Music Monday: Big Bands and Shamanism

Today is the last day of my winter research leave and the eve of the first day of the new semester. It makes sense then to look backward (a bit) and forward in a mystical way.

I was pleasantly surprised to see two big band albums kicking around on various “best of 2025” lists and I have enjoyed both of them. 

The first is Tom Smith’s A Year in the Life. I don’t know much about Smith other than he’s a saxophone player, but the band is tight and particularly benefits from Jamie McCredie’s guitar playing. One review notes that at times, the band has a Thad Jones/Mel Lewis sound to it and I agree. But it isn’t just a throwback to the late-1960s big band sound. It has a vibe of its own and leans into contemporary jazz enough to encourage me to listen to it more than once! 

The other big band album that I’ve seen kicking around on lists is Interaction: 3 Cohens & WDR Big Band. The WDR Big Band is a German big band out of Cologne. I’ve listened to them from time to time, but they’re not really in my regular rotation. This album might just change that. The blend of traditional jazz styles (including rags!) and modern sensibilities is really nice. The band isn’t trying to reproduce some kind of vintage sound and plays with polished and contemporary sensibilities. The star of the show for me, though, is Anat Cohen’s clarinet. 

I’ll leave you with a couple more cuts from the album to give you a sense of its range:

Lest you think I’ve totally succumbed to the vigorous complexity of large ensemble jazz, I do still listen to edgier small ensemble improvised music. For example, I was enthralled by Berlin-based, Korean sax player Jung-jae Kim’s Shamanism. As with most improvised music, it is perhaps best to get a sense for it live:

Hearing the album, I recalled Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, and Joe Morris’s album of the same name (on one of my favorite labels Chad Fowler’s Mahakala Music).