Brad Turner - It's All So Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Post Bop, Contemporary Jazz
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I love this album. On the surface, it's straight ahead mainstream post bop/contemporary jazz; nothing particularly groundbreaking jumps out. Yet, it all sounds quite fresh and unique. You can dissect it all day, trying to find the elements that make it special, trying to pin down why it tickles the ear so, and come up completely dry. Such is the magic of inspiration and its expression through music. I'm done dissecting and now I'm just listening.... and enjoying!
Johanna Linnea Jakobsson - Don't Overthink It Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Post Bop, Contemporary Jazz
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Danish born, Sweden dwelling saxophonist/composer/singer Johanna Linnea Jakobsson delivers an album that occasionally veers towards jazz, but is mostly of the folky singer/songwriter variety. In fact, with her soft mezzo-soprano with an occasional warble, one could understandably mistake moments of this album as excepted from some collection of lost Joni Mitchell tunes. There's a little too much pathos in the album for me to really love it, but these are nice songs, sweetly delivered.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland / Larry Grenadier - First Meeting: Live at Dizzy's Club Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Post Bop
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What a contrast in listens today!
I just posted my impressions of a new prog album in my prog diary in which the music had all the bits I love but they didn't lash together well, leaving the listening experience shy of what I'd hoped.
Total reversal here.
Individual bits of these performances seem good, but sometimes less than totally interesting, sometimes random, and not at all like the foundation for a top shelf modern jazz album. But each of these six long pieces is far greater than the sum of their parts. These aren't just random bits, but all building blocks that point to and complete a rather astonishing whole. More than often, as a song reached it's climax or resolution, I literally wanted to stand up, clap like mad, and hoot and holler like I was at the best concert I'd ever been to. These climaxes and resolutions are musically triumphant! So while the bits didn't wow me, the overall effect was nothing less than astonishing. How ironic that all this improvisation adds up to compositional genius! I'm calling this one of my favorite jazz albums of 2025.
Laura Jurd - Rites & Revelations Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Modern Creative, Jazz-Folk
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This is a rather hot set of either folk influenced jazz or jazz infused folk. Whichever way you want to categorize it, the blend of original folk style compositions with improvisation is both unique and captivating. Trumpet isn't the first instrument I think of when I think of international folk, but Jurd makes it work spectacularly. There is tremendous power in these songs and it's easy to be blown away at times, and I mean that in a very good way, Highly recommended.
Dave Douglas - Alloy Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Post Bop, Avant Garde
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I was a fan of Dave Douglas from the first time I heard him. Here, he teams up with two other trumpeters to provide layers, harmonies, and counterpoint all in beautiful brass. Traditionally, my favorite Douglas works have been mainstream post bop with lots of clear melody; this recording is more avant garde and requires a little adjustment to my Douglas ear, but it is definitely worth it. The impressive thing is how appropriately restrained the trumpets are. A single trumpet, with its tone and forceful projection, can dominate and overwhelm, so it seems three of them in a small ensemble is a recipe for so much brassy noise. But none of the three seems to have the need to go big, and it works exceptionally well as they all support each other while giving the rhythm section plenty of space to breathe. An impressive recording for sure.
Wayne Horvitz - Music for 10 Musicians Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Third Stream, Avant Garde
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This brand new bit of genre defying minimalism lies more toward the classical end of the third stream spectrum with the jazz part being solidly in the chamber jazz vein. While there may be 10 musicians, only a few are active most of the time; This is largely sparse, and quiet music, never really raising its voice above piano. The album is repetitious in a constructive sense, placing 10 similarly laid out movements between an introduction and a finale. However, it is not repetitious in the more standard way of minimalism of placing a simple, repetitive motif under the sparse melody. So in the end, this is its own breed of minimalism, not fully classical, not fully jazz, sometimes experimental, and most of the time intriguing to my ear.
Marie Mørck - My One and Only Love Year: 2025
Style or Subgenre: Vocal Jazz
For my last Saturday Night Vocals of 2025, I sat with Denmark's Marie Mørck for the first time. She has a truly lovely voice, but for me her delivery came across a little superficial. Similarly, her trio hits all the right notes in the right order, but the arrangements and presentation generally seemed plain and rote. A pleasant listen, yes, but still rather unconvincing. Of the six cuts, Look for the Silver Lining is the one that stood out.
I decided to really focus on new music like never before. During the year 2025, I listened to 382 current year albums, mostly jazz and prog. I found these two genres to be not just alive and kicking, but totally kicking butt! I listened to about 180 from each genre, and liked everything I heard, and dearly loved a good chunk of it. With numbers like that, I feel comfortable dropping a top 100 in each genre, all from this year.
An interesting thing about my explorations is that my list is also much more international than usual with only about a third coming from the US or UK. My top 100 (not taking time to split genres) consists of the following entries:
US - 27
UK - 9
Italy - 8
Mixed nationality - 7
Canada - 5
Israel - 5
Germany - 5
Norway - 4
France - 4
Japan - 4
2 each from Brazil, Spain, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, Denmark and Slovakia
1 each from Peru, Romania, South Africa, Greece, Chile, Iceland, Ukraine, and Switzerland
The even bigger trend is how women come to dominate more and more of my favorite jazz albums. This trend has been gradually accelerating for the last decade, but this year it was a full blown explosion! 7 of my top 10 jazz albums of the year are by women, including all of numbers 1-4.
