Happy New Ears Award 2014

Well, on behalf of all reviewers of the Free Jazz Collective, we wish you a very happy and very creative 2015, full of fantastic listening experiences.

The winner of the 2014 Happy New Ears award are Hughues Vincent and Yasumune Morishige with "Fragments" - a dark masterpiece - as the result of a shortlist and then voting contest which proved to be very intense in the last couple of days.

HAPPY NEW EARS AWARD 2014 : "FRAGMENTS" BY HUGUES VINCENT & YASUMUNE MORISHIGE 

The fierce voting contest of the last days brought "Zerfall" by Bogan Ghost (Anthea Caddy and Liz Albee) on the second place, and Marc Ducret's "Tower-Bridge" on a good third spot.

The top-10 list is as follows

1.     Hugues Vincent & Yasumune Morishige - Fragment - 35%

2.     Bogan Ghost - Zerfall - 22% 

3.     Marc Ducret - Tower-Bridge - 10% 

4.     Ken Vandermark - Nine Ways to Build a Bridge - 6% 

5.     Wadada Leo Smith - Great Lakes Suite - 6% 

6.     Steve Lehman Octet - Mise en Abime - 4% 

7.     Akira Sakata - Arashi - 2% 

8.     Jeremiah Cymerman - Pale Horse - 2%

9.     Farmers by Nature - Love and Ghosts - 2% 

10.   Lotte Anker & Jakob Riis - Squid Police - 1% 

Congratulations to the winners with their prestigious award. We look forward to the new listening experiences of 2015! 

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New Ears 2014: Cast your Vote

What another great round of responses! You all have proven once again that your tastes are impeccable, ears are unflappable, and have helped to confirm the observation that it has indeed been another great year for new music!

We had over 150 albums nominated for the New Ears 2014 award and though it wasn't easy to take all of the great suggestions and tease out a select 15 16, but here they are … to the right ... ready for your votes.

You can vote between now and December 31 at midnight, when the winner will be declared and a new year of new music begins. Please remember - this is NOT ABOUT THE BEST ALBUM, but about the MOST INNOVATIVE LISTENING EXPERIENCE.

So as we have said before … “cast your votes, mobilize your fans, persuade the cynics, convince the indifferent, wake up the musical sleepers .... and have fun!”

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Happy New Ears 2014

Greetings everyone!

It's time again for our highly contested yet equally enjoyable HAPPY NEW EARS AWARD for the most innovative listening experience of the year. This is how it works. We present you below a longlist of albums that meet the criteria of having offered a new, novel, creative, innovative approach and perspective to music. This is not necessarily the best album of the year, but it should create a feeling with the listener of hearing something surprising, never heard before, discomforting or comforting in a different way, yet with an attractiveness and fascination that makes you want to hear it again and again.

Here is the currently proposed list from our reviewers:

• Akira Sakata - Arashi
• Alexander Hawkins Ensemble: Step Wide, Step Deep
• Anna Webber - Simple
• Antunes, Wooley and Corsano - Malus 
• Battle Trance - Palace of Wind 
• Bogan Ghost - Zerfall 
• Denman Maroney & Hans Tammen - Arson
• EFT - Spatial Awareness 
• Fennesz - Becs
• Flying Lotus - You're Dead
• Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut - The Music of Everything - BFP 
• Jeremiah Cymerman - Pale Horse 
• Jeremiah Cymerman, Evan Parker, Nate Wooley – World of Objects
• Joe Morris Quartet - Balance 
• John Coltrane - Offering: Live at Temple University
• John Edwards, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury – A Field Perpetually at the Edge of Disorder
• Jorrit Dijkstra - Music for Reeds and Electronics 
• Ken Vandermark - Sound in Motion in Sound
• Ken Vandermark - Nine Ways to Build a Bridge
• Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack - ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire 
• Lotte Anker & Jakob Riis - Squid Police
• Marc Ducret: Tower-Bridge
• Mats Gustafsson NU Ensemble: Hidros 6 - Knockin'
• Michael Francis Duch – Tomba Emmanuelle
• N.E.W - Motion 
• Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble - Intergalactic Beings
• Robin Hayward - Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse
• Steve Lehman Octet - Mise en Abime
• Syrinx Effect - Snail Songs 
• The Rempis/Marhaug Duo - Naancore
• Waclaw Zimpel To Tu Orchestra – Nature Moves

You can add albums for the longlist between now and the end of the week. We - the review team - will then reduce this list to a manageable shorter list. On this list the votes can be cast and we will have the winner by year-end.

Many thanks in advance for the suggestions. (Please note that comments on posts require moderation to deal with the spammers. If you submit suggestions, they may not appear immediately)

- Free Jazz Blog

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