To me, the essence of the Chicago jazz and improvised-music community is live performance. More than records made in many other jazz cities, records made in Chicago are documents of what a band does onstage—and that’d be a fair description of almost everything on my list. An aesthetic shaped by onstage performance tends to make for an album a bit less splashy or conceptual than many of the picks that dominate year-end lists, but none of these efforts is lacking in artistry and excitement.
Tomeka Reid Quartet, Tomeka Reid Quartet (Thirsty Ear)
Songs from the Big Book of Love by Michael Zerang & The Blue Lights
To make this impressive album, drummer Makaya McCraven culled improvised passages and grooves from more than 48 hours of live recordings made during a weekly residency at the Bedford in 2013—he cut and pasted, looped, rearranged, and even added subtle keyboard washes. The drummer assembled a stellar cast of musicians for the residency—guitarist Jeff Parker, trumpeter Marquis Hill, vibist Justin Thomas, and bassist Matt Ulery, among others—and while their personalities remain intact, McCraven’s compositional mind-set is what allows the raw material to cohere into a new body of groove-oriented work.
