Jerome Wilson's Best Jazz Albums Of 2023

There was a lot of exceptional new music released during 2023 and these were my favorite albums of the year. Some of them bent the music into fascinating new shapes and some made fresh and compelling statements within the jazz tradition.

Jaimie Branch
Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
International Anthem

Just before her death in August 2022, Jaimie Branch finished recording this expansive set that mixes ingredients such as Egyptian vamps, classical riffs, and country music into a furious barrage of energetic music. For all the album's wild bombast, its poignant heart is Branch singing an old Meat Puppets song, "The Mountain."



James Brandon Lewis
For Mahalia With Love
Tao Forms

Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and his Red Lily Quintet pay homage to gospel legend Mahalia Jackson with this set that illuminates some of her favorite hymns with molten flire that carries on the legacy of Spiritual Jazz.



Leap Day Trio
Live at The Cafe Bohemia
Giant Step Arts

This is a powerful live set from the trio of Jeff Lederer, Mimi Jones, and Matt Wilson. The group shows a remarkable musical telepathy and an uncanny ability to find soul at any tempo or style.



Tyshawn Sorey Trio
Continuing
Pi Recordings

Tyshawn Sorey keeps his exploration of the piano trio format going as he leads his group through extended developments of three jazz compositions and the standard "Angel Eyes." The grooves they achieve are hypnotic and relentless.



Ingrid Laubrock
The Last Quiet Place
Pyroclastic Records

Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock puts together a string-heavy sextet that can be as sedate as a chamber ensemble or as raucous as the loudest prog rock band, often on the same track. This is one of the wildest ensembles she has ever assembled.



Jeff Lederer with Mary LaRose
Schoenberg on the Beach
Little (i) Music

Memories of Coney Island and the art songs of Arnold Schoenberg come together in this imaginative audio collage masterminded by Jeff Lederer. His band, featuring clarinet, vibraphone, and cello, slides and slips its way through alternately ominous and charming interpretations of the early music of Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Mary LaRose's elastic vocals add the perfect touch of playful whimsy to the project.



Daniel Hersog
Open Spaces
Cellar Music

This is a majestic work by composer Daniel Hersog that beautifully expands folk songs and quasi-folk songs into arrangements for a full jazz orchestra. Hersog's writing is full of warmth and humanity, and his treatments of "Shenandoah" and "Red River Valley" are particularly moving.



Dan Rosenboom
Polarity
Orenda Records

"The Age Of Snakes" is 19 minutes of head-bopping, spacewalking funk slowly infiltrated by ambient electronics that Brian Eno could have brought to the party. Trumpeter Rosenboom and his group spend the rest of the album on shorter but still compelling pieces that update the amorphous beauty and punchy rhythms of Seventies jazz-rock.



Roxana Amed / Frank Carlberg
Los Trabajos Y Las Noches
Sony Music Latin

Vocalist Amed and pianist Carlberg come together to set the work of Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik to music. The stark power of Amed's voice is commanding, even to a non-Spanish speaker, and she is well-matched by the dramatic musical accompaniment that features Carlberg and saxophonist Adam Kolker.



Susan Alcorn
Canto
Relative Pitch

Susan Alcorn brings her pedal steel guitar talents to a group of Chilean musicians adept in both folk songs and free improvisation. The result is music that carries a heavy knowledge of Chilean history but still has the impulse for surprise and experimentation. It is enhanced by the presence of Alcorn's ghostly and fluid pedal steel work.

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