I’d like to share some best-of the year in music for me, hopefully this might suggest some artists or recordings you missed this year. Please respond with your suggestions in the Comment field, I’d love to hear it!
live gigs:
<> Paul Motian with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano 9/15/07 Village Vanguard, NYC
here’s what I wrote in a previous post:
I recently returned from an overnight to trip to NYC to see Paul Motian at the Vanguard with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. 3 sets of genius. He is a master drummer in the purest sense. He breaks every rule of drumming and fresh mountains of music crack through the earth and scrape the sky. Some say that his playing belies his advanced age (77, I think). I think that ONLY a 77 year old master can play this way.
People will be praising these gigs and this band 20 years from now, and most of them will be lying, because there was only 17 people there for the third set. 
<> Derek Trucks Band, 6.30.07, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto
This was a chance to catch up with some old friends in the DTB, had they not played a note it still would have great just to hang. Between them living on the road and me doing 120+ local dates a year, our paths just don’t cross the way they used to. The fact that they played a transcendent set was icing on the cake.
<> Caetano Veloso, 11.11.07 Massey Hall, Toronto
My first time seeing one of my musical heroes, and what a humbling experience. Here’s an artist who could be resting comfortably on his past work, and show up and crank out the hits and it would be universally praised. He’s that good, that sublime, that individual.
Instead, he shows up with a power trio of players less than half his age, and proceeds to play new, original, alt-rock. Yeah, he played a few hits (Cuccurru Paloma, wonderful.) but for the most part he challenged his devoted audience from the first note to the last. Inspirational.
<> The Drummers of Weather Report, 11.02.07, PASIC, Columbus, OH
This wasn’t a gig per se, but a panel discussion featuring a handful of the world’s greatest musicians, whom also happened to be drummers and/or percussionists in perhaps the only fusion band that ever mattered after the Tony Williams Lifetime: Weather Report.
The warmth, candor, and humour of these gentlemen reminded why it’s OK and probably still cool to be passionate about music and the people who make it. Big laughs, a few tears, and you could really hear the music in the stories they told. 15 minutes after this session Chris Stott and I ran into Omar Hakim across the street at a market; we were both a little dumbstruck. I’m pretty sure I offered Omar the keys to my car. 
I didn’t have the guts to ask him about his Anita Baker track (Giving You The Best That I Got), one of my favourite studio drumming moments of all time.
CDs, DVDs, downloads (in no particular order):
Kip Hanrahan – Beautiful Scars
The Bad Plus – Prog
Bjork – Volta
Wayne Krantz -Your Basic Live ‘06
Anat Fort – A Long Story
Chris Potter Underground – Follow the Red Line
Kate McGarry – The Target
Alicia Keys – As I Am
Bill McHenry – Roses
Dave Barnes – Chasing Mississippi
Kurt Elling – Nightmoves
Herbie Hancock – The Joni Letters
Jojo Mayer – Secret Weapons For The Modern Drummer (DVD)
And my favourite movies this year (released this year, though I did see a lot on DVD that I missed in years past that I may have liked more): The Fountain, and Superbad.
Of course, the boys and girls @ PAISTE have a slew of new stuff I want to play (Crystal Hats!!!), so 2008 may be a year for some new cymbals.
