The following selection is our definitive “Best Jazz Albums of 2025” list. It is divided into albums featuring solos, duets, trios, quartets, quintets, and larger ensembles (three albums per category), for a total of 18. We have also added two special mentions: “Artist of the Year” and “Archive of the Year.” Altogether, that makes 20 albums that, in our view, sum up just how great 2025 was for jazz.

We introduced this format back in 2020, as a way to move beyond the usual ranked top 10 lists. The idea was simple: give more space to albums that often fly under the radar. Not because they lack quality, but because they follow a more personal path, explore a niche subgenre, or use a format that rarely gets the spotlight. By dividing our selection into solos, duets, trios, and so on, we can highlight a wider range of releases that truly deserve to be heard.

This approach also makes ranking unnecessary. Within each section, the three albums stand side by side, there is no need to pick a “best.” And between sections, there is no reason to say a duet matters more than a solo or a large ensemble. Each format brings its own voice and its own beauty.

Finally, there are already plenty of excellent ranked lists out there, from the Francis Davis Critics Poll to El Intruso and Downbeat. Our goal is not to compete with them, but to offer something more personal, a reflection of how we have listened, what moved us, and what stayed with us this year.

So yes, this selection unfolds in an unusual way, but we hope you will understand its spirit and enjoy the perspective it brings.

One more thing. This year, we have added a small twist: for each album selected, we will recommend another one that is somehow related by format (say, another solo album), or by feeling, or simply by its beauty or origin. The goal is to give even more visibility to releases (actually 45 in total!) we believe are truly worth your time.

If you are still in doubt, take a look at what follows: each album here has its own story, its own voice, and every one of them needed to be created (find out in details why here).

We hope you will discover new music and find that this list resonates with your own highlights of 2025.

Happy reading, and, above all, happy listening.

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Best Jazz Albums 2025

I – Solo Albums

2025 was another brilliant year for Pat Thomas, in duet with Hamid Drake, in quartet with [Ahmed], but even more so solo, with no less than four notable releases.

Sufi Women (scatterArchive), which sits on the electronic side of his exploration of spiritual and acoustic quests. Distortions and layered sounds seem to shake you from within, as if their vibrations and textures were guiding you through the neck of an hourglass, toward another, unknown side. ود ود (Wadud / Most Loving) (Nyahh Records) offers another facet of that same quest, recorded live in Dublin on a piano with a copper-plated interior. The sound feels alive, vibrating, metallic. The “short” 30-minute improvisation dissolves into pure satisfaction. Hikmah (TAO Forms) offers a somewhat more accessible yet no less intense chapter. This eight-piece set feels so profoundly jazz and so profoundly beautiful that it could have been the one.

But our choice for this selection has to be The Bliss Of Bliss (Konnekt). It offers an even more intense experience, perhaps more extreme. The gesture seems to vanish; the musician disappears. Only the sound remains, taking shape, searching, reacting, the sound lives, breathing, even panting at times. The immersion is mesmerizing, with an absolutely magnificent depth. 

Pat Thomas: piano
Released May 29, 2025

Discover also Amina Claudine Myers – Solace of the Mind (Red Hook Records)

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“How and why do we continue to make art in this bizarre time? Let me try here to offer a small break from insanity. I do believe that for listeners in our small pond, focused attention on sonic expression might help the individual keep a connection with their humanity and reinforce positive human endeavors—love, empathy, and truth-seeking”.
–Ned Rothenberg

With this release, Ned Rothenberg offers us more than just a connection to our humanity: his music is so deeply beautiful that it can only make us believe in humanity itself. We can only feel grateful that he recorded such an album, allowing us to lose ourselves in its beauty and ethereal precision, where repetition becomes revelation and restraint becomes power.

Ned Rothenberg: alto saxophone, Bb and A clarinets, shakuhachi
Released September 5, 2025

Discover also Lori Goldston – Open Space (Relative Pitch Records)

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40 Springs in Paris is a magnificent solo album. There is a sense of total sincerity in the playing, with Ramon Lopez finding that precious space where his performance reveals its depth, precision, and experience, yet always simply and gently.

