033: My favorite jazz albums of 2025!

Tripping through my favorites of this year’s jazz in chronological order, from the freewheeling avant-garde to the cosmic, experimental, ambient-infused, and pretty much everything else in between.

I can hardly believe this is my fourth year presenting my expanded contribution to the 20th Annual Francis Davis¹ Jazz Critics Poll, but here we are! It’s been a long, weird, and frankly terrible year for many reasons but great art persists, as does my compulsion to share it with all of you. I’m up to 26 albums (six more than last year!), which makes this post way too long for email so please make sure to open it in a new window to see it all. As I always conclude, please buy work that moves you and support musicians directly. ❤️‍🔥

Sun & Rain
Waterfall
1/10, Out Of Your Head Records

Sun & Rain is a quartet consisting of alto, tenor, electric guitar, and drums. This album immediately made an impression and stuck around in my mind all year long. Out Of Your Head Records consistently puts out some of the best contemporary jazz and you will see them two more times on this list.² Sort of a mix of free jazz and post-rock, this is experimental music that often feels tense, but there’s a flow that sweetens the tone without necessarily softening it. “Waterfall II” introduces an almost country drone element, giving the song a cinematic Western vibe, while “Waterfall III” weirdly reminds me of the playfulness Jimmy Giuffre³ sometimes incorporates. Compelling, absorbing music!

Green Cosmos
Abendmusiken
1/24, Frederiksberg Records

In my ambitious, short-lived attempt at weekly posts earlier this year, one of the first was about the reissue of this lovely, mysterious German jazz record from 1983, released by a group composed of saxophonist Michael Boxberger, pianist Benny Düring, and twin rock-music-loving rhythm section Alfred and Uli Franke. You can read more if you like, but here’s the most descriptive bit:

“The twins clearly had some sort of psychic connection as the rhythm section; the songs with kalimba are my favorites. Boxberger’s tone is bright and full with the slightest of edges, and Düring’s piano is pliant yet sharp, just a bit reminiscent of Bill Evans in the Miles Davis Quintet. It’s a wonderful album of two modes and it does both well: spiritual jazz and ice-clinking-in-glass jazz.”

This is also an excuse to sneak in a bonus recommendation: a second Green Cosmos album called Morgenmusiken, subtitled “A Cosmic Jazz Journey Unearthed,” and described as revealing their evolution “toward freer, more meditative soundscapes.”

Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, William Parker
The Ancients
1/31, eremite records

I had the good fortune to see Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few at Detroit Jazz Fest in 2023, easily the highlight of that year’s festival for me. Been following him since then, and so the announcement of this intergenerational trio was an exciting one: two legendary Williams of free jazz (drummer Hooker and bassist Parker) backing the wonderful young saxophonist. The music, recorded live across three different nights in LA and San Francisco back in 2023, delivers on that promise with Collier’s sax piercing and shrieking while simultaneously exuding a measured mellowness, Joe Henderson meets Albert Ayler. When he goes off, Collier flies into the stratosphere. Hold onto your seat and let yourself be engulfed.

Also, I love uncommon credits and Collier has an exceptionally cute one here: little instruments, alongside his sax, the Aztec death whistle and a siren. Parker has a good one, too: the hojǒk, a Korean instrument like an oboe.

James Brandon Lewis Trio
Apple Cores
2/7, ANTI- Record

I guess 2023 was a good live music year for me because that’s also when I saw James Brandon Lewis with the Messthetics at Third Man Records and have been following him ever since. This one is as great as everything else he does, rhythmic grooves and divine melodies set slightly askew, with his core trio joined by another guitar and more percussion on four of the eleven tracks. Lewis’ sax is particularly wonderful on “Prince Eugene” and the Ornette Coleman composition “Broken Shadows,” and there’s a slight Lynchian ambience in the background of “Apple Cores II” that makes the song float when you’re listening on headphones.

Marshall Allen
New Dawn
2/14, Mexican Summer

When I reviewed this one for Uncut, it felt very good to describe this album as “the exquisite results of a life steeped in cosmic jazz.” It’s billed as the solo debut of saxophonist Marshall Allen, the 101-year-old leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra since 1995. Recorded with help from Arkestra members like longtime saxophonist Knoel Scott and guests like Neneh Cherry, New Dawn is a pretty delightful set of songs. There’s the space lounge of “African Sunset,” the crime jazz of “Sonny’s Dance,” and the baroque-infused grooves of “Boma,” with the classic Ra composition “Angels and Demons at Play” to end the album, dubbed out moments sending this music in yet another galactic direction.

