They made our year! Here is a shortlist of the albums chosen by Qwest TV's journalists amongst the best releases of 2018.
The Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel has put together quite a support team for his latest album, Where the River Goes. The all-star quintet includes Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire, Larry Grenadier, Eric Harland.
The guitarist Jack Wilkins personifies the term underrated. His albums from the Seventies should have made him a star, but instead he morphed into a “musician’s musician,” a player revered by other players for his abundant gifts but unfairly neglected by the commercial public. Windows, initially released in 1973, was Wilkins’s debut recording as a leader.
While it was unexpected that the acclaimed tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd should have collaborated with the guitarist Bill Frisell and the pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz on the 2016 album I Long to See You, it was even more surprising that Lloyd should include the singer Lucinda Williams, as well as the two guitarists, on his most recent album, Vanished Gardens.
The virtuoso electric bassist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Marcus Miller embraces a sweeping vision of contemporary jazz on Laid Black, a winning example of his expansive talents.
Retransforming such classic Shorter tunes as “Juju” and “Fe Fi Fo Fum,” and introducing new originals that hint at the work of their main inspiration, Lovano and Douglas reveal how present day jazz can stride towards the future while also embracing the past
