Kenny Barron’s Beyond This Place is glorious. Whereas I’ve found some of the more talked-about albums of 2024 either been uneven or unfocused – as if attracting debate is more important than just setting out to make a great album – everything just works so well here.
We are treated to the most fluent playing from young alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins I have heard to date. The way in which the recording has captured Johnathan Blake’s shimmering and empathetic busy-ness is just fabulous. The quintet is often reduced to duos and trios, and that gives the individual musicians, and Barron in particular, the space to breathe. I think I will never tire of being able to eavesdrop on musical dialoguing at this level; its freshness is truly astonishing.
Producer Jean-Philippe Allard talked through the backstory to this recording in a radio interview he gave to Alex Dutilh to mark the release in early May. To summarise, a consistently fabulous album like this, with great musicians from several generations playing at their best, hasn’t just happened from nowhere.
At the end of Stan Getz’s life, as Allard remembered, the saxophonist “just couldn’t stop talking about Kenny Barron.” Allard produced the classic 1991 album People Time of the two them – it would be Getz’s last. The producer then devoted himself for the next three decades unshakably to a quest: to create the ideal conditions to show quite how superb the Philadelphia-born pianist truly is. For this quintet outing, recorded on the morning after a live concert at New Morning, Allard had booked a particular Steinway piano in Paris on which Barron has already recorded a solo album (The Source), and had it shipped to the old Barclay studios in Epinay for the session.
But now comes the sad part. This has been a year in which the news from jazz has been a constant reminder of transience and fragility. A mere 12 days after recording this delightful interview, Allard died from cancer at the age of just 67.
Yes, those deaths: in September, we lost Benny Golson, making Sonny Rollins the sole survivor of the “Great Day in Harlem” photo. And then in November, a series of hammer-blows: Quincy Jones, Lou Donaldson and Roy Haynes all passed away in rapid succession. And as I am writing this, I am reading all the farewells to another immortal: Martial Solal.
However, look to younger generations and the art of making music fearlessly in the moment is in good hands. Another album made in ideal recording conditions was Who We Are from a quartet led by saxophonist/composer Marius Neset and classical pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who went to Oslo’s Rainbow Studios in the depths of winter to record a gem. I had no hesitation in five-starring Zara McFarlane’s Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan, produced by Giacomo Smith. And the praise heaped on Outpost of Dreams, an ECM duo album from Norma Winstone and Kit Downes – particularly in Germany – makes me ask one question: how on earth it can be that Norma Winstone isn’t a Dame yet?
Three More Essential Albums from 2024
Zara McFarlane’s Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (K7 Records)
Marius Neset / Leif Ove Andsnes: Who We Are (Simax)
Norma Winstone/Kit Downes: Outpost of Dreams (ECM)
Musical Experience of the Year
Taylor Eigsti / Gretchen Parlato / Ben Wendel at Ronnie Scott's in November (EFG LJF)
Track of the Year
“Once Upon a Time in America” (Deborah's Theme) from Ennio by Gregoire Maret and Romain Collin (ACT)
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