Welcome to our Jazz November 2026 lineup! This is our last regular curation before our big end-of-the-year selection, and it is packed with true legends alongside a handful of fresh talents new to our radar. I hope this music treats you well and helps you discover some incredible new sounds to add to your rotation.

November 2026 – New Jazz Releases Selection

• Keith Jarrett – Roma (ECM)
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo – Kappa Ondo (Libra)
• Noah X Petter – DRIFT (Leiter)
• Matthew Shipp & William Parker Duo – A Whole System Of (TAO Forms)
• Sylvie Courvoisier – Amalthea (Pyroclastic)
• Jakob Bro, Larry Grenadier, Jorge Rossy feat. Charles Lloyd – Bjerge, Strand (Loveland Music)
• Shuteen Erdenebaatar – Bright Folk (Motéma Music)
• Vilhelm Bromander – Aurora II (Warm Winters Ltd.)
• Rempis, Abrams, Ra + Baker – The Walls Of The Temple Are Made Of Sound (Aerophonic)

(Albums are listed by release date)

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With Roma, we can finally experience the complete picture of Keith Jarrett’s final European solo tour. Recorded live at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the album joins Budapest Concert, Bordeaux Concert, New Vienna, and Munich 2016 to complete the five-city sequence:

• July 3, 2016: Budapest Concert (Released October 30, 2020) at Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, Palace of Arts, Budapest, Hungary
• July 6, 2016: Bordeaux Concert (Released September 30, 2022) at L’Auditorium de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
• July 9, 2016: New Vienna (Released May 30, 2025) at Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna, Austria
• July 12, 2016: Roma (Released November 6, 2026) at Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy
• July 16, 2016: Munich 2016 (Released November 1, 2019) at Philharmonie, Gasteig, Munich, Germany

Explore all of Keith Jarrett’s post-1998 solo performances on the Best of Jazz Keith Jarrett Solo Piano Guide part 2.

Because the label originally issued these out of chronological order over a seven-year span, the arrival of the Rome concert finally allows us to listen to and trace the entire itinerary exactly as it was.

Following this European run, Jarrett performed only one last public concert, on February 15, 2017, at Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium.

Keith Jarrett: piano
Releases November 6, 2026

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Satoko Fujii’s Kappa Ondo also brings a remarkable sequence to its conclusion: five orchestra albums in five consecutive months, each featuring a different ensemble.

Fujii’s professional career began in a Tokyo cabaret big band, following years of solitary classical piano study. The excitement of playing with others has remained a driving force ever since. Across Bielefeld, Kobe, Berlin, Nagoya, and Tokyo, the project offers a broad view of what is essentially central to her musical life.

In Fujii’s discography, these five releases highlight an orchestral practice already represented in more than twenty albums before the series began. Their significance lies in the chance to consider them together, across different cities, generations, and recording dates. Together, they suggest how much of this music depends on relationships built and maintained over time. If you haven’t already, I think Kappa Ondo is an appropriate place to enter this new series: its tribute connects the freedom of an improvising orchestra with a profound belief in other people’s capacity to create.

Specifically, the Tokyo orchestra’s album honors Ichiji Tamura, Natsuki Tamura’s father and Fujii’s father-in-law, an educator and artist whose work encouraged artistic expression among people with disabilities. Its centerpiece is Fujii’s setting of his song “Kappa Ondo,” originally written for teachers to perform for students at an annual school talent show. As the conclusion to this five-album project, the tribute gives the series an affecting focus: connection, participation, imagination, and creativity as a space to flourish.

It gives a deeply human context to the larger project, and a reason to return to the four records that lead up to it:

• Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra (July 10, 2026): A rediscovered 2014 German archival recording featuring a mix of professionals and local music students who collaborated on composition, conducting, and free improvisation.
• Orchestra Kobe – After The Storm (August 7, 2026): A live recording from February 2026 that documents one of Fujii’s long-standing regional ensembles, highlighting how its unique instrumental balance shapes the relationship between soloist and orchestra.
• Orchestra Berlin – Second Attempt (September 4, 2026): An open-form performance where musicians assemble short, written musical fragments like Lego bricks and even incorporate non-musical objects like newspapers into the collective piece.
• Orchestra Nagoya – Korekara (October 2, 2026): A celebratory four-part suite written for the 20th anniversary of a beloved local cultural café, reflecting the deep, community-driven history and long-term trust of this 1999-founded ensemble.