Yazz Ahmed
A Paradise in the Hold
2/28, Night Time Stories

I loved this album so much that I reviewed it for Uncut and wrote about it for myself and all of you here, too. Trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer Yazz Ahmed is one of my favorite contemporary musicians and this might be my record of the year, if I were forced to choose one. Her compositions incorporate electronic experimentation alongside the traditional instruments of jazz and are subtly textured, richly imaginative, and incredibly satisfying. You can read more about my thoughts if you click on either link, but I’ll repeat that on what is probably the album’s best song (“Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You”) I was reminded first of an Arabic-infused take on Alice Coltrane’s ashram recordings, then later of Ron Carter’s hypnotic grooves on Ptah, the El Daoud. The other standout for me is the use of bass clarinet; when I asked her about it, she cited Bennie Maupin and mentioned being inspired by electric Miles, like Live-Evil and Bitches Brew. Really excellent!

Peter Brötzmann / John Edwards / Steve Noble / Jason Adasiewicz
The Quartet
3/7, Otoroku

It is humbling to be able to listen to the final performances Peter Brötzmann ever played; he couldn’t sound more alive, as terrific and potent and tenderly brutal as he always was. The four sets captured here at Cafe OTO make for a powerful tribute to the legendary, influential saxophonist. The music is exceedingly urgent, tense and mysterious, the curiosity of Adasiewicz’ vibraphone pressed up against Brötzmann’s exhaustive horn in a searching conversation between like-minded travelers. I think a quote from Brötzmann himself, which he stated at the end of this particular group’s first time at Cafe OTO, provides a better summary than I can: “The Quartet is, for us, a great adventure.”

Adam O’Farrill
For These Streets
3/28, Out Of Your Head Records

Trumpeter and flugelhorn player Adam O'Farrill leads an octet composed of some of the most exciting musicians in contemporary jazz, including three who appear multiple times on this list (vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and drummer Tomas Fuijwara). O’Farrill comes from a lineage of Afro-Cuban jazz greats (his father is the pianist Arturo O'Farrill, whose father was the composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill). The music here is of a different flavor, dazzling avant-garde jazz that draws on Stravinsky’s neoclassical works and the literature of the 1930s, yet not without its ties to O'Farrill’s legacy: my favorite song on the album – “Speeding Blots of Ink” – was inspired by changüí, a style of Cuban music. I like what he told Jazz Times about it: “Several people have come up to me [after gigs] asking if they could see the score, that they can’t tell what time signature it’s in, but it’s all in 4/4. Changüí is so powerful because it’s so groovy but it’s also kind of disorienting at the same time — it shows that you can kind of have both of those things at once.”

William Hooker Reality Trio w/ David Ware & Alan Braufman
Live at the New York Jazz Museum: January 14, 1977
3/28, Valley of Search

An important archival find, the particular show captured here didn’t take place at a loft but the trio were all key figures in the scene. Drummer William Hooker had moved to the city in the mid-1970s and began performing with saxophonists David Murray and David S. Ware, both of whom appear on his 1977 free jazz debut, ...Is Eternal Life. Ware is also part of the trio here, playing tenor to Alan Braufman’s alto. I reviewed this one for Uncut and described the musicians as charismatic in the soul-possessed way of free jazz. The recording is raw, but the music spills over with the creative sensibilities of the fulminating avant-garde zeitgeist.

Something new was happening among these industrial spaces, musicians chasing pure release and following the one true imperative of artistic expression. You hear this immediately upon the album’s first notes, intense horns blaring out a clarion call. The performance is technically one long track, but it’s been separated into movements for the purposes of this release. The divisions work, but it’s not hard to imagine experiencing the live set as one long, undulating storm of unrelenting free jazz. That being said, unexpected moments of grace appear again and again, Trane-esque saxophone lines on “Movement 4” and “Movement 8” occasionally offering a bit of melodic respite. The dual horns are transcendent throughout, forming a latticework of sound suspended above the controlled chaos of Hooker’s drums, whose ensembles rarely feature a bassist due to the fierce nature of his drumming. It’s wonderful to have this music a part of our world now, successful as both an urgent piece of free jazz and document of a deeply influential scene.

Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari
Journey to Nabta Playa
5/2, Spiritmuse Records

Have not heard enough people talking about this ambitious, magnetic record, a collaboration between composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Angel Bat Dawid and interdisciplinary artist Naima Nefertari, granddaughter of Moki and Don Cherry. The spirit of the Cherry family is present even further through the inclusion of both a rare Don composition (“Bishmillah”) and a phenomenal recording of “Burial: String Quartet in E Minor,” a previously unreleased piece by his son and Naima’s uncle, David Ornette. The centerpiece, though, is the 20-minute “Exorcism Clearing the Electromagnetic Field,” which I can only describe as Sun Ra meets Tarkovsky’s Stalker. I also love the dotted-with-birdsong “Heru: The Oasis” and techno-jazz-drone excellence of “Black Stones of Sirius.”