Now it's probably clear that having checked out almost 400 current year albums means I can't be intimately immersed in each and every one. These selections will likely shift a bit as time goes by, but I think it's a pretty good list.
As a note, I will not be doing this again in 2026! This took a lot of time and energy and while it was highly rewarding, I think I'll settle back into a more balanced life in 2026, and change my listening habits to exploring more back catalogs of favored artists, checking out unfamiliar artists of the past, listening to fewer albums in greater depth, and returning more classical to my lineup.
Now here's my prog top 100 albums of 2025:
Top 10 The rest of the Top 20 The rest of the Top 40
The rest of the Top 100
Hiromi's Sonicwonder - Out There
Fabienne Ambuehl - Thrive
Song Yi Jeon Nonet - The Earthy Suites
Ai Kuwabara - Flying!
Nankai Trio - Antarctica
Myra Melford - Splash
Sun-Mi Hong - Fourth Page: Meaning Of A Nest
Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland / Larry Grenadier - First Meeting: Live at Dizzy's
Alison Rayner Quintet - SEMA4
Eyolf Dale - When Shadows Dance
GTO Trio - Within
Horace Silver Quintet - Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse
Sandra-Mae Lux - Sandra-Mae Lux
Ron Magril - Inspired
Steve Dyer - Multipolar
Sasha Berliner - Fantôme
Fabia Mantwill Orchestra - In Sight
Nigel Price Organ Trio - It's On
Michael Wollny Trio - Living Ghosts
Aleph Quintet - Hiwar
Andrea Ferrari - Liquid Walls
Duduka Da Fonseca Trio - Rio Fantasia
Josephine Davies - The Celtic Year Of The Wheel Suite
Julian Shore - Sub Rosa
Petra Onderuf Quartet - An Odd Time of Day
Marilyn Crispell/Thommy Andersson/Michala Østergaard - The Cave
Rolf Thofte Quintet - Martha's Dance
Al Di Meola - Al DiMeola
DigDogDo - Evolution
Judy Wexler - No Wonder
Winther/Anderson/Watts - Steep Steps
Laura Jurd - Rites & Revelations
Yazz Ahmed - A Paradise In The Hold
Sharon Mansur - Trigger
Kaisa's Machine - Moving Parts
Piotr Wojtasik - Inscape
Baptiste Stanek - Basel Smash
Miho - Hazama - Live Life This Day : Celebrating Thad Jones
Jimmy Greene - As We Are Now
Caity Gyorgy - Caity Gyorgy With Strings
Jaleel Shaw - Painter Of The Invisible
Gellért Szabó's Ideal Orchestra - Live at Berghain
Michael Dease - Flow
Florian Arbenz / Michael Arbenz / Ron Carter The Alpine Session
Cassio Vianna - Vida
Jake Baldwin - Vanishing Point
Leo Genovese / Francesco Marcocci / Aleksandar Petrov - Before You Fly
Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Jamie Shew -Spicy, Classy And A Little Sassy
Eric Alexander - Chicago To New York
Emma Rawicz & Gwilym Simcock - Big Visit
Tony Tixier - Poems Never End
Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson - Bone Bells
Maria Manousaki - Behind Closed Doors
Jeremy Pelt - Woven
Nadav - Remez - Summit
Andy Emler - Le Temps Est Parti Pour Rester
Jacob Wutzke - You Better Bet
Steve Sandberg Trio - Live at Soapbox Gallery
Charles Lloyd - Figure in Blue
Rahel Talts - New And Familiar
Hans Luchs - The Spell Is Broken
Becca Wilkins - Rêverie
Tarun Balani - ڪڏهن ملنداسين Kadahin Milandaasin
Rebecca Trescher - Changing Perspectives
Tomoko Omura - Run Run Run
Rasmus Kjær ' Run Run Run
Dave Douglas - Alloy
Artemis - Arboresque
Pymlico - Core
Landæus Trio - Resilience
Emma Smith - Bitter Orange
Simon Spiess - Helio
Linda Dachtyl - Full Speed Ahead
Makiko Hirabayashi Weavers - Gifts
Andrew Moreno - Axiom
Mathias Landæus/Nina De Heney/Kresten Osgood - Dissolving Patterns
Sam Coombes - Time of Life
Gerald Massois - Community Demain À L'aube
NORI - Walking Foot
Greg Abate - Positive Energy
Donna Byrne - Its All About Love
Argyle - Arrival
Daniel Ferruz - Un Presente
Yotam Ben-Or Quartet - Impermanence
Esthesis Quartet - Sound & Fury
Red 123 - New Town
Matt Ulery - Mother Harp
Behn Gillece - Pivot Point
Aaron Parks - By All Means
Liv Andrea Hauge Trio - Døgnville
Vilhelm Bromander Unfolding Orchestra - Jorden Vi Ärvde
Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Plays Mulatu
Sofia Roubati - Reflections
Vincent Meissner Trio - Eigengrau
Charlie Ballantine - East By Midwest
Emma Hedrick - Newcomer
Joe Alterman Featuring Houston Person - Brisket for Brisket
Etienne Manchon Trio - Weird Life
Carl Allen - Tippin'
Karla Harris Merge
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