My favorite listening experiences this year, both concerts and recordings, listed roughly in order of release date to highlight the newer material. A lot of the recent stuff is in my Bandcamp collection, feel free to browse.

• The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, Live at the Clock-out Lounge (2024). I was lucky enough to catch this combo on the last night of their tour, when they were hot and fully in sync. The energy was extraordinary, drawing on both rock (Brendan Canty and Joe Lally are the best rock rhythm section since the Minutemen) and jazz. The same tunes are on their studio album, but for me it lacked the punch of the live show. I also very much enjoyed two other James Brandon Lewis albums with a more conventional jazz quartet., Transfiguration (2024) and Code of Being (2021).
• Bill Frisell, Breaking the Shell (2024). Over the past decade or so, guitarist Frisell has collaborated with legendary drummer Andrew Cyrille on a series of recordings with shifting personnel but a shared aesthetic of atmospheric improvisation. This project combines them with pipe organist Kit Downes for a unique and spacious sound.
• Exploding Star Orchestra, Live at the Adler Planetarium (2024). A suitably cosmic venue for Rob Mazurek’s mind-expanding big band. The lineup captured at this concert was particularly powerful, driven by two drummers and two keyboardists.
• William Parker, Heart Trio (2024). On bass Parker is a peerless jazz virtuoso, but he periodically puts his main axe down to play an assortment of flutes and strings in a kind of non-specific world music style. This record documents his entrancing occasional trio with pianist Cooper-Moore, here playing homemade instruments, and drummer Hamid Drake.
• Vinnie Sperrazza, Sunday (2024). A programmatic suite from drummer Sperrazza; the focus throughout is on the tunes, played with great sensitivity and clarity by his quartet Apocryphal.
• Mary Halvorson, Cloudward (2024). Halvorson is without question the leading guitar player of her generation, but she may be even more talented as a writer for ensembles. My favorite records of hers are for larger groups, and this session by her new sextet is full of compact, complex arrangements that showcase all the players.
• Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers, Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (2024). A marvelous, meditative session by two revered jazz elders–both are now in their 80s. It’s easy to call such a meeting historic, and it is, but the music is simply beautiful.
• Hu Vibrational, Live at BRIC (2024). Adam Rudolph’s group, consisting of four percussionists and four harmony instruments, played one of the quietest and most fascinating concerts I’ve heard. Their recordings, though, seem to be a quite different vibe.
• Tony Allen, Jazz is Dead 18 (2023). It’s a treat to have this posthumouly released session by the great Nigerian drummer, on the producer Adrian Younge’s Jazz Is Dead label. The music is in the same vein as, and stands up to, Allen’s late-career masterpieces The Source and Tribute to Art Blakey.
• Ned Rothenbeg, Crossings Four (2023). An all-star quartet of New York players delivers a set of complex, moody pieces; Rothenberg’s bass clarinet is a standout.
• Jason Adasiewicz, Roy’s World (2023). The Chicago jazz scene produced an unbelievable string of great music in the 2010s, and continues to do so today. This vibraphone-based quintet of local luminaries recalls classic Blue Note sessions while being absolutely fresh.
• Sylvie Courvoisier – Chimaera (2023). Gorgeous, dreamy work from a band of top-flight improvisers. The music is a tribute to the unclassifiable French artist Odilon Redon, and it feels quite close to the floating clouds of color in his late works. Here’s a nice appreciation by Richard Williams.
• Celestine Ukwu, No Condition Is Permanent (2022). A welcome reissue of one of the legendary recordings of Nigerian highlife from the 1970s. Veterans of the old music-blog scene will recall the great African music blog named after this record.
• Ted Nash – Rauschenberg In Jazz: Nine Details (2022). An undeservedly obscure recording of a 2016 concert in Beijing. The American saxophonist worked with a group of China-based musicians to pull together a suite inspired by the concurrent exhibit of the work of Robert Rauschenberg; it’s exciting and unusual ensemble music.
• Kirk Knuffke – Gravity Without Airs (2022). Moody, exploratory chamber music from an unusual trio. Knuffke’s cornet is alternately breathy and keening, and the great Matthew Shipp on piano and Michael Bisio on bass are constantly inventive.
• Sonny Rollins, Complete Live at the Village Gate 1962 (2015). An important document: six hours of Rollins in a pianoless quartet with Don Cherry. The group is truly experimental, in the sense that the players are obviously working out their concept, and not all of it works. But a lot does, and the highs are very high.
• Beno​î​t Delbecq, Ink (2015). Delbecq’s translation of the prepared piano into the jazz piano-trio tradition is fascinating and atmospheric.
• Jemeel Moondoc, The Zookeeper’s House (2014). One of the last sessions by the largely unheralded saxophonist, a veteran of the 1970s loft-jazz scene; swinging and spiritual.
• Darren Johnston, The Edge of the Forest (2009). Creative arrangements and great interplay from clarinet, trumpet, sax, bass and drums, almost like a modernist version of the old New Orleans three-horn frontline.
• Keletigui et ses Tambourinis, The Syliphone Years (2009). The definitive collection of one of the great West African guitar bands: the long, looping lines are fantastic.
• Bill Dixon, Modus Operandi (2007). The late, legendary avant-garde trumpeter made relatively few recordings, so every one is precious. This little-known session with a Canadian bassist and reed player is not in most discographies.
• Greg Osby, Public (2004). A punchy, inventive live recording, one of a string of great records Osby made in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His The Invisible Hand, with Andrew Hill, is a modern classic, but I’ve found almost everything from this period is very worthwhile.
• Mood – Doom (1997). A one-off masterpiece of atmospheric production and headnodding beats from hip-hop’s golden age.

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