2020 in jazz

This is a timeline documenting events of jazz in the year 2020.

2020 in jazz
Decade	2020s in jazz
Music	2020 in music
Standards	List of jazz standards
See also	2019 in jazz – 2021 in jazz

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Events

January

February

March

April

May

• May 6 – Gregory Porter's brother Lloyd dies of COVID-19, two months after the singer is forced to interrupt his world tour by the pandemic.^[1]

June

• June 26 - Immanuel Wilkins signs with Blue Note Records^[2]

July

August

• August 6-8 – The Newport Jazz Festival is replaced by a programme of virtual events created by founder George Wein.^[3]

September

October

November

December

Albums

Month	Day	Album	Artist	Label	Notes	Ref.
January	17	Is That So?	John McLaughlin (musician), Shankar Mahadevan, Zakir Hussain (musician)	Abstract Logix		[4]
February	14	Life Goes On	Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow	ECM Records		[5][6][7][8]
	21	From This Place	Pat Metheny	Nonesuch Records		[9]
March	20	Elegant Traveller	Jocelyn Gould			[10]
		Rejoice	Hugh Masekela and Tony Allen	World Circuit	Masekela died in 2018[11]	[12]
	27	Big Vicious	Avishai Cohen (trumpeter)	ECM Records		[13]
		Pursuance : The Coltranes	Lakecia Benjamin	Ropeadope Records		[14]
April	10	Iron Starlet	Connie Han	Mack Avenue Records		[15][16]
June	12	Angels Around	Kurt Rosenwinkel			[17]
	20	Swallow Tales	John Scofield and Steve Swallow	ECM Records		[18]
July	10	RoundAgain	Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade	Nonesuch		[19]
August	7	Just Coolin'	Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers	Blue Note Records	recorded in 1959.	[20]
	14	Omega	Immanuel Wilkins			[21]
	21	Source	Nubya Garcia	Concord		[22][23]
	28	The Call Within	Tigran Hamasyan	Nonesuch		[24]
		Axiom	Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah	Ropeadope Records		[25]
September	11	Artemis	Artemis (Renee Rosnes, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Anat Cohen, Melissa Aldana, Ingrid Jensen, Noriko Ueda, Allison Miller)	Blue Note Records		[26]
October	30	Artlessly Falling	Mary Halvorson's Code Girl			[27]

Deaths

• January 10 – Wolfgang Dauner, 84, German jazz pianist^[28]
• February 10 – Lyle Mays, 66, American jazz fusion keyboardist (Pat Metheny Group)^[29]
• February 16 – Graeme Allwright, 93, New Zealand-French folk and jazz singer-songwriter^[30]
• February 18 – Jon Christensen, 76m Norwegian jazz drummer^[31]
• March 2 – Susan Weinert, 54, German jazz fusion guitarist (cancer)^[32]
• March 6 – McCoy Tyner, 81, American jazz pianist^[33]
• March 10 – Marcelo Peralta, 59, Argentine jazz saxophonist (COVID-19)^[34]
• April 1 - Ellis Marsalis, Jr., 85, American jazz pianist and educator
• April 15 - Lee Konitz, 92, American jazz saxophonist
• October 17 – Toshinori Kondo, 71, Japanese jazz and jazz fusion trumpeter^[35]
• October 31 – Marc Fosset, 71, French jazz guitarist^[36]
• November 1 – Pedro Iturralde, 91, Spanish jazz saxophonist^[37]
• November 7 – Cándido Camero, 99, Cuban jazz percussionist^[38]
• November 11 – Andrew White, 78, American jazz saxophonist^[39]
• November 26 – Allan Botschinsky, 80, Danish jazz trumpeter^[40]
• December 30 – Eugene Wright, 97, American jazz bassist (Dave Brubeck Quartet)^[41]

See also

• Jazz portal

• List of 2020 albums
• List of jazz festivals
• List of years in jazz
• 2020s in jazz
• 2020 in music