What should you expect from jazz this month? Welcome to our January 2023 selection of albums that have already been released or will soon be released this month (“What to Wait For”). These albums got our full attention and are worth your time. They are listed in order of release date.

Jazz January 2023 – New Records Selection

• Jason Moran – From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Self-release)
• Fred Frith, Susana Santos Silva – Laying Demons to Rest (RogueArt)
• Andrew Cyrille – Music Delivery / Percussion (Intakt Records)
• Sebastien Rochford, Kit Downes – A Short Diary (ECM)
• Kawashima, Mochizuki, Henritzi – Chinmoku wa ishikure ni yadoru bouryoku (Trost Records)
• Bill Laurance & Michael League – Where You Wish You Were (ACT Music)
• Lakecia Benjamin – Phoenix (Whirlwind Recordings)
• Casey Moir – Traction (HearHere Records)

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From the Dancehall to the Battlefield is a concept album about the life and legacy of American ragtime musician and early jazz bandleader James Reese Europe.

The album opens with words by Jason Moran himself to introduce the hero of the release:

The entire album is astonishing. First, it successfully returns to one of the very roots of Black American music and enlightens us with crucial cultural history in a serious yet profoundly pleasant way. Second, the music perfectly embodies the greatness of Europe in his approach to music, extending the scope in a constant mix hardly heard before of jazz’s ways and tunes, from before it was even named jazz, all the way to today’s modern jazz.

Jason Moran: piano, voice; Tarus Mateen: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums; Logan Richardson: alto saxophone; Brian Settles: tenor saxophone; Darryl Harper: clarinet; David Adewumi: trumpet; Reginald Cyntje, Chris Bates: trombone; Jose Davila: tuba, helicon
Released January 1, 2023

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One concert, one track of about 42 minutes, by a duet of artists that connects beyond expectations.

British musician, composer, and improviser Fred Frith, mostly known for his work as a guitarist, and Portuguese trumpet player and composer Susana Santos Silva, internationally recognized for her solo release All the Rivers (Clean Feed, 2018), were already playing together on Road (Intakt Records, 2021), a live album by the Fred Frith Trio, recorded during a 2019 tour.

On this new release, they create music that cannot be reduced to a mere guitar-trumpet release. The scope of textures, expressions, and impressions gathered here is just phenomenal; the dance between solo and accompaniment is so blurred and so delectable; the tightness of the music is so very sharp and consistent.

One truly feels they are about to enter a heavenly universe, where demons will be laid to rest. The title really captures the atmosphere, which Tim Hodgkinson, in the very evocative liner notes, depicts as “A laying to rest, an exorcism, a healing.”

The quality of the recording, sound design, and mastering contributes to this release’s unique character. The music and sounds are so exquisitely rendered that they give the album its proper extradimensional nature.

So, set aside 42 minutes and listen to this music, and all your stress will certainly be laid to rest.

Fred Frith: electric guitar; Susana Santos Silva: trumpet
Released January 20, 2023

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Strangely enough, considering Andrew Cyrille’s massive discography, he had up until now released only two solo albums in his entire career:

• What About? (BYG Records) in 1969
• The Loop (ICTUS Records) in 1978

So, a new solo release by Andrew Cyrille is certainly quite an event!

“I wanted to have a variety of percussion instruments in the compositions. So I was thinking of melodies that could be played with tambourines, bells, cymbals, crotales, gongs, and mallets.”
–Andrew Cyrille

As described above, Andrew Cyrille conceived an interesting framework; for each track, he focuses on a limited scope of the drums and percussion, as well as how he strikes them.

