Nightmoves, Concord

 

Bennie Maupin, Early Reflections, Cryptogramophone

 

Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly, The Speed of Change, 482 Music

 

Liz McComb, The Spirit of New Orleans, Gve

 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Harriet Tubman, Noir

 

JD Allen, Now!, Sunnyside

 

Dave Holland, Pass It On, Dare2

 

SF Jazz Collective, Live 2008, SF Jazz

 

 

Reissues/Historic

 

Sarah Vaughan, Live at the 1971 Monterey Jazz Festival, MJF

 

Lester Young, Live at Birdland, ESP disk

 

McCoy Tyner, Fly With The Wind, Milestone

Anthony Braxton, The Complete Arista Recordings, Mosaic

 

Return to Forever, Anthology, Concord

 

Henry Grimes Trio, The Call, ESP disk

 

Art Pepper, The Croydon Concert, Widow’s Taste

 

Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Flies High, Riverside

 

John Coltrane, Traneing In, Prestige

 

Steve Lacy, The Forest and the Zoo, ESP disk