"Giant Steps" in Jazz Evolution

At the end of the last episode of the Ken Burns Jazz documentary (which was terribly vague compared to the rest of the documentary in which they tried to cram 30-40 years of history into one episode) they mention that no significant advancements have really been made in jazz to push jazz into a new era. They included that possibly some young musician may stand up and lead the genre forward into this new era some day with other musicians in their wake of influence.

Now, this documentary is around ten years old and I've really just started settling myself in listening to the greats of the 50's and 60's so my knowledge of modern jazz musicians is rather limited.

So the question is, do any of you know of a(ny) jazz musician(s) in the past ten years who have made significant contributions to the evolution of jazz? For example, if a historian 30 years from now were to study jazz history of the 2000s they would point to this person and say "They did it, jazz took a step forward in history because of them" like the way we look at Miles Davis in his influence on cool jazz and fusion.

A good example of something new and non-trendy in jazz that will hold up over time is Kenny Werner's "Lawn Chair Society".

Yeah, I suppose it could be as a result of the direction society is going. For example, there are less "original" movies now than 10, 20, or 30 years ago. In order to get as much money as possible, movie makers go for what people are familiar with, sequels, superheroes, transformers, star trek, or book/play adaptations for example and the people being original don't get as much publicity. I tend to suspect the same thing is happening in music.

I was thinking back to the late 80s when it looked like Henry Threadgill was going to lead the way to a new jazz that combined the past and the new. He released a series of albums that stood out from the fuzak, smooth jazz and traditionalists of the time, but then he seemed to fade from view after a while, I'm not sure why, my own interests at the time had switched to jazz being created by folks with samplers and turntables. A fun innovation in itself that hit a dead end after a while for most.

I do not know all of jazz for the past 10 years. However, of course I always check information and a sample. For example, I do not know whether Nu Jazz is recognized as really next-generation jazz. Of course it is different from the mixture, but feels that in late years music in itself may be saturation to some extent.

It was existence of Bill Stewart to have felt me to be purely. As for him, all performances were innovative in jazz. I thought that there was not a next-generation drum hero about jazz anymore. However, Bill Stewart did it. Of course even in Brian Blade.

 

I like Ken Burns "JAZZ" documentary except for that last episode. Besides the fact that they try to cram 40+ years of jazz history in one episode, the producers are very biased on their views of jazz, at least post-67 jazz. The documentary makes it seem like jazz died when Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington died.

Ken Burns is notorious for his bias towards oldschool jazz (he spends, what, half that documentary on the 30s?). I wouldn't take anything his documentary says about the more recent stuff seriously.