Precisely, the 11 tracks are:

1. “Thruway”: Trap drum set and cymbals played with sticks.
2. “Bernard Albert Wilkinson”: Trap drum set and cymbals played with sticks.
3. “La Ibkey (Don’t Cry)”: Trap drum set played with hands.
4. “Metallic Resonance”: Assorted cymbals and crotales improvised with knitting needles and various metallic percussion instruments.
5. “Jumping in the Sugar Bowl”: Trap drum set and cymbals played with sticks.
6. “Water Water Water”: Trap drum set and cowbell played with sticks.
7. “Cowbell Ecstasy”: Assorted cowbells played with sticks.
8. “Enter from the East”: Trap drum set played with mallets.
9. “Tambourine Cocktail”: Assorted tambourines played against each other.
10. “Threading A Needle”: Trap drum set played with brushes.
11. “For Girls Dancing”: Trap drum set played with sticks.

At first, it might sound restrictive, but once you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Imagine that you are among the best at playing your instrument. You have even defined it and broadened its horizons over the years. You have absolutely nothing to prove any longer. How would you attack a new solo recording? You would have to limit and challenge yourself to increase your focus and creativity.

Still, even the impossible rhythms in this impossible arrangement seem to come so easily to Cyrille.

The framework of the tracks and the incredible layers of rhythms played by Andrew Cyrille make Music Delivery/Percussion a must-listen for all drum lovers, but he excels at playing each rhythm, making the impossible look so simple that it is also a must-listen for all music lovers in general.

Discover next: New Jazz Releases January 2026

Andrew Cyrille: drums, percussion
Released January 20, 2023

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Sebastian Rochford is a British drummer and composer, best known for being part of the Polar Bear and also for his innovative and creative approach to drumming. Rochford was previously featured on four ECM albums (three with Andy Sheppard, plus one with Kit Downes).

Kit Downes is a British jazz pianist and organist, and winner of the BBC Jazz Awards’ “Rising Star” award in 2008. On ECM, he was featured once on Thomas Stronen’s Time is A Blind Guide. Since 2018, he has released three wonderful albums as a leader: Obsidian, Dreamlife of Debris, and Vermillion.

A Short Diary is a drum-piano duet that takes the exact opposite direction of the ones we usually feature on Bestofjazz.org. Far from the free-jazz form, or the accumulation of strokes, this release reduces them to the bare minimum, thereby creating an etheric atmosphere that is perfectly in line with its purpose—grief.

“This “short diary (of loss)”, as drummer Sebastian Rochford calls it, is offered as “a sonic memory, created with love, out of a need for comfort.” It is dedicated to Rochford’s father, Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford, 1932-2019, and to his family. Seb, one of ten siblings, wrote most of the music shortly after Gerard’s death and delivers it here, in performances of deep feeling and hymn-like clarity, together with pianist Kit Downes.”
–ECM Records

How do we offer our attention to another person? How do we do it affectionately, and how do we do it consistently, while still being authentically ourselves?

These are questions the drummer certainly had to ask himself—and if you ever wondered whether it is possible to play the drums in memory of a loved one, then play this CD. Sebastian Rochford proves that it’s feasible and sensible, and he directs it straight to your soul with a delicate beauty that only Kit Downes and ECM could graciously meet.

Simply put, this album is beautiful.

Sebastian Rochford: drums, composition; Kit Downes: piano
Released January 20, 2023

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The three tracks of Chinmoku wa ishikure ni yadoru bouryoku are inspired by Georg Trakl’s “Night Song”:

Night Song
by Georg Trakl

Over nocturnal dark floods
I sing my sad songs,
Songs which bleed like wounds.
However, no heart carries them to me again
Through the darkness.

Only the nocturnal dark floods
Rush, sob my songs,
Songs which bleed from wounds,
They carry them to my heart again
Through the darkness.

The entire album is as dark as this verse and as intense as the “Georg Trakl” Google image search photos. The tracks, for which each part was recorded separately during lockdown in 2021, feel like a ghost story and lead one to wonder how vibrations and experiences across time and space can synchronize so frighteningly well and tell a story from shouted whispers so essentially and bewilderingly.