What makes these ten tracks so mesmerizing is that Lopez never seems to be playing with rhythm in the strict sense of the word. At times, you think you glimpse the outline of a pulse, the shadow of a motif taking shape, but nothing ever settles. These are merely fragments, flashes, suspended impulses. Lopez sculpts timbres, shapes sounds, juxtaposes colors, and from this material a dynamic emerges, one that moves forward without ever needing rhythm to carry it.

This is an extraordinarily arrhythmic motion, yet one with an irresistible sense of progression. Everything undoubtedly resides in the harmony of wavering, the cadence of variation, the movement of repetition: all that constitutes rhythm, without ever directly invoking it.

Free jazz in all its serenity.

Ramon Lopez: drums
Released May 5, 2025

Discover also Paul Rogers – Peace And Happiness (Fundacja Słuchaj!)

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II – Duet Albums

The piece possesses exceptional cathartic beauty, with a power that seems to emerge from the mists of time, yet it feels more essential and compelling than any modernity. The 40-minute performance, built on loops and repetitions, forms a seamless whole that is impossible to pause, let alone stop. It is an experience that hypnotizes the mind into a marvelous trance, where the intensity of the performance fades into the background as the beauty of the perfect complementarity of sounds and the music shared by these two musicians takes center stage.

Read our full review, along with videos that offer a clear view of their technique.

Evan Parker: soprano saxophone; Bill Nace: 2 string Taishogoto
Released May 23, 2025

Discover also Naissam Jalal – Souffles (Les Couleurs Du Son)

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Bone Bells is a stunning dialogue between two of the most inventive voices in contemporary music. Their third duo album and second release on Pyroclastic Records finds Courvoisier and Halvorson deepening their already telepathic connection, blending contemporary chamber music with avant-garde jazz.

Splitting the compositions evenly, the two create a constantly shifting soundscape from the eerie melancholy of Halvorson’s title track to the explosive energy of Courvoisier’s “Esmeralda”. Prepared piano and looping guitar lines morph into intricate, elastic structures, while moments of delicate lyricism dissolve into dizzying improvisation. There is an organic, instinctive quality to their interplay, as each piece is reshaped in real time, blurring the lines between composition and spontaneous creation.

Taking its title from Hernan Diaz’s novel Trust, Bone Bells evokes an enigmatic sonic world where structure and abstraction, beauty and discord, all exist in perfect tension.

Sylvie Courvoisier: piano; Mary Halvorson: guitar
Released March 14, 2025

Discover also John Scofield, Dave Holland – Memories of home (ECM)

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What stands out immediately is that this is not your typical “sax meets drums” free-jazz duo. Lao Dan brings not only the tenor sax but also the dizi and other flutes, and that shift in timbre completely reshapes the conversation. And so the dialogue widens: we hear a woodwind voice leaning into breath, air, and texture, and a percussionist who responds in kind. Vasco Trilla opens space, listens to the grain of each sound, and answers with colour, resonance, and à propos.

The album title New Species suggests transformation, difference, and the emergence of something not yet defined. Given Lao Dan’s instrumentation and cultural roots, and Trilla’s European/percussion background, one might interpret the project as a proposal. And it is. From Dan’s opening to Trilla’s closing gestures, the album truly feels like an exploration of new territory. Stunning.

Lao Dan: tenor saxophone, diy flute, dizi; Vasco Trilla: drums, percussion
Released November 8, 2025

Discover also Rodrigo Amado, Chris Corsano – The Healing (Live At ZDB) (((European Echoes)

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III – Trio Albums

If WEBO moved you last year, you will love this new release featuring William Parker, William Hooker, and Isaiah Collier.

The title, The Ancients, marks an intriguing shift in perspective. With a lineup blending historical and new key figures, the music embodies the spirit of spiritual jazz and energy music, the intense free jazz, deeply tied to black cultural expression and freedom. Yet, the name suggests something more: a transition from being the “new thing” to carrying forward a powerful, living tradition.

