20 Tracks that Moved Me in 2020

There need be no more words uttered on the challenges of 2020, but MAN was there a lot of great music that came out. I agonized over all that I left out (I kept a running list this year and there were literally over a hundred things on the list of records I really dug) and here’s what I came up with.

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Top 10 Favorite Stanley Cowell tracks

Yesterday, a couple hours before I heard about the passing of jazz giant Stanley Cowell, Kate was doing ordering some supplies for Wesleyan’s Art Department and I saw the piece of paper full of hyper-specific color names – indigo blue, poppy red, royal blue, and so on. As I think about Prof. Cowell’s legacy as a pianist, composer, and conceptualist, it is like that. He may not have invented “blue” or “green,” but you can be sure that there is a shade that is uniquely and identifiably his and so much jazz of the last 50-plus years has been enriched by that indirectly and directly.

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