"At the Amoeba Music flagship store in Berkeley, Calif., the 'jazz cigarette' was more popular than jazz itself, with news that the record store would soon replace its jazz room with a marijuana dispensary. Despite such news, 2015 saw jazz reassert itself as the ambitious and protean American music par excellence, its greatest practitioners reaching stunning new heights. Pianists Brad Mehldau and Vijay Iyer, alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams, the unslottable reed player Matana Roberts and the aforementioned Washington released some of the year’s most dynamic music, jazz or not." -- Andy Beta