Best Jazz Albums of 2002.(Critical Essay)

What keeps a song in a jazz musician's heart these days is anyone's guess. The past few years have seen the major labels all but turn their backs on the genre: the high-profile buzz of Ken Burns's 2001 documentary never translated into solid sales increases, nor has the hunger for all things American spread to our own classical music. Yet jazz has weathered slumps before (older players still remember the pop-infested sixties and seventies with a shudder). For the most stolid of contemporary jazzmen and women, judging from some of the finer recordings released this year, solace seems to reside in the bedrock of melody.

Lynne Arriale, "Inspiration" (TCB)--The pianist Arriale, who forthrightly titled a 1999 album "Melody," knows the value of something that's too often overlooked by improvisation-worshipping jazz fans: a great tune. This lyrical player and her sharp-eared trio embrace the songcraft that links Keith Jarrett's "So Tender" to Burt Bacharach's "A House Is Not a Home," and Abdullah Ibrahim's "Mountain of the Night" to Lennon and McCartney's "Blackbird."

Tony Bennett & K. D. Lang, "A Wonderful World" (Columbia)--Bennett and Lang pay tribute to Louis Armstrong through his more commercially successful songs. It takes artistry to pull something like this off, and both the venerable crooner and the younger eclectic have it in spades. Neither are jazz vocalists per se, but through the Master they find their own inner swing.

Dee Dee Bridgewater, "This Is New" (Verve)--There's life in the jazz concept album yet. The veteran singer (a Tony winner who still remains frustratingly off the wider radar) brings new lustre to ...