Jazz In 2020

If you read this blog regularly, you might get the impression that all I listen to is 1960s psychedelic rock, but that's most definitely not the case. I've been a jazz fan since high school and as time goes by, I find myself listening to more and more jazz, especially after watching Ken Burns' Jazz series. 

The problem I have now is trying to find new jazz to listen to. I'm pretty familiar with the standard repertoire but discovering new music is tricky. Thankfully, Rolling Stone has published a comprehensive review article that covers jazz in 2020. There are links to artists' pages (many on Bandcamp), so you can sample their music and I suppose you can always dig around on Spotify or YouTube Music as well. 

Jazz is a web. Because of the genre’s inherently collaborative, often mix-and-match nature, singling out a supporting player we like on a given record might lead us to dozens of other sessions featuring that same artist in various contexts. Or we might pick up a certain current in the music that crops up elsewhere, unifying albums that seemed to have little else in common. In 2020, when connection of any kind was scarce, these sorts of musical hyperlinks seemed all the more precious, a way to map and marvel at the complex social networks that keep jazz exciting year after year.

Like in pretty much every other corner of the music world, there was a lot to mourn in jazz in 2020: the passing of legends such as Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, and Wallace Roney; the closure of beloved venues like New York’s Jazz Standard; the news that piano titan Keith Jarrett (who put out his latest epic live solo set, The Budapest Concert, in October) may never perform in public again. But there was also a lot to celebrate: next-best-thing livestreams from the Village Vanguard and other clubs, plus virtual fests and fund-raising efforts; a new class of deserving NEA Jazz Masters; and of course a sea of new releases.

Here, then, are six paths through the year in jazz on record, with a few examples of what could be found along the way — plus Bandcamp links where applicable — demonstrating a small fraction of just how much there was to explore. You won’t find any kind of rankings below, or a survey that claims to be in any way comprehensive, but hopefully one or more of these avenues leads you to some kind of discovery. Happy listening.

There's enough music here that I'll probably still be working my way through it by the time the 2021 article comes out. The article is now in the overflow slot on my bookmarks bar for quick access.