Makoto Kawashima: alto saxophone; Harutaka Mochizuki: alto saxophone; Michel Henritzi: lap steel, guitar feedback
Released January 20, 2023

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“Spanish resident and North Africa enthusiast Michael League draws colorful musical landscapes on oud, bass, and guitar. And Bill Laurance, otherwise also known to us, especially for dense walls of sound on keyboards and synthesizers, transfers their sound palette to the acoustic world of the piano. Musical escapism, world jazz 2.0, and an invitation to a place where we wish to be.”
–ACT Music

Bill Laurance: acoustic piano, voice; Michael League: oud, fretless acoustic guitar bass, fretless baritone electric guitar, ngoni, voice
Released January 27, 2023

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Phoenix is as flamboyant as the cover art suggests. This is pure jazz, combined with all the extravagance that American pop and even hip-hop music can produce in an entertaining and clever way.

“The album was produced by the multi-Grammy-award-winning Terri Lyne Carrington and features a star-studded lineup of specially curated guests Dianne Reeves, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, and Wayne Shorter.”
–Bandcamp page

Lakecia Benjamin: saxophone, vocals, synths, sound design; Victor Gould: piano, organ, Rhodes; EJ Strickland: drums; Ivan Taylor: double bass, electric bass; Josh Evans, Wallace Roney Jr: trumpet; Anastassiya Petrova: Rhodes, organ; Orange Rodriguez: synths; Nêgah Santos: percussion; Jahmal Nichols: double bass; Josée Klein, Laura Epling: violin; Nicole Neely: viola; Cremaine Booker: cello | With special guests: Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Dianne Reeves, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Wayne Shorter
Released January 27, 2023

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Traction is as extreme as it is stimulating. Just read this liner note: “free improvisation generating action and the force to propel body and sound on a tangential route to collective musical structure and discovery.”

Extreme? Yes.

From the very first seconds of the very first track, you will realize this is not standard vocal jazz. This is a free improvisation duet of voice and cello for Tracks 1-4, and quartet of voice, cello, alto saxophone, and trumpet for Tracks 5-8. The intense vocals are at times startlingly intertwined with the instruments, becoming almost indistinguishable from them as they admirably enhance the music—and even though this is clearly not easily accessible, it also triggers the listener’s interest by posing so many questions.

Stimulating? Definitely.

We are used to covering free improvisations and extreme instrumental-jazz performances within these pages, but rarely those made by vocalists, and yet this world is so very gripping. It is quickly clear that the potential of the vocals is as large as that of any other instrument when used to its best ability.

One merely needs to look at the vocabulary of vocal techniques to understand the impression of an endless inventory.

There exist four vocal modes: (1) neutral, non-metallic mode, with or without air, ranging from reduced to full density; (2) curbing, restrained, and reduced metallic, reduced density; (3) overdrive; and (4) edge, both ranging from reduced to full metallic, and reduced to full density. These four modes can be lightened or darkened by the color created in the vocal tract and underscored with effects (e.g., distortion, creaks, rattles, growls, grunts, screams, vocal breaks, air, vibrato, and ornamentation).

Even without understanding the full range of these techniques, one can tell that Casey Moir covers most of them. Moreover, the apparent ease with which they are performed is astonishing; at no point does it feel unmastered or hazardous. Moir’s only clear intention is to perform improvised music to the extreme via a duet and quartet using their own vocals, which are as extraordinary—if not even more so—as all the other instruments.

I understand the target audience for such a release is very niche, but Traction offers a unique, provocative experience that is so very rewarding.

DUO
Casey Moir: voice; Elisabeth Coudoux: cello

QUARTET
Casey Moir: voice; Elisabeth Coudoux: cello; Marcus Wärnheim: alto saxophone; Jérome Fouquet: trumpet
Released January 31, 2023

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Playlist

Listen to these tracks on our Spotify playlist ↗.

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Best Jazz January 2023

January 2023 brought an exciting start to the year, with new jazz albums spanning contemporary jazz, avant-garde, free improvisation and more. This selection highlights some of the best new jazz releases of January 2023—records that caught our attention and deserve a closer listen.

Explore more of our Best Jazz Albums 2023 selections as we continue listening, discovering, and sharing the most compelling jazz releases of the year.