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- Benny Goodman – The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings. Small-group swing is one of the best sounds in jazz in my book, much more listenable today than most big-band music from the same era. The sound that Goodman’s quartet with Teddy Wilson on piano and Lionel Hamptom on vibes generates is just lovely.
- Kitsos Harisiadis – Lament in a Deep Style 1929-1931. I discovered this recording thanks to Andrew Katzenstein’s fascinating article in the New York Review of Books on the music produced in Epirus in the 1920s and 1930s. Harisiadis is a clarinetist and near-contemporary of Goodman but his sound ventures into territory jazz would not explore until the 1960s.
- John Coltrane – Both Directions At Once. This will probably outsell any jazz recording by a living musician, so I don’t need to give it more publicity. But who could pass up more recordings from the Coltrane quarter’s classic period? While it did not surprise me, I certainly enjoyed this, especially the untitled original compositions.
- Herbie Hancock – Sextant. Another one of those records I just didn’t hear right the first time: the goofy cover and synthesizer bleeps were apparently not serious enough for this young jazz fan. But with this passage of time, I find I do really like it: an excellent extension of the moody, complex Bitches Brew sound.
- Ergo – If Not Inertia. The prepared piano pieces of John Cage are some of my favorite music outside the jazz idiom, mostly because of the lovely spooky sound. So I really enjoyed the incorporation of the prepared piano, along with electronics and other noises, into a more jazz-like context on this recording.
The Tangled Woof 
Andrew, what a nice surprise that you like Harisiadis. My first wife was from Epirus, and his music is “second home” yours, dieter