Friday, December 29, 2006

Rounding up the "Best of 2006" lists

As 2006 winds to a close, many jazz critics are publishing their lists of the year's best CDs, with Sound Grammar, the latest recording by saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman (pictured), appearing at or near the top of many of those lists.

Personally, I've never been much for year-end list-making under any circumstances, and due to my limited budget and idiosyncratic listening habits, plus the difficulty of getting service from many jazz labels' promotional departments, there are many major releases from this year that I simply haven't heard yet. At some point, I may or may not weigh in with some thoughts about some of my favorite recordings from the year, but for right now, in lieu of publishing a list of my own, I'm just going to point you to a link-dump of a bunch of other people's picks:
If you've read any other good "best jazz of 2006" lists, by all means please leave a note and the link in the comments. And if you'd like to talk about some of your personal favorite releases from the past year, your comments are also very welcome.

In the meantime, if you're so inclined, you can check out some vintage video of Coleman from 1988 in the embedded window below. This performance of "Happy Hour" was filmed at the Montreal Jazz Festival and features Coleman, the Prime Time band and special guest Pat Metheny on guitar. Also, depending on when you're reading this, you may be able to find some individual Coleman audio tracks for free download by checking the Hype Machine music blog aggregator, (which is actually quite a nice resource for finding all sorts of free MP3s.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My best of 2006 list (I haven't heard it all ) is on:

avantfront.wordpress.com/2006/12/03/best-of-2006/