Isaiah Collier: tenor saxophone, Aztec death whistle, siren, little instruments; William Hooker: drums, vocals; William Parker: bass, hojǒk, singing
Released January 31, 2025

Discover also Alan Bishop, Sam Shalabi, Maurice Louca – Tropic Of Taurus: Dwarfs Of East Agouza In Shenzhen (Old Heaven Books)

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The third album by Satoko Fujii’s This Is It! trio (piano, trumpet, drums), Message, is as excellent as you would imagine. It is dense, intricate, intelligent, and entertaining. The trio’s chemistry is palpable, with each note feeling both purposeful and spontaneous. Every track unfolds with a sense of exploration, yet, strangely enough, also with a sense of relaxation, almost as if their cohesion is so natural that it puts us in a state of listening well-being.

Sakoto Fuji: piano; Natsuki Tamura: trumpet; Takashi Itani: percussion
Releases May 9, 2025

Discover also Myra Melford, Michael Formanek, Ches Smith – Splash (Intakt Records)

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This album was surely our soundtrack of the summer. The trio is impeccable, the chemistry perfect. Right from the opening, the bass and drums once again merge seamlessly into one. Then come those first trumpet notes, making you melt and waver under the precision of their intent. The entire album possesses these alluring, entertaining, and surprising qualities, making it, without a doubt, one of the essential releases of 2025.

Linda May Han Oh: bass; Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet; Tyshawn Sorey: drums
Released August 22, 2025

Discover also Fieldwork – Thereupon (Pi Recordings)

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IV – Quartet Albums

Like the transcendentals in philosophy (truth, beauty, and goodness), Armageddon Flower resonates with a purity that transcends the limits of music itself. The album is not simply listened to; it is experienced on a deeper level, where intellect, emotion, and instinct converge. It reflects a kind of musical truth, where each note, while initially inconceivable to us, ultimately, once played, seems both inevitable and essential.

The beauty of the interplay between Perelman, Shipp, Maneri, and Parker evokes a profound harmony. In contrast, the raw emotion of their performance evokes the idea of ​​a quest for something greater than mere technical excellence, aimed at touching the soul. Like the transcendentals, the qualities of Armageddon Flower do not exist in isolation; they intertwine, creating an integrated whole that goes beyond explanation, offering a glimpse into something beyond, as if we were experiencing the cutting edge of today’s music.

Ivo Perelman: tenor saxophone; Matthew Shipp: piano; Mat Maneri: viola; William Parker: bass
Released June 20, 2025

Discover also The Hemphill Stringtet – The Hemphill Stringtet Plays Music Of Julius Hemphill (Out Of Your Head Records)

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The Music of Anthony Braxton is a bold, high-energy celebration of one of jazz’s most visionary composers, marking his 80th birthday and his induction into DownBeat’s Hall of Fame in 2025. With his long-running trio featuring Matt Brewer (bass) and Damion Reid (drums), joined by Mark Turner (tenor saxophone), Steve Lehman reinterprets Braxton’s small-group compositions with sharp precision and raw expressiveness.

Lehman’s relationship with Braxton runs deep, as he spent nearly a decade performing in the saxophonist’s ensembles, and here he makes a compelling case for Braxton’s music as an essential part of the jazz canon. Hard-swinging, fearless, and electrifying.

Steve Lehman: alto saxophone; Mark Turner: tenor saxophone; Matt Brewer: bass; Damion Reid: drums
Released February 28, 2025

Discover also Jaleel Shaw – Painter Of The Invisible (Changu Records)

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On Abstraction Is Deliverance, James Brandon Lewis treats abstraction not as a way to escape emotion, but as a way to reach it more directly. The quartet strips things down so everything reveals itself, and suddenly, the smallest gestures carry the most weight. A single held note, a fragment from Ortiz’s piano, a breath of silence between phrases… these become the real terrain of the music. And what is striking is how Lewis folds the tradition into this approach. Instead of quoting Coltrane or echoing David S. Ware’s force, he distills their spirit into something quieter, more focused, almost transparent. It is jazz as a lens, and the album’s power comes from that tension: the familiar reshaped through abstraction, the abstract made deeply human.

