Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your A to Z form of musical analysis and cultural criticism.

I'm your host Ben Ratliff. Oh, And today for the first pop cast of 2016, we're going to do the last exercise in looking back at 2015.

And we're going to talk about the year in jazz. And with us today is Nate Chinan. Hey Nate

happy new year Ben to you too. There's a couple of ways to talk about what

happened in 2015 in jazz there's the obvious what did people

there's the obvious critically way of what were

aesthetically great records that there was a consensus around

but then there's what did people actually notice who weren't specifically

looking for it.

You mean it's not total overlap?

Yeah, no, it's not total overlap.

In fact, fascinatingly, it's not total overlap. In fact, fascinatingly, it's not total overlap. But let's start with the

great records that we noticed and a lot of our colleagues noticed too. One of them was Rudhreshmahatopah's bird calls. Very, very good record.

This record is interestingly a repertory album. It's based on Charlie Parker, but it's like no other Charlie Parker related

record that I've ever heard.

Yeah, it's almost as if the Charlie Parker material functions on a kind of, you know, cellular level and it's been reconstituted so radically that you only really can see it with special instruments. But you know at heart this is a

showcase for a really really solid band and an interesting band one that

introduces one new voice in the trumpeter Adam O'Farrell.

Yeah.

I think he was 20 at the time that he made this record.

It also has a killer rhythm section with Matt Mitchell on piano,

Rudy Royston on drums, and Francois Mouton on bass. And this band is just slashing and brilliant and can get superheated, can get very kind of cool and chill.

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