Inspired

The year in review: Jazz

by Jon Garelick

In alphabetical order:

1) Stefon Harris, Black Action Figure (Blue Note). Jazz's "it" kid of 1999 (who performed at both Ryles and the Regattabar this year) was pretty irresistible: a two-mallet vibes player who consolidates the tradition of Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, and Bobby Hutcherson, turning phrases from percussive swing to legato lyricism in a flash. And he can write, too!

2) Charlie Hunter/Leon Parker, Duo (Blue Note). Sometimes you just have to groove. With magical percussion man Parker, eight-string guitarist Hunter took the ride of his career.

3)ICP Orchestra. The Amsterdam-based Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, born in 1967 and co-led since then by composer/pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, made their local debut in November as part of the Boston Creative Music Alliance series at the ICA. The music that night, and their album Jubilee Varia (hatOLOGY), happily trashed geographic, musical, and ideological boundaries.

4) Wynton Marsalis. With his seven-CD "Swinging into the 21st" series and his seven-CD Live at the Village Vanguard set (all on Columbia), the king of jazz might seem to be stuffing the ballot box for the year-end lists. But the former includes Sweet Release & Ghost Story: Two More Ballets by Wynton Marsalis, and if anyone's writing better jazz these days I haven't heard it. The Vanguard box documents the live work of Marsalis's septet, a legacy that may prove more important than any single composition.

5) Brad Mehldau, Elegiac Cycle and Art of the Trio 4: Back at the Vanguard (Warner Bros.). In the first, Mehldau is Chopin improvising solos for an hour, with a touch of stride and blues here and there. In the latter, probably the best working piano trio out there continue to extend the ensemble tradition established 40 years ago by Bill Evans and Paul Bley. Almost as valuable as the music: Mehldau's broadside liner notes that quote Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Mann, and Allen Ginsberg while attacking critics who compare him to Evans and Bley.

6) Joe Morris. The singular Morris followed up last year's A Cloud of Black Birds (AUM Fidelity) with more releases than I could keep track of, but the good news is that his classic quartet continued with a stunning show at MIT's Killian Hall (with new drummer Gerald Cleaver) and a new album, Underthru (Omnitone), that follows the guitarist's conversational interplay with the astonishing violinist Mat Maneri.

7) Paul Motian, Trio 2000 + One and Monk and Powell (Winter & Winter). No one mixes up standard formulas better than drummer Motian. His Electric Bebop Band matches two tenors (Chris Potter and Chris Speed) and two electric guitars (Kurt Rosenwinkel and Steve Cardenas) with the father of jazz electric bass (Steve Swallow) for fresh timbres and collective derring-do on the Monk and Powell books. Trio 2000 + One alternately adds electric bassist Larry Grenadier and pianist Masabumi Kikuchi to Swallow and Potter for tense workouts over free rhythms and Motian's folk-like melodies.

8) Hugh Ragin, An Afternoon in Harlem (Justin Time). Thanks to Phoenix contributor Ed Hazell for turning me on to the best trumpet album I heard this year. Ragin is a veteran of bands led by Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and David Murray, but that only hints at the versatility he shows here, from Blue Note-style blues swingers (the title track) to all manner of mixed "free" and straight-ahead forms. Ragin's improvisations have an exuberant logic, his articulation is flawless, his tone is indescribably brilliant and rich, and his band is his equal. What's not to like?

9) Dewey Redman/Cecil Taylor/Elvin Jones, Momentum Space (Verve). Three masters join forces to create a classic: "free" jazz with a structural and emotional coherence, mixing solo pieces, duets, and trios. Taylor's 20-minute "Is" begins as a trio, and varies in tempo and intensity, building into torrents and ending with some spare piano figures played against quietly tolling cymbals. It's a journey that leaves you both exhausted and refreshed.

10) Sam Rivers, Inspiration (RCA). The septuagenarian avant-garde legend says he originally intended these seven big-band pieces to play for 50 minutes each, so Inspiration is the result of inspired concision: rapidly juxtaposed unison ensemble passages, squalling collective improvs, and pointed solos. The revolutionary Dizzy Gillespie big band of the '40s is the obvious antecedent, but unlike most of today's big-band music that claims the "tradition" as its own, Rivers looks forward as well as back.

In Memoriam: Trumpeter Lester Bowie, who with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and other bands was funny, angry, a master of the tradition both "in" and "out," and always entertaining . . . Jaki Byard, who inspired generations of musicians through his playing, writing, and teaching . . . Fred Hopkins, a bass virtuoso who lifted every ensemble he was a part of . . . vibist Milt Jackson, who made a percussion instrument sing in a long, unbroken line.