{"id":11124,"date":"2020-01-24T18:15:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T18:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11124"},"modified":"2020-01-24T20:48:18","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T20:48:18","slug":"2019-npr-jazz-critics-poll-includes-your-bloggers-list-of-best-jazz-albums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=11124","title":{"rendered":"2019 NPR Jazz Critics Poll includes your blogger’s list of best jazz albums"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pianist-composer-bandleader Guillermo Klein (seated fifth from left), and his star-riddled band Los Guachos, produced the year’s best album “Cristal,” in the opinion of Culture Currents’ Kevin Lynch Courtesy WBGO\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

After a few years’ hiatus, I re-joined Francis Davis’ longtime culling of jazz critics in a poll that began at The Village Voice<\/em> in 2006, and has morphed into a National Public Radio-sponsored survey, now the largest annual poll of jazz critics. So, if you’d like to refer to the best critical consensus on what to listen to or buy in jazz, here’s a great guide.<\/p>\n

If you have a favorite critic among participants, you can find his or her list, including mine, in the link to all the critics, in the opening essay (or here: all participating critics<\/a>.) Davis’ two short essays provide fine overviews of the year and of critical preferences. He notes a surprise top consensus winner, Diatom<\/em> Ribbons<\/em>, by the fairly unknown Canadian pianist-composer Kris Davis (see photo below.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My top choice, Cristal<\/em>, by Guillermo Klein and his brilliant medium-sized ensemble Los Guachos (The Orphans), bolstered my sense that Latin Jazz is moving close to the center of the jazz fulcrum of artistic power and influence.<\/p>\n

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Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos released “Cristal,” my choice for the best jazz album of 2019.\u00a0 Courtesy google.com<\/em><\/p>\n

This year, Puerto Rican-born alto\u00a0saxophonist Miguel Zenon, who is also in Klein’s band of “orphans,” (he’s seated to Klein’s left in the photo, at top) gave us an album that just missed my top ten, Sonero: The<\/em> Mu<\/em>sic<\/em> of<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>Ismae<\/em>l<\/em> Rivera. T<\/em>he NPR critics group similarly ranked Sonero<\/em> number 12 in their consensus voting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zenon is also an original member of the SFJAZZ Ensemble, which scored in my top 10 with The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Original Compositions.<\/em> Jobim, of course, is the father of Brazilian bossa nova.<\/p>\n

These albums follow trumpeter former-Milwaukeean Brian Lynch’s dazzling Madera Latino,<\/em> a 2-CD 2018 Latin-style take on the music of trumpet icon Woody Shaw, one of my picks for best of that year.<\/td>\n

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Otherwise, I was deeply impressed by Forward<\/em>, the debut album (and a live performance I saw) by The Paul Dietrich Ensemble, a Madison-based orchestra. Maria Schneider Orchestra drummer Clarence Penn is the album’s co-billed artist. Schneider’s style and sensibility deeply inform Dietrich’s music. Among the band’s featured soloists was Chicago alto saxophonist Greg Ward, whose own album,\u00a0Stomping Off From Greenwood,<\/i>\u00a0also made my top 10 list.<\/p>\n

I reviewed the album here and for The Shepherd Express<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Madison composer-arranger Paul Dietrich’s music looks backward and forward, like sonic cinema<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n