“James Brandon Lewis is at the top of the international jazz world,” writes Intakt Records. It is a bold statement, yet one that feels true. This new release (the fifth by his quartet) confirms it.

James Brandon Lewis: tenor saxophone; Aruán Ortiz: piano; Brad Jones: bass; Chad Taylor: drums
Released May 30, 2025

Discover also Billy Mohler – The Eternal (Contagious Music)

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V – Quintet Albums

“I wish that people hear the sounds of a faraway place that feels more like a dream than reality.”
–Louis Sclavis, in the liner notes

Recorded in France last year, this India, as Louis Sclavis himself puts it, is more of a far-off, remembered, nearly dreamt journey than a literal evocation of reality. And that is where all these beautiful impressions come from, the atmospheres, the feelings. The compositions evoke only, and the music seems to dwell on details, on what Sclavis likely experienced, before offering it back to us. And he leaves enough space for us to make them our own. In the end, what India evokes becomes personal, a place we dream rather than recognize. Ravishing.

Louis Sclavis: clarinets; Olivier Laisney: trumpet; Benjamin Moussay: piano; Sarah Murcia: double bass; Christophe Lavergne: drums
Released October 17, 2025

Discover also Laura Jurd – Rites & Revelations (New Soil)

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As noted on the cover, this is the second version of Sven-Åke Johansson’s 2022 album Stumps (Ni Vu Ni Connu), recorded less than a year later at Jazzfest Berlin 2022. The Stumps pieces are built around a minimal motif, opening into expansive improvisation before returning to close the theme. There is a magnificent focus on form, repetition, subtle variation, and rhythm as shape. The result feels delightfully old-fashioned yet profoundly modern, and unmistakably unique.

You can also find a thoughtful overview of recent losses in the jazz world on Jazz Passings, updated for 2025

Sadly, Sven-Åke Johansson passed away this year. Such albums remind us just how much we will miss his singular voice.

Sven-Ake Johansson: drums; Pierre Borel: alto saxophone; Axel Dörner: trumpet; Simon Sieger: piano; Joel Grip: double bass
Released January 24, 2025

Discover also Hi Res Heart – Move Fast And Mend Things (Discus)

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With Cream, Kassa Overall blurs the lines between jazz and hip-hop until they barely matter. And as he reinterprets hip-hop classics, the album plays on three levels. First, you can enjoy the music itself, modern, funky, nu-jazz, very much in the Warp Records spirit. Then, if you know the originals, there is the pleasure of hearing how Kassa reshapes those tracks. And finally, if you are curious about where those samples once came from, or if you already knew, you can follow the threads back and hear how his music, how music in general, is never a closed loop but always circling upward, always moving toward something new.

Kassa Overall: drums; Matt Wong: keyboards; Emilio Modeste: saxophone; Rashaan Carter: bass; Bendji Allonce: percussion | Guest Tomoki Sanders: saxophone, percussion
Released September 12, 2025

Discover also Donny McCaslin – Lullaby For The Lost (Edition Records)

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VI – Larger Ensembles Albums

If you also found Origami Harvest exceptional, you will be delighted with this new album, as Ambrose Akinmusire returns to a similar place where jazz, hip-hop, and classical merge to bring depth and resonance, weight and beauty.