Cole Pulice
Land’s End Eternal
5/9, Leaving Records

I had the pleasure of writing the album bio for this meditative ambient jazz record but I know I would have loved it anyway. I’m so glad I had such a good excuse to spend so much time with its otherworldly beauty, created by electroacoustic saxophonist, improviser, and composer Cole Pulice. Land’s End Eternal is special for a number of reasons but one of them is because it presents their first use of the electric guitar, which is at its most wonderful on the radiant suite of songs called “A Hidden Nook Between Worlds I, II, III.” Another personal favorite of mine is album closer “After the Rain,” brilliant pastoral chamber-jazz that includes saxophone, multiple guitars, brass choir, and voice and was written shortly after the heavy rains of an atmospheric river swept through San Francisco Bay. Incredibly moving!

Joy Guidry
Five Prayers
5/16, Jaid Records

I will follow Joy Guidry anywhere. Here, the bassoonist/composer might just be at her most beautiful yet, five tracks of scintillating experimental ambient jazz that sees her exploring electronic music further, the sudden appearance of an upbeat tempo about halfway through “Myles” transforming starry ambient into a techno jam. I always seem to be drawn to the longest songs on albums and that’s the case here with the 16-minute album closer “I Know You’re Always With Me,” which is effectively a liquid injection of pure ambient pleasure, right into your cortex.

Tomas Fujiwara
Dream Up
6/12, Out Of Your Head Records

Drummer and composer Tomas Fujiwara leads a percussion quartet composed of Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Tim Keiper (donso ngoni, kamale ngoni, calabash, temple blocks, timbale, djembe, castanets, balafon, found objects, and other percussion), and Kaoru Watanabe (o-jimedaiko, uchiwadaiko, shimedaiko, and shinobue [three Japanese drums, one Japanese flute]). Dream Up is a perfect title for this oddly Lynchian music. It is mysterious and gentle, curious and captivating, and an extremely satisfying listen.

Brandee Younger
Gadabout Season
6/13, Impulse!

Brandee Younger’s jazz harp is incredibly lovely; I mean, the music she makes on the instrument but also the literal harp she uses, as she is the inheritor of Alice Coltrane’s harp, and this album was recorded using it! Modern greats like Shabaka Hutchings on clarinet and Josh Johnson on saxophone make guest appearances, while Makaya McCraven backs her on drums and percussion throughout the album. Probably it’s because I read a frigate battle scene in Mason & Dixon right before closely listening to it, but my favorite song is “Breaking Point” because it sounds like it could be a beguiling score to such a scene, the drama of harp strings heavily pulled akin to sails and other ship-board actions. It’s fucking wonderful!

Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, Carlos Niño
Openness Trio
7/11, Blue Note

The songs on this marvelous album were recorded in a variety of beautiful places – to name two, in the hills of Ojai with the Topatopa Mountains in the distance and under a pepper tree at Elsewhere in Topanga Canyon – and you can hear it. “Hawk Dreams” is one of the best album openers I have heard in some time, unsurprising given the heavy creative minds of the crew here: guitarist and producer Nate Mercereau, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and percussionist Carlos Niño. This album is the trio’s debut; it might be my favorite debut of the year. I can’t stop listening to the last two tracks: the elemental, Jon Hassell-esque fantasia of “Chimes in the Garden” and the gorgeous, exploratory, electro-inflected jazz “Elsewhere.”

Scree
August
8/22, Ruination Record Co.

I’ve been in love with the music of Brooklyn-based trio Scree since I first heard their fantastic album Jasmine On A Night In July described as “spiritual lounge” a couple years ago. The ensemble is filled to nine members on August and the atmosphere is pure wonder, welcoming and inviting, otherworldly warmth with just the right touch of edge or darkness to keep you on your toes. I’m particularly fond of the free jazz interlude in the middle of “Zikra,” the sweet melancholy of “Me Me Me,” and the folk-inflected fluttering flutes of “Season 2”!

Pharoah Sanders
Love Is Here - The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings
9/30, Transcendence Sounds

You think you’re never gonna hear anything new from Pharoah Sanders, and then it turns out there’s an archival recording with some of his famous compositions featuring a pipe organ! By 1975, the saxophonist had spent the past decade recording and releasing some of the most vital jazz ever put to tape, both as leader and in the respective ensembles of John and Alice Coltrane. In between his final release for Impulse! (1974’s Satchidananda–esque live album Elevation) and 1977’s Pharoah on independent label India Navigation, he headed to Paris and played the set that was finally released in full on Love Is Here - The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings.

