I'm guessing that is the sound you refer to, and yes, there is a certain "posture" to a lot of that music that seems kind of shallow and trendy and borrowed from another time. Still, on the other hand, there are other hard/post bop bands that are not part of that radio friendly sound and are playing good modern jazz, for instance Dave Douglas comes to mind.

Some of the best post bop did happen early in the genre (Bill Evans, Miles'quintet), but you could say the same for bop and fusion and a lot of other genres too. The innovators usually are the best.

Thinking of some big name artists who released CDs over the last year, I bought the new ones by Branford Marsalis and Kenny Garrett, two sax players who can really tear it up if they want to.

Both CDs had good music, but I thought the sound was very bland and it really took away from the quality. I think that same music played live would have been much better.

Thats the problem with a lot of Potter's music too, over-produced and bland sounding. Its a background music sound.

Subtlety can go a long way for me.

 

 

you can hear album in full here:

http://soundcloud.com/dawn-of-midi/dom-final-mix-mp3" rel="nofollow - http://soundcloud.com/dawn-of-midi/dom-final-mix-mp3

You might want to read this site's definition of Post Fusion Contemporary and Post Bop to get an idea of how we deal with these issues. To that I would add that this piece falls right between the two genres and it would be difficult to decide which one it is.

An over simplified definition of the two genres might break down to; Contemporary doesn't swing, but Post Bop does. This piece you posted does not swing overall, but the pianist's note runs do swing, hence the difficulty in applying a tag.

I didn't really dislike this piece, but its not my favorite either. There is a sort of formal modern element to this music, but I wouldn't say that all modern jazz sounds like this.

There is an amazing variety in today's jazz world, and music that swings is still alive and well, although at the same time, people seem to be more and more accepting of jazz that doesn't swing.

Websters Dictionary describes jazz as music that has syncopated rhythm (along with other features), yet many trusted jazz resources are willing to accept new music that has little, or even no syncopation, as jazz. I had a hard time with that when we first started working on this site, but I'm willing to go along with it to a certain extent.

The piece you posted actually has some swing to it, there is other "jazz" music these days that has even less of a swing feel than this one.

Also, this piece has a certain formal feel to it, but less formal than some other music I have heard.

Once again, I thought this piece was okay, but some of this modern jazz that gets so formal sounding and has no syncopation at all is not something I would enjoy listening to.

Still, this piece does represent a big portion of modern jazz, but at the same time, look around, you will still find plenty of jazz that swings, and not just retro artists repeating the past.

Many older artists who started out in the avant-garde as youngsters have re-explored hard swing and the sweaty, gritty, bluesy roots of jazz, artists like Henry Threadgill and Archie Shepp come to mind, but there are plenty more who keep the modern exploration of music that swings alive.

Not only that I am not a musician, I'm also tone deaf, so I leave aside the technical stuff behind the music and try to enjoy the music.What I expect from the music is either to be groovy, to make me want to move my body, or to touch my soul(I mostly prefer the lyrical music). I find the tune you're talking about neither groovy enough, nor touching enough.

Here is a sample of 'modern' jazz that I like