“This album is about the fears and struggles I personally face, as well as those many Black men endure: colorism, erasure, and the question of who gets to speak for my community, and why. There’s also the constant negotiation of what happens when I don’t conform to certain expectations or when I choose to reject those imposed on me. These are the complexities I navigate daily. When I made this album, I was thinking about others who face these same struggles. I’m always considering who I represent—on all levels, in all the roles I play within my various communities. It’s about understanding the weight of those roles and the responsibility that comes with them. Some of these ideas didn’t require direct conversation. The experience is so universally understood that words become unnecessary.”
–Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet; Kokayi: vocals; Sam Harris: piano; Chiquitamagic: synths; Dustin Brown: drums | Mivos Quartet Olivia De Prato, Maya Bennardo: violin; Victor Lowrie Tafoya: viola; Nathan Watts: cello
Released January 31, 2025

Discover also Daoud – ok (ACT)

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Angles 11 is the current incarnation of Martin Küchen’s long-running ensemble project Angles (discover, for example, Angles 9 or Angles 3), exploring avant-garde jazz with a distinctly European, and particularly Scandinavian, sense of expression. This new formation brings together core members from earlier lineups with fresh voices and, for the first time, appears on the Fundacja Słuchaj label.

It is moving, pulsing, built on contrasts and surges of energy. The three drums provide a grounding life force, draped beautifully by the Fender Rhodes and carried impeccably by the bass lines, giving the ensemble the space to explore freedom as they will.

Martin Küchen: tenor, soprano saxophones; Johan Berthling: double bass; Alex Zethson: Fender Rhodes, Juno 106; Mattias Ståhl: vibraphone, soprano saxophone; Konrad Agnas, Michaela Antalova, Kjell Nordeson: drums; Susana Santos Silva: trumpet; Magnus Broo: trumpet; Josefin Runsteen: amplified violin; Eirik Hegdal: baritone, alto saxophones
Released July 18, 2025

Discover also Anna Högberg Attack – Ensamseglaren (Fönstret)

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What makes Unseparate so striking is how unified the whole feels, despite the two distinct compositional voices. Webber and Morris each expand the language of big band music in their own way, yet the dialogue creates a singular work. This is a record of precision, imagination, and collective energy, where the written music and the improvisations push each other higher.

Anna Webber, Angela Morris: tenor saxophone, flute, conductor; Jay Rattman: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute; Charlotte Greve: alto saxophone, flute, clarinet; Adam Schneit: tenor saxophone, clarinet; Lisa Parrott: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet; Nolan Tsang, Ryan Easter, Jake Henry, Kenny Warren: trumpets; Tim Vaughn, Zekkereya El-magharbel, Jen Baker, Reginald Chapman: trombones; Yuhan Su: vibraphone; Dustin Carlson: guitar; Marta Sánchez: piano; Adam Hopkins: bass; Jeff Davis: drums
Released September 26, 2025

Discover also Mary Halvorson – About Ghosts (Nonesuch Records)

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Artist of the Year

This year’s artist is someone who, through endurance and passion, brought stability and openness to a world that definitely needed them in 2025: Christer Bothén.

Bothén released so many remarkable albums in 2025 that he could easily have been featured in several of the above categories. He is also the perfect example of how exciting the Swedish scene is today, both as a steady anchor and as a generous supporter of younger and emerging artists.

Born in 1941, Christer Bothén is a Swedish composer, multi-instrumentalist (primarily bass clarinetist), and improviser. He was a close collaborator of Don Cherry in the 1970s, joining Cherry’s extended musical community in Sweden, where he explored free jazz infused with African and Eastern influences. It was during this period that he learned to play the donso n’goni during a stay in Mali, where he studied traditional West African music with master musicians from the Wassoulou region.

Fast forward to 2025, and Bothén has finally recorded his first solo album on the donso n’goni: the deeply meditative Christer Bothén Donso N’Goni (Black Truffle).

He also took part in what is already being hailed as one of the best sextet formations of the year (Francis Davis Poll, Mid-Year 2025): Cosmic Ears, alongside Mats Gustafsson and Goran Kajfês. Together they channel the spirit of Don Cherry, blending free-jazz improvisation with African, Gnawa, Swedish folk, and electronic elements on their 2025 debut, Traces (We Jazz).

