As we navigate through 2025, it is clear that while the world may be facing its challenges, music is shining brightly, with exceptional artists delivering incredible work. This year, jazz has already offered us some truly remarkable albums, each bringing something fresh to the table. In this post, we will highlight the standout releases that already have made an impact. Here are the Best Jazz Albums of 2025 (so far).

Best Jazz Albums 2025, So Far

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

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Same, if WEBO moved you last year, you’ll 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

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Splash marks Myra Melford’s first release with this trio and her latest exploration of music as a multi-dimensional art form. Inspired by Cy Twombly’s expressive, gestural paintings, Melford channels that same sense of movement and energy into her compositions, creating a sound that is fluid and dynamic.

The result is outstanding: structure and abstraction, improvisation and composition blur into a constant state of transformation, where every moment feels both spontaneous and intentional, perhaps, much like a splash itself.

Myra Melford: piano; Michael Formanek: bass; Ches Smith: drums, vibraphone
Released March 28, 