Top in 20 bass-led album: Ellen Andrea Wang, Closeness, Ropeadope

Best and top bass-led jazz album of 2020 'Erasmus' for instance was a bit special from the erstwhile Pixel bassist and singer Ellen Andrea Wang along with UK guitarist Rob Luft and Sweden-born drummer Jon Fält. On Closeness released in the autumn …

Published: 26 Nov 2020. Updated: 3 years.

Best and top bass-led jazz album of 2020 'Erasmus' for instance was a bit special from the erstwhile Pixel bassist and singer Ellen Andrea Wang along with UK guitarist Rob Luft and Sweden-born drummer Jon Fält.

On Closeness released in the autumn there is a flowing open quality to the ensemble sound as it traverses electronica, spacey jazz-rock and much more with shards of melody shaped around a constantly shifting, compelling beat. The album includes versions of Ornette Coleman's 'Lonely Woman' and Pat Metheny's 'This Is Not America'.

marlbank albums of the year will be published on Thursday 31 December round midnight

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Top in 20: Jazz from South Africa NDUDUZO MAKHATINI, MODES OF COMMUNICATION: LETTERS FROM THE UNDERWORLDS, Blue Note

Best and top release from South Africa. It's so long ago but hearing this I thought back immediately to the 1990s and hearing Bheki Mseleku, the great South African pianist. I saw Bheki in Bath and in London a few times at the Queen Elizabeth Hall …

Published: 26 Nov 2020. Updated: 3 years.

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Best and top release from South Africa. It's so long ago but hearing this I thought back immediately to the 1990s and hearing Bheki Mseleku, the great South African pianist. I saw Bheki in Bath and in London a few times at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and outside during the Jazz on a Summer's Day festival at Ally Pally. At the QEH Bheki, who died in 2008, was playing with Joe Henderson. Mseleku had a mystical sense to him and when you heard him you travelled to another sphere entirely. He conducted us there.

The other force of nature whose sound is also here very certainly somewhere in the air is the late McCoy Tyner, his sound a contrast to Mseleku's not Afojazz in the folkloric sense harnessing local music and ancient traditions that you got with Mseleku although Mseleku's sound like Abdullah Ibrahim's slots directly into African American jazz in certain senses, probably through the inspiration of Duke Ellington. What Tyner brings inside Makhatini's sound and it is certainly there, is direct from John Coltrane, the harmonies that underpinned the classic quartet and a sense of the universe.

The most exciting pianist to emerge from the South African scene in many years Makhatini is an important signing for Blue Note. Who knows what the future is but this pianist I think will be an icon of African jazz. This album is certainly an instant classic.

Makhatini is the pianist in Shabaka and the Ancestors, here he unveils a new side to his artistry: all tracks are consistently engrossing. The fervour of 'Indawu' is striking, particularly, a tribute to the spirits of the Nguni people that live in and underneath water and features Logan Richardson on sax among the personnel and in their excellent rapport recalls Mseleku's understanding with Henderson. Lift your spirits, begin a new consciousness, by discovering these epic sounds today. SG

marlbank albums of the year will be published on Thursday 31 December round midnight