Satoko Fujii: piano, composition, arrangement, conducting; Natsuki Tamura: trumpet, composition, arrangement, conducting; Sachi Hayasaka, Kunihiro Izumi: alto saxophone; Kenichi Matsumoto, Daisuke Fujiwara: tenor saxophone; Ryuichi Yoshida: baritone saxophone; Yoshihito Fukumoto, Takao Watanabe, Yusaku Shirotani: trumpet; Haguregumo Nagamatsu, Yasuyuki Takahashi, Toshihiro Koike: trombone; Kelly Churko: guitar; Toshiki Nagata: double bass; Akira Horikoshi: drums
Releases November 6, 20226

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Our Best Jazz Albums of 2026 selection arrives in less than a month.
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Listening to EPs is a distinct pleasure. They deliver concentrated musical ideas, stripping away the filler that can sometimes weigh down full-length albums. Instead of stretching the material, an EP captures a single, clear artistic vision in a beautifully condensed burst.

And I don’t think this format is a concession to short modern attention spans (which likely isn’t even an issue among music lovers). Instead, it certainly represents a conscious choice to maximize impact and respect the music through pure, sincere expression.

This philosophy is exactly what makes Noah X Petter’s debut EP, DRIFT, so satisfying to listen to. Within this condensed framework, heavy jazz roots remarkably fuse with head-nodding hip-hop loops, textural electronics, and a sharp guest feature. Short but perfectly on point.

Noah Fürbringer: drums, production; Petter Eldh: bass, production | Guest Talib Kweli: vocals on track 4
Releases November 6, 2026

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Despite their extensive work together during the last four decades, this is only Shipp and Parker’s fourth duo album. Their collaboration has taken countless forms, most famously within the David S. Ware Quartet, yet the encounter between piano and double bass remains a distinct occasion.

Their connection is remarkably strong, earning a rightful place in the history of jazz. So calling such a connection “telepathy” is tempting, but I would imagine it is ultimately about talent, work, and attention, the kind found in a deep friendship: learning another person’s sense of time, recognizing the possibilities within an unfamiliar gesture, and remaining receptive as their language changes. Familiarity can make surprise possible. Knowing that an unexpected decision will receive a serious response creates freedom. On this record, that manifests as a breathtaking, unpredictable ecosystem, where Shipp’s percussive, fractured piano lines meet the anchoring, deeply resonant pulse of Parker’s bass.

On November 6, A Whole System Of arrives alongside a reissue of Zo, their first duo recording from 1994, offering a interesting opportunity to hear time itself at work.

Matthew Shipp: piano; William Parker: bass
Releases November 6, 2026

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This quartet has been playing together under this name for quite some time (I believe I’ve seen them twice in the last 4 years), and I was really eager to hear them record something. And with Amalthea, they’re delivering exactly what we’d expect: a truly exceptional recording.

The core of this record is the piano-and-vibraphone pairing (which certainly grounded the idea of the outstanding Talamanti). The album title comes from the myth of the ‘horn of plenty,’ but for Courvoisier, true abundance is found in the chemistry of this group.

The tracklist mixes brand-new tunes with reimagined pieces from her previous records, Chimaera and D’Agala. Hearing these older, familiar ideas dropped into a brand-new room with four independent musical minds completely changes the game. Courvoisier gives her quartet demanding material, but she also gives them the total freedom to steer the ship. That’s also where you can hear they have been playing together for a while now, as it works flawlessly.

Sylvie Courvoisier: piano, composition; Patricia Brennan: vibraphone; Thomas Morgan: double bass; Dan Weiss: drums
Releases November 13, 2026

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Recorded over two winter days in Copenhagen, this staggering album brings Danish guitarist Jakob Bro together with jazz icon Charles Lloyd and the legendary rhythm section of Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy (famed for their decades with Brad Mehldau). Relying almost entirely on raw, first-take improvisations, their music is incredibly relaxing and breathtakingly intimate.

Lloyd’s playing here is uniquely vulnerable, delivering peaceful, transformative melodies. Bro’s own words offer reason enough to spend time with this recording, pointing to the rare privilege of hearing a completely new shade of Lloyd’s legendary voice: ‘I love the way Charles Lloyd is playing on this album. Some of the songs are very quiet pieces, and when we listened back, Charles said he felt that he sounded different from the way he had on other recordings, and he was very happy with that.’

