Jazz music of the Aughts

In thinking about my follow-up to The New Jazz Standards, I've been trying to establish a criteria for evaluating music and establishing rules (for lack of a better term) to apply to modern music as "standards". Today, I read this short article about jazz in the "Aughts" (Noughts? Noughties?) written by JazzHouston co-creator and administrator, Andrew Lienhard. He offers some wonderfully simple and well-stated insights to jazz music of the past decade. Here's a refreshing outlook on jazz music of the past decade:

...there's renewed focus on original music, especially among new artists. Most debut albums were as much a playing debut as they were a program of new compositions. The music is more complex too -- rhythmically, harmonically, arrangements, etc. But that complexity is not a means to an end as it was in the 70's and 80's. It's more of a base than a flavor. And there's much greater cross-pollination between mainstream genres. Hip-Hop entered the music, so did Indie Pop and Electronica. Case in point is the ubiquitous interest in covering modern pop music. Radiohead became the new Rogers & Hart.

I completely agree. Plus, I love lists, so this was a no-brainer to re-post. He's even got a "best of Houston" list!