I reviewed this one for Uncut, so I’ll borrow a bit of what I wrote there:

Sanders would explore more commercial avenues in the ‘80s but during this set, he’s not there yet. His most intense free playing is perhaps slightly sanded down but he’s largely fire and grooves, his tremendous saxophone blowing on full display with a tight band backing him up: Danny Mixon on piano and organ, Calvin Hill on double bass, and Greg Bandy on drums. Six tracks compiled from this set were previously released in 2020 as Live in Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings), but this version expands to include the full catalog of what was recorded at the Grand Auditorium that night: eleven tracks in total, preserved with great quality thanks to the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), home of French radio and television archives.

The music performed is a mix of Sanders’ own compositions, both beloved and obscure, as well as several Coltrane standards. The immediate difference between the two releases is much more Mixon; the thunderous track “Improvisation with Pipe Organ” sets a singular tone, sweeping in a gospel influence that returns to close the set with Sanders’ impassioned chanting on “Love Is Everywhere.” Mixon’s contributions are easily the most compelling aspects beyond Sanders’ terrific playing, though Hill and Bandy both contribute dynamic solos, particularly on the Coltrane compositions “Moment’s Notice” and “Lazy Bird.” At his best on “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” Sanders’ free jazz blowing contrasts with the drama of Mixon’s organ to place the saxophonist’s most beloved composition in an entirely different light.

The Necks
Disquiet
10/10, Northern Spy

The Necks are a sensory experience and their latest is as absorbing as ever. I particularly love “Ghost Net,” which has an almost Can-esque, post-punk feel to it, and the dissolving mist proggy organ of "Causeway.” As is always the case with the avant-garde Australian trio’s Odyssean music, the more you're immersed in it, the more wonderful it becomes.

Rafael Toral
Traveling Light
10/24, Drag City

This remarkable album was my introduction to the Portuguese guitarist Rafael Toral, whose backlog of ambient, drone, and experimental music I’ll surely be exploring in the coming year. I don’t care for rankings but I love Traveling Light so much that it’d easily be in my top 3 of the year. You have never heard jazz standards quite like this; in her wonderful review, Vanessa Ague described the album as “a reimagination of jazz standards as drone etudes.” Cannot be better put! In addition to Toral’s guitar and the always-welcome use of a theremin, a tenor saxophone, flugelhorn, and flute provide doses of jazz that give these experimental compositions a moody, noir sensibility. I love this line from the album bio: “In this new landscape, history and tradition are exemplified, like a toast to Earth cultures made on the alien terrain of Mars.” Also, I fell in love with “My Funny Valentine” earlier this year, so it was extra wonderful to hear the Lynchian take on it here!

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio
10/24, Mississippi Records

One of the more soothing selections on my list this year, the Cosmic Tones Research Trio blend spiritual grooves with meditative motorik rhythms to create music that sounds elegiac in the “life is rich and full” way. Instrumentation includes cello, alto sax, piano, flutes, Rhodes, modular synth, and various percussion. Two tracks I love include the transcendent spiritual jazz of “Sankofa” and the evocative brilliance of “Photosynthesis,” ambient sparks in a jazz sea!

Patricia Brennan
Of The Near and Far
10/24, Pyroclastic Records

The vibraphonist Patricia Brennan makes what I like to call Twilight Zone jazz, eerie music with a strange warmth and comfort; this album might just be her best yet. The musical combination is vast: a jazz quintet (piano, bass, drums, guitar, and mallet percussion) paired with a standard string quartet and an electronic musician. The result is effectively prog jazz, for me exemplified by Miles Okazaki’s sick John McLaughlin-esque guitar on “Andromeda,” a song that explodes into an avant-garde dream. The album closes with the perfectly titled “When You Stare Into the Abyss,” those classical strings in contrast with the burbling electronics feeling very much like a fusion of new and old staring directly through time into dimensions unknown.

Yusuf Mumin
Journey to the Ancient
10/31, Wewantsounds

This is a really special album that I haven’t seen people talking about and I don’t know why! Gorgeous spiritual jazz from a former member of Black Unity Trio, whose 1969 album Al Fatihah was possibly the first ever independently released free jazz record and used to be one of those holy grail, once-in-a-lifetime finds, until it was finally reissued a few years ago. This album features previously unreleased music from Mumin’s personal archive; he plays the cello, double bass, tenor, flute, and alto across the four tracks, accompanied only by a drummer (William Holmes). The titular track is the standout, quiet and reflective music that reaches deep inside to hint at cosmic truths.

