I've found myself listening to steadily more and more jazz lately (blame it on old age, I guess), and have decided to start another weekly feature to accompany my Sunday Soul posts, tentatively titled the Jazz Brunch Jam. And while I've always enjoyed listening to it, its form and complexity are beyond my feeble words of expression, so much like Sunday Soul, you'll get some killer compositions, with little of my ramblings to muck it all up.
Some of what I'll share is classic, you know, from cats like Miles, Bird, Dizzy (and the majestic Ella, pictured above). Some will be new, modern, acid-jazz. Whatever. Jazz as an art form (if you can even come to a consensus of the definition of jazz) has always walked the line between being avant-garde and commercialized. I'm not here to enter that debate, and all I'll promise you is that you won't see any Kenny G here. I think Bill Evans put it best when he said, "it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling."
That being said, the first track I'll share with you is one from a duo of Danes who call themselves Povo (which means "people"in Portugese) that just dropped this summer on a 12" they put out named City Blues, on a label which specializes in Scandinavian jazz, Ricky-Tick Records. It's definitely a modern take, with an almost looping interplay between piano and trumpet with a funky line that hooks you in. As a bonus, I've included a track from their debut album (We Are Povo, which came out back in 2005) titled Good & Bad, which hits the debate over the definition of jazz head on and really straddles the line between jazz and electronica.
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