The best of the music I listened to for the first time this year, listed in order of release date. Overall a pretty amazing year for music, both in new releases and older discoveries.

• Exploding Star Orchestra – Lightning Dreamers (2023). Rob Mazurek’s big band has been exploring the outer reaches of jazz, composition and spacey grooves for almost two decades now, creating an extraordinary body of work. The new album is great, pushing further into new territory with a more focused and studio-oriented approach.
• Natural Information Society – Since Time Is Gravity (2023). Joshua Abrams’ minimalism-jazz-trance-world ensemble has created one of the most distinctive sounds in contemporary music. A new record from them is a major event, at least in my musical world, and this one, featuring Chicago tenor legend Ari Brown, is awesome.
• Buddy Guy – Damn Right Farewell Tour (2023). At the age of 87, Guy delivered one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever seen: a seamless stream of storytelling, blues history and impossibly noisy guitar. It was simultaneously avant-garde and traditional in a way I can only compare to the Sun Ra Arkestra, who I had just seen two weeks prior.
• James Brandon Lewis – For Mahalia, With Love (2023). The energetic young saxophonist delivers a perfectly judged synthesis of old and new: the simple, powerful gospel themes make for compelling improvisations from his modernist group.
• Tyshawn Sorey – The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism (2022). An epic live recording from drummer-composer Sorey’s piano trio, along with jazz elder Greg Osby, playing extended takes on standards and modern jazz classics. Absolutely fresh and in the moment.
• Jeff Parker – Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy (2022). Long, pulsing pieces that are exploratory without ever letting go of the beat. A similar vibe from a similar group, also featuring guitarist Parker and bassist Anna Butterss, is on this year’s record by Daniel Villareal, Lados B.
• Nina Simone – The Montreux Years (2021). The centerpiece of this reissue package is a complete 1968 concert by Nina at the height of her powers; better than any best-of compilation, it shows just how her unmatched voice forged a singular style from diverse material.
• Marc Ribot – Plays Solo Guitar Works of Frantz Casseus (2021). The self-described noise guitarist plays these classical guitar pieces straight, in support of his teacher Casseus’ ambition to make a distinctive Haitian contribution to the repertoire. They are lovely, rhythmic miniatures.
• Kuniko Kato – J.S. Bach: Solo Works For Marimba (2017). I love Bach, and I love the marimba, so I thought I would probably like Bach played on marimba. I was right! An absolutely gorgeous sound.
• Fretwork – Purcell: The Complete Fantazias (2009). Marvelous Baroque counterpoint played by an all-viol ensemble. I know little of Purcell, but the comparisons of this long-neglected chamber music, from 1680, to some of Bach’s abstract masterpieces seem apt to me.
• Darondo – Let My People Go (2006). A compilation of obscure but wonderfully soulful early 70s funk, from a mysterious figure who recorded little and later vanished from view. He gets close to the exalted level of Al Green, or Sly Stone’s solo records.
• The Temptations – Psychedelic Soul (2003). A great overview of the male vocal group’s 1968-1973 collaborations with Barnett Strong and Norman Whitfield: extraordinarily creative and sublimely funky.
• Augustus Pablo – El Rockers (2000). Pablo was given top billing on what is generally considered the single best dub reggae album, King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown. This is one of two excellent compilations of more spaced-out instrumentals from that period; the other is the earlier In Fine Style.
• Joe Lovano – Trio Fascination (1998). A late-period classic of the sax-bass-drums trio, featuring jazz elders Dave Holland on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The follow-up Flights of Fancy, with an assortment of different trios, is also worthwhile.
• King Sunny Adé – Synchro System/Aura (1984). These two albums, re-released together, can be seen as the final installment of a trilogy of masterpieces of Nigerian juju, after the early compilation The Best Of The Classic Years and the crossover hit Juju Music. For me, they’re all essential.
• Old And New Dreams – Old And New Dreams (1979). In an apparent bid to confuse future search technology, the group Old And New Dreams, made of Ornette Coleman’s old bandmates, recorded not one but two albums called Old And New Dreams. Both are great but I had previously missed this one, on ECM, in the confusion; it has what is perhaps the definitive version of Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.”
• Tony Allen – No Discrimination (1979). After working with Fela Kuti to create the Afrobeat sound, drummer extraordinaire Tony Allen went his own way toward the end of the 1970s, recording a series of solo albums; this is my favorite of the bunch.
• Stanley Turrentine – Dearly Beloved (1961). A certified soul-jazz classic. The big-toned tenor player recorded this album not long after his marriage to organist Shirley Scott, and they are definitely in sync here.

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