I’ve written a lot this year—by far the most I have in the last few years—although most of it is unpublished and a very little percent is about new albums. I’ve also been taking a deep deep deep dive into 50s and 60s honky tonk and copping pedal steel solos as I learn to play lap steel, so that has cut into my music writing time. So as I have done in the past I’ve been making and updating a Spotify playlist to keep track of some of my favorite music of 2023. For some folks, there might be very little “jazz,” here, as there is more that is either pretty out there (Brandon Seabrook), music that is jazz related but might not be jazz at all (Cecile McLorin Salvant’s Melusine, all sung in French), or things that lean more toward new age/ambient/electronica than jazz (Carlos Nino and Friends’ Taaaud and Jason Moran/Marcus Gilmore/BlankFor.ms’ Refract come to mind). But don’t worry, the Heavy Hitters album shows that burning hard bop never goes out of style. And of course not everything is on Spotify. The new Art Ensemble of Chicago album From Paris to Paris is excellent as is Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music’s For Jemeel-Fire From The Road, which I reviewed for Point of Departure. There’s plenty here to dig into, I know that there are albums I haven’t had the chance to really fully engage with that probably should be here, and there is an impossible amount of new music for anybody to keep track of, but this is plenty to get a person going.

A few notes:

-This playlist is more or less random order, or the order in which I came by the music; it is NOT a ranked list.

-All of this is new music. No newly unearthed “masterpieces” from Trane, or giant reissue box sets of whoever.

-Pay special attention to the tracks from Kansas City-based tenor saxophonist Matt Otto, who possesses a captivating and wholly unique melodic, sonic, and harmonic approach.

-Do I have any idea what Brandon Seabrook is doing on brutalovechamp? Does any of it make sense to me? Pretty much no. But it mesmerizes me, as does most of his music.

-My favorite album of the year so far, regardless of genre, is Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek’s New Future City Radio, which has almost nothing jazz about it other than the other realms and projects each has been involved in. The beginning of the album has a serious Gil Scott-Heron “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” vibe to it. The whole album is purely of the calamitous moment we find ourselves in.

-Respect our elders: the new albums from George Coleman and George Freeman are delicious, with the latter featuring a few of the last recorded tracks from Joey DeFrancesco.

-Believe it or not, the luscious string based album August Dreams from Richard Carr, Caleb Burhans, and Clarice Jensen is improvised. I wouldn’t have believed it without reading the press materials. It’s more in the ambient, drone, new/classical contemporary music vein. Improvised is good enough for me to get it on the list.

–Love in Exile from Arooj Aftab/Vijay Iyer/Shahzad Ismaily has gotten a lot of critical attention. The lyrics are sung in Urdu. I have not looked to see if there’s a translation, so I don’t know what the songs are about. I certainly don’t feel comfortable trying to put it into any genre box. All I know is that the music is beautiful. That’s what really counts.

-Finally, I mentioned it above, but the Heavy Hitters album from Mike LeDonne, Jeremy Pelt, Eric Alexander, Vincent Herring, Kenny Washington, and Peter Washington is absolute fire.