James Farm, the self-titled debut album from the collaborative band featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland, has made NPR Music's list of the ten Best Jazz Albums of 2011. "All contribute songs to the group's repertoire, and in doing so, they've clearly soaked up grooves and chord progressions from today's pop music without ever forcing the issue," says NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon. "Then they worked out these textures and tunes on the road for a while before pressing record. The harvest feels unlike an all-star collective, and more like a homegrown band."
James Farm, the self-titled debut album from the collaborative band featuring saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland, released this spring on Nonesuch Records, has made NPR Music's list of the ten Best Jazz Albums of 2011. The album uses traditional acoustic jazz quartet instrumentation for its song-based approach to jazz and incorporates the members’ myriad influences: rock, soul, folk, classical, electronica.
Patrick Jarenwattananon, of the NPR Jazz blog A Blog Supreme, notes James Farm for being among those albums with "original visions of composition," through which the writer/performers in the group "search for new ways to express beauty."
Though they're not farmers, Redman, Parks, Penman, and Harland have, as James Farm, "recorded a disc which somehow feels organic and earthy," writes Jarenwattananon. "All contribute songs to the group's repertoire, and in doing so, they've clearly soaked up grooves and chord progressions from today's pop music without ever forcing the issue. Then they worked out these textures and tunes on the road for a while before pressing record. The harvest feels unlike an all-star collective, and more like a homegrown band."
Read more and hear clips from the Best Jazz Albums of 2011 according to NPR Music at npr.org.
To pick up a copy of James Farm, head to the Nonesuch Store, where all CDs are 34% off SRP for the store's fourth-anniversary sale. CD orders of James Farm also include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.
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