Slate and Nate Chinen Put Mary Halvorson At The Top

Mary Halvorson‘s About Ghosts is Slate Magazine’s Top Jazz album of the year. Fred Kaplan writes, “in recent years, Halvorson has figured out how to lace her ideas with structure, and About Ghosts, in that sense, is a triumph, marking her stature as a truly original musician, bandleader, and composer—a master in a style of her own invention. Her bandmates are top notch and clued in, their interplay is clairvoyant, and the music overall is a head-spinner. More than that, it’s fun.” Read more here.

Halvorson also tops the list at Nate Chinen’s Substack. Chinen writes, “There’s never been reason to doubt Halvorson’s far-seeing and intrepid instinct as a composer. But the latest album by her working band Amaryllis… sets an imposing new bar for whip-smart orchestration with roguish tendencies.” See his list here.