Well, somebody had to get this started.
CW is that 2013 was a great year for new music. It certainly was in the genres that I listen to.
These are in no particular order, except for the first two, which stand head and shoulders above everything else I heard this year.
Jason Isbell, "Southeastern." The best singer-songwriter album in years. If I gave out the Grammys, "Elephant" would be song of the year.
The Wayne Shorter Quartet, "Without a Net." Well into his 80s, Wayne is still writing and playing amazing music. Someday, an orchestration of "Pegasus" will be part of the standard symphonic repetoire.
And here are a bunch of others.
Dunedin Consort and Players, John Butt cond., "The Passion According to St. John"
Miles Davis, "The Miles Davis Quintet Live in Europe 1969 (Bootleg Collection vol. 2)'
Robbie Fulks, "Gone Away Backward"
Sarah Jarosz, "Build Me Up from Bones"
Aaron Diehl, "The Bespoke Man's Narrative"
Ashley Monroe, "Like a Rose"
Aoife O'Donovan, "Fossils"
Solas, "Shamrock City"
Fred Hersch & Julian Lage, "Free Flying"
Chris Thile, "Bach Sonatas and Partitas, vol. 1"
Amos Lee, "Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song"
Bill Frisell, "Big Sur"
Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom, "No Morphine, No Lilies"
Ben Goldberg, "Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues"
Pavel Haas Quartet, "Schubert String Quartets"
Quatuor Ebene, "Mendelssohn String Quartets"
Cecile McLorin Salvant, "WomanChild"
Dido, "Girl Who Got Away"
Della Mae, "This World Oft Can Be"
Bryce Dessner and Kronos Quartet, "Aheym"
The National, "Trouble Will Find Me"
Vampire Weekend, "Modern Vampires of the City"
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, "Old Yellow Moon"
Danish National Symphony, Christoph Poppen cond., "Before Heaven, Before Earth: Eichberg Symphonies 1 & 2"
Gretchen Parlato, "Live in NYC"
Hilary Hahn, "In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores"
John Scofield, "Uberjam Deux"
Lage Lund, Will Vinson & Orlando LeFleming, "The OWL Trio"
Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, "Last Night on Earth"
Pat Metheny, "Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels vol. 20"
Rudresh Mahanthappa, "Gamak"
Son Volt, "Honky Tonk"
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Vasily Petrenko cond., "Shostakovich Symphony No. 4"
Tired Pony, "The Ghost of the Mountain"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "New Constellation"
Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet, "Wislawa"
Stefano Bollani & Hamilton de Holanda, "O Que Sera"