Ken Vandermark
October Flowers for Joe McPhee
10/31, Audiographic Records

Had the pleasure to see Chicago-based composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist Ken Vandermark perform at Out There opening for Joe McPhee/Paal Nilssen-Love the day before Joe McPhee’s 86th birthday and it was truly wonderful. It would have been wonderful no matter what, but it was extra meaningful to hear this music, compositions and improvisations that are Vandermark’s homage to his friend and mentor of nearly 30 years, with the mentor there in the small audience with us. Vandermark plays a murderer’s row of horns (clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone, and tenor) and wrings an impressive amount of emotion as a soloist, his music as sweetly tuneful as it is formidably cathartic.

Griot Galaxy
Live on WUOM 1979
11/7, Two Rooms Records

Griot Galaxy is my favorite Detroit jazz band of all time, their mind-melding avant-garde Afrofuturist sci-fi jazz proof that all was not lost in the ‘80s. I’ve been lucky enough to write about them twice: a narrative feature for the Detroit Metro Times and the liner notes for Third Man’s reissue of their fantastic record Kins. Their music pushed boundaries with a fearless, fearsome affection for creativity, polyrhythms and odd meters anchored by a serious propensity for rhythm, thanks in no small part to double bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal’s previous experience with Sun Ra, as well as Tabbal’s work with one-time Arkestra trumpeter Phil Cohran.

The band was led by the late saxophonist, composer, and poet Faruq Z. Bey, who suffered a motorcycle accident in 1984 that put him in a coma for a few weeks and effectively ended the band. Bey was able to relearn everything and continued to play music all throughout his life (including on Silver Dragon, a totally fantastic collaboration with His Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever and a crew of Detroit heavy hitters), but we only have a small handful of recorded Griot Galaxy music – and now there’s one more, thanks to one of Detroit’s most vital labels, Two Rooms Records. Described as “nearly lost to history, this double-length release captures an extended radio performance by the seminal group, featuring stunning versions of their classic repertoire circa 1979, in a compact, quartet setting.” The music presented here is absolutely beautiful chaos, just a tremendous release in multiple senses of both words!

Kalia Vandever
Another View
11/14, Northern Spy

You just don’t hear enough trombone in jazz, which is one reason this album, on which Kalia Vandever’s trombone strikes a particularly rich, elegiac tone interlaced with Mary Halvorson’s fractal guitar, delighted me. My favorite track is “Withholding,” a spectral evocation of light and shadow held in place by the locked-in rhythm section of Kayvon Gordon on drums and Kanoa Mendenhall on bass. It’s also the second literature-infused album on my list, inspired in part by Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House. I haven’t read that one yet, but I’m a fan of Machado’s short fiction and I definitely hear the imaginative eeriness of her work in this music.

Kelsey Mines, Erin Rogers
Scratching at the Surface
11/21, Relative Pitch Records

If you love avant-garde and free improv, you need to explore the Relative Pitch Records discography. This album immediately stood out to me for two reasons: I love an aquatic sonic element or theme (Scratching at the Surface goes deep, literally) and I love singular instrument combinations, which in this case are Kelsey Mines’ contrabass and Erin Rogers’ tenor and soprano saxophones. The album bio puts it like this: “Inspired by the sea’s raw energy and quiet beauty, Rogers and Mines craft a mesmerizing soundscape of undulating rhythms, bold textures, and immersive mystery.” I put it like this: they sound like two sea monsters conversing at the bottom of the ocean, free jazz horns absolutely pleading while the contrabass bellows and purrs in response.⁴ Low-end resonant majesty!

Thank you, as always, for reading and following me this year. I love you all. Be well.

Now Reading: Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon; Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai; The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

1. Rest in peace, as he passed away in April of this year. Here’s a really thoughtful obituary written by Nate Chinen. I did not know Francis Davis personally, but contributing to this list has been hugely important to me so I can’t help but feel deeply grateful toward him and sad for the world’s loss.

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3. I wrote about him a bit earlier this year when I was working on a project about ‘50s jazz.

4. I’m reminded of one of my favorite short stories, Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn”:

“The Fog Horn blew.

The monster answered.

I saw it all, I knew it all-the million years of waiting alone, for someone to come back who never came back. The million years of isolation at the bottom of the sea, the insanity of time there, while the skies cleared of reptile-birds, the swamps fried on the continental lands, the sloths and sabre-tooths had there day and sank in tar pits, and men ran like white ants upon the hills.”