Leftovers

Dozens of neglected 2019 releases are still in my virtual queue.  I haven’t heard a note of potentially excellent albums by artists including Benjamin Bernheim, Ali Farka Touré, Gang Starr, Joe Henry, Londynn B, Thurston Moore and Xylouris White.  I got around to checking out recent efforts by Soweto Kinch and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra only after publishing my best-music-of-2019 list.  Kinch blends the trad-jazz of New Orleans with London grime on the 64-minute concept album The Black Peril.  The harmonious mashup of the styles associated with Jelly Roll Morton and Dizzee Rascal validates my assertion that jazz and rap are marginally different components of the same continuum.  The Iceland Symphony Orchestra introduces four new works on the riveting Concurrence.  Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Metacosmos” sounds like an instant classic and Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s composition “Quake” may be even better.


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Bobby Watson is The Plastic Sax Person of the Decade.

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From the Redemption of Kanye West department: “Mary” isn’t actually an opera.  Instead, it’s like an extremely ambitious variation of a church’s traditional Journey to Bethlehem presentation.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)