BURSTA Mercury prize winner, a host of fresh collaborations and a posthumous release of a much-lauded live performance are all among the year’s standouts
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The South Korean former pop singer and jazz composer Jihye Lee woke up the wider jazz world with a daring and sophisticated debut, 2021’s Daring Mind. This superb successor invites contemporary trumpet maestro Ambrose Akinmusire to add his own magic, as Lee mingles the traditional life story of her grandmother with her own more liberated one. Korean rhythms (played by Snarky Puppy drummer Keita Ogawa) shift to fast moving jazz; Born in 1935 lets Gil Evans-like chords unleash Maria Schneider alto-sax stalwart Dave Pietro, and Akinmusire’s vaulting solo on the ghostly You Are My Universe is exquisite.
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