So if an icon like Charles Lloyd can find a completely new, joyful space in his own sound after a lifetime in jazz, how could we not be just as captivated?

Jakob Bro: electric guitar; Charles Lloyd: tenor saxophone, flutes; Larry Grenadier: double bass; Jorge Rossy: drums
Releases November 13, 2026

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Shuteen Erdenebaatar is a Mongolian jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader based in Germany since 2018. In October 2024, she returned to her homeland with the musicians who had become part of her life in Europe. Sharing familiar places with her bandmates let her rediscover them through their eyes, while her first visit to the Gobi Desert, her father’s birthplace, reopened a connection to her origins. It is for sure quite an experience to bring the people of your present into the places that shaped you and discover something new together.

And that exact experience gives Bright Folk its emotional feel. To my ears, the music evokes wind, vast horizons, and the grandeur of open space, while carrying the warmth of the people who give those places meaning. As Erdenebaatar puts it, “It is a celebration of the people, memories, and landscapes that quietly shape who we are and who we continue to become.”

Shuteen Erdenebaatar: piano; Simon Comté: tenor saxophone; Nils Kugelmann: double bass; Amir Bresler: drums | Guest Jakob Manz: alto saxophone on track 4 & 6
Releases November 20, 2026

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What makes Aurora II so touching, with its romantic allure and innocent accents, is certainly the deep attention required to play an instrument that is not one’s own.

Here, several of these seasoned musicians have stepped away from their native instruments to take up unfamiliar woodwinds. This radical shift surely pushes them to bring a different kind of attention and commitment than they normally do. In return, this offers us a sound imbued with a unique charm, perhaps evocative of shokunin kishitsu, the spirit of the Japanese craftsman which pushes one to focus all their attention on the present to do well, capturing a process still in development, not yet at the absolute pinnacle of mastery.

The immediate lack of comfort these musicians must feel when trying another instrument—they know professionally what is expected of them, and they are aware of the gap between the beginner and the expert—most likely pushes them instinctively into the extreme concentration we feel here. Crucially, this tension remains grounded by the native instrumentation of the remaining players, who provide a steady foundational framework.

Add to this the consistently meditative and spiritual compositions of Bromander, and you get an album of touching beauty, the reflection of what is done with care and total dedication.

Vilhelm Bromander: soprano saxophone; Pelle Westlin: clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone; Johan Graden: clarinet; Mauritz Agnas: clarinet, double bass; Emma Augustsson: cello; Anton Svanberg: tuba; Isabell Gustafsson-Ny: pump organ; Nils Agnas: drums
Releases November 20, 2026

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The Walls of the Temple Are Made of Sound is a deeply moving title. While a venue can certainly act as a temple for artists and listeners, a space for communion (see the backstory here), extending Steve Lacy’s original phrase (“THIS PLACE IS A TEMPLE”) gives the concept a life beyond any physical architecture. It beautifully implies that the temple exists because the sound does, not the other way around.

The inclusion of electronics by the musicians makes that idea of continuity especially compelling. The first of these three massive improvisations (stretching across 45, 24, and 48 minutes) is already excellent, yet the second and third pieces draw us even deeper as the electronic textures become more prominent, allowing the quartet to create music that is somehow “peacefully intense.”

Ultimately, perhaps the deepest tribute to a sacred space is to keep discovering what can happen within it: the temple still exists because these musicians keep renewing the sound of its walls.

Aerophonic Records was founded by Dave Rempis in the winter of 2013; this independent jazz label has become a central documentarian of Chicago's fertile free-jazz and improvised music underground.

Dave Rempis: soprano, alto, tenor, baritone saxophone; Jim Baker: piano, electronics; Joshua Abrams: bass, electronics; Avreeayl Ra: drums, percussion
Releases November 27, 2026

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2026: New Releases Month by Month

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 2026

…and the Playlist Jazz 2026:
Listen to our 2026 playlist (link to Spotify) with all the monthly new-release selections and excerpts of the above albums (when available) for a total of (soon) 120 breathtaking tracks.

New Jazz Releases November 2026

And that is it for this November jazz selection.

What about you? What have you been listening to this November? Which new releases have caught your attention, and which ones keep bringing you back? As always, share your discoveries with us in the comments.

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