Contemporary Jazz
 

Alright, so I'm pretty well clued into most of the jazz greats from the 40s, 50s and 60s - Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. - but I'm looking for some good contemporary jazz. I'm not talking musicians that simply cover the standards or cheesy smooth jazz. I want to hear some good modern day jazz musicians playing original compositions.

Any suggestions?

You like Medeski Martin and Wood? They are great.

I play bass in the school jazz band. Lots of fun but i dont if the stuff we play is old classic or new cheesy stuff.

i played on the top jazz band my first couple of years and we played all sorts of weird avant guarde stuff that was pretty sweet and the family guy theme. but anyways, check out bad plus. great pop jazz band that's quite interesting

I agree....check out Bad Plus.

how about john zorn's stuff?
mats gustafsson
derek bailey, who recently passed away
peter brötzmann

can't think of more right now

http://www.bridgetkearney.com/13286.html

this is a girl who went to my high school. i would check out the sax attack cover of the violent femmes. sax attack won the best high school jazz group of the year and the sax player won a grammy the next year. it's all great stuff

and after that shameless promotion my favorite contemporary jazzers:soulive, critters buggin, sex mob, kenny garret, delfeayo marsalis,

Soulive.....those guys are pretty tight.

that's one the bands i'm most excited to see at bonnaroo. they bring the house down

Try "Five Corners Quintet" if you can dig that sort of thing. They're most definitely contemporary.

Also, try anything off the ECM label. It's a very esoteric label, but if you like one recording off it, then you've probably just found heaven.

I'm a fan of saxophonist and composer Chris Potter (http://www.chrispottermusic.com/).

He says
“My aesthetic is based in Bird and Lester Young and Sonny [Rollins]. I want my music to have that emotional impact. What I learned from them in terms of phrasing, sound, approach to rhythm will never be outdated. I would like to basically use the same aesthetic sensibility with more contemporary harmonic and rhythmic concepts, being influenced by classical, world music, funk, rock, rap, country, whatever...digesting new ideas, new influences to keep the freshness alive.”

Sweet, thank you. You know, song suggestions would also be helpful, seeing as I'm stuck with dial-up and need to choose what I download wisely.

I saw a documentary at 3 in the morning last summer focusing on contemporary jazz. There was an amazing american band on there that i wish i'd writen the name down of. I think they had drums, piano and sax and played really dirty sounding punky music, kind of like morphine only 50 times faster, sound familiar to anyone? think they might have been from nyc

soweto kinch can be quite good but sometimes the jazz hip hop hybrid doesnt quite work

MMW
soulive
michael wolff & impure thoughts (includes badal roy, miles davis' tabla player & the drummer from the headhunters)

drummer from headhunters? a definate for me

Perhaps Sex Mob?

yeah chris potters pretty good. his cd vertigo is my favorite with kurt rosenwinkel on guitar. rosenwinkel is really good too. for his "out" stuff check a group called human feel. on his cd the next step he completely retuned his guitar so he could get out of the constraints of all the theory in his fingers and hands.

piano player jason moran is really great. his drummer nasheet waits is my all time favorite drummer these days. elvin jones' extension in some ways. his cd black stars with the t sax player sam rivers who is around 78 and still blows his guts out is really good.

check out some nels cline for really good sonic youth inspired jazz noise improv rock stuff. guitar player extaorinaire yes.

matt

sex mob has a slide trumpet, not a sax

check out
"the Thing"

thanks silverfreepress, i'll give them a try

it might have been a trumpet i can't remember that well it was nearly a year ago, so fingers crossed

cold bleak heat
corsano/flaherty

Ray Brown died a couple of years ago, but he was stil doing nice (albeit mainstream) stuff.

it wasn't sex mob, but i liked them a lot anyway. The band i'm looking for was more aggressive sounding, almost thrash jazz if you could call it that

Bugge Wesseltoft is a very interesting jazz/electronic keyboardist. His New Conception of Jazz band have done some fine stuff, especially the LP Film'ing

i second the suggestions for mats gustaffson, peter brotzmann, paul flaherty & chris corsano & cold bleak heat. i also suggest tracking down recordings by the graveyards (sometimes called burning graveyards, when joined by spencer yeh). they're an amazing free jazz group featuring john from wolf eyes (not a noise thing, all post -Ayler free inzanity..)
cheers, wc

I applaud The Bad Plus & Soweto Kinch mentions, because those are good responses.
they are both too "fusion" for my tastes, but still better than most contemporary jazz out there.

The Frank & Joe Show features some blazing jazz guitar. To a lesser extent, so does Mark Elf. Kurt Rosenwinkel was also aptly mentioned. Usually Larry & Brad play on his albums & it's swingin' straight-ahead stuff with just some hints of fusion.

There really is only one answer to the topic poster's question though. The decidedly non-swingin' but completely exciting

Brad Mehldau Trio.

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint have something coming out soon.
Zaar just released some hurdy-gurdy infected jazz rock.

i saw the SF jazz collective last night. they're a bunch of famous jazz musicianss/composers (joshua redman, nicholas payton, bobby hutcherson) who get together once a year to write new stuff and play music of an influential jazz artist. this year they did herbie hancock. it was really cool, payton's composition was really wild, i guess you could call it math-jazz. they're really good- the drummer was amazing.