Episode 61:: Old News, New Gospel

In the continuing quest to champion the value of modern Jazz, WSRP presents another episode in the constantly-evolving genre of "new Jazz releases." The selections have been released within the past year - several of them just the past month - and were chosen for their particularly distinct approaches.

'Modern Jazz' is no one thing, and in fact it's not even a viable auditory category. 'Modern Jazz' cannot be classified by how it sounds, because it can sound like so many, even contradictory, things. But perhaps it can be categorized by what it's trying to do, and how it's trying to do that. The modern techno-concept of the internet 'cloud' I think captures this much better than an earlier ideology of Jazz-as-geneology (King Oliver begat Satchmo etc.) or the more general linear genre histories (traditional, swing, bebop, dixieland, hard bop, cool post, free jazz, fusion).

So give it a listen, and if this isn't your bag of Jazz, fear not - there are lots of other types of Jazz being made in the world today, and over 85 years worth of archival recordings.

Audio

Playlist

1. Warren Smith - One More Lick for Harold Vick - Old News, Borrowed Blues
2. George Schuller - Common Mama - Like Before, Somewhat After
3. Myra Medford - Through the Same Gate - The Whole Tree Gone
4. Ahmad Jamal - Flight to Russia - A Quiet Time
5. Brad Mehldau - John Boy - Highway Rider
6. Brad Mehldau - Sky Turning Grey (For Elliott Smith) - Highway Rider
7. Pat Metheny - Spirit of the Air - Orchestrion

::WSRP:: Good thing we didn't call it "Weekly Surrogate Radio Project."