Bothén also appears on Jorden Vi Ärvde, as part of the Unfolding Orchestra of rising star Vilhelm Bromander, a deeply reflective suite of jazz-orchestra music that addresses our planet’s inheritance with a blend of political urgency, lyricism, and spiritual calm, released on Thanatosis, the label run by the indispensable Alexander Zethson.

Last but not least, Bothén released the magnificent L’Invisible with his trio Christer Bothén 3, featuring Kansan Zetterberg on bass and Kjell Nordeson on vibraphone and drums:

In this superb album, experimentation, improvisation, and free jazz are experienced as if in a dream, half-asleep. The rough is transformed into something soft, the raw into something gentle, and brutality is dulled into a world of delicacy (read the full review).

Christer Bothén: bass clarinet, inside piano; Kansan Zetterberg: bass; Kjell Nordeson: vibraphone, drums
Released April 4, 2025

Through these four outstanding releases, Christer Bothén has once again proven, how essential he is to jazz and to the Swedish jazz community, underlining just how healthy and inspired the country’s scene is today.

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Archive of the Year

It is a key document featuring four powerful voices that prove free jazz can swing, smile, and seduce even when it continuously explodes. Heard today, this music does more than fill a gap in Schweizer’s discography; it widens the horizon, reminding us of how fiercely and freely she made space for herself and others.

“The concert with the Irène Schweizer Quartet in Zurich 1981 demonstrates a theatrical performance that remains musically coherent despite the spectacle. The music is action-oriented, pushy, and takes on an urgency and bidding character through constantly interwoven repetitions. This snapshot resembles a manifesto. This is Jazz with the anger of a Charles Mingus, the boldness of a Fats Waller, and the energy of punk.”
–Bert Noglik, liner notes

Irène Schweizer: piano; Rüdiger Carl: saxophones, clarinet, accordion; Johnny Dyani: bass, vocal; Han Bennink: drums, percussion, megaphone
Released May 23, 2025

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Best Jazz 2025

• Solo
  • Pat Thomas – The Bliss Of Bliss (Konnekt)
  • Ned Rothenberg – Looms & Legends (Pyroclastic Records)
  • Ramon Lopez – 40 Springs in Paris (RogueArt)
• Duet
  • Evan Parker, Bill Nace – Branches (Open Mouth Records, Otoroku)
  • Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson – Bone Bells (Pyroclastic Records)
  • Lao Dan, Vasco Trilla – New Species (NoBusiness Records)
• Trio
  • Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, William Parker – The Ancients (Eremite Records)
  • Satoko Fujii’s This is It! – Message (Libra Records)
  • Linda May Han Oh, Ambrose Akinmusire, Tyshawn Sorey – Strange Heavens (Biophilia Records)
• Quartet
  • Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp String Trio – Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms)
  • Steve Lehman – The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)
  • James Brandon Lewis Quartet – Abstraction Is Deliverance (Intakt Records)
• Quintet
  • Louis Sclavis – India (Yolk Records)
  • Sven-Åke Johansson – Stumps (Second Version) (Trost Records)
  • Kassa Overall – Cream (Warp Records)
• Larger Ensemble
  • Ambrose Akinmusire – Honey From a Winter Stone (Nonesuch Records)
  • Angles 11 – Tell Them It’s The Sound Of Freedom (Fundacja Słuchaj!)
  • Webber/Morris Big Band – Unseparate (Out Of Your Head Records)
• Artist of the Year
  • Christer Bothén 3 – L’Invisible (Thanatosis)
• Archive Of The Year
  • Irène Schweizer, Rüdiger Carl, Johnny Dyani, Han Bennink – Irène’s Hot Four (Intakt Records)

…and the Playlist:
Listen to our “Best Jazz 2025” 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.

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Thank you!

Thank you everyone for reading this article,

… and thank you to all musicians—whether listed here or not—for creating music that keeps us listening.

If you would like to share the albums that shaped your own best jazz 2025 list, feel free to drop them in the comments, we always enjoy discovering what moved you this year.