One last thing about year-end lists

When compiling my own year-end compendium, I forgot one important fact: Francis Davis does the same thing for the Village Voice, and his ranking of albums culls from a larger list of critics than mine, so I must defer to him. Not that I mind letting someone else do the yeoman's work...

The Death of Smooth Jazz

"We were one of the last smooth jazz stations to bail on the format. But it's been in trouble for a while. There’s been a shift in the industry, where the quantity of listeners became more important than the quality of listeners. The radio stations that have lots of listeners, regardless of how long they listen, will be rewarded, and the stations whose listeners listen passionately aren’t rewarded. The 'JZA listeners weren’t button-pushers."

Read the whole thing here, via Marginal Revolution.

Billy Taylor

I don't have much to say about Billy Taylor, who died yesterday. But his importance in the development of jazz studies as an academic discipline cannot be understated. His writing on the subject and work in promoting jazz as art to be taken seriously was crucial to the transformation of the perception of jazz (beginning after World War II with important antecedents from the swing era) from popular dance music to an art form. However, Taylor did not fully subscribe to that dichotomy, often finding a point in his music and writing between art and entertainment that disappointed few.

Below, Taylor discusses cool jazz in the 1950s miniseries The Subject Is Jazz:

2010 In Review

Tomorrow I'm off to Miami for the holiday, so I will leave you with my year-end roundup. As the usual disclaimer goes, since I am but an amateur critic, I only review a handful of albums released in a given year, so be sure to check out the best-of lists of the more than capable critics after the break. But before that, here are the albums which I enjoyed the most in 2010, in alphabetical order by artist:

• The Bad Plus: Never Stop
• Vijay Iyer: Solo
• Jason Moran: TEN
• Paul Motian: Lost in a Dream
• Polar Bear: Peepers
• Christian Scott: Yesterday You Said Tomorrow
• The Wee Trio: Capitol Diner Vol. 2

Also, some of my favorite nonjazz of 2010:

• Beach House: Teen Dream
• The Black Keys: Brothers
• Broken Social Scene: Forgiveness Rock Record
• Spoon: Transference
• Vampire Weekend: Contra
• The Walkmen: Lisbon
• Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• The Whigs: In The Dark

And below the break, the compilation of critics' lists. [more]

Winter

1. Avishai Cohen - Art Deco
2. Jason Moran & Stefon Harris - Beatrice
3. Medeski Martin & Wood - Partido Alto
4. Paul Motian, Bill Frisell & Joe Lovano - Dance
5. Charles Mingus - Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues
6. Chris Potter - Okinawa
7. Miles Davis - Freedom Jazz Dance
8. Vijay Iyer - Fleurette Africaine
9. Miroslav Vitous - Carry On, No. 1

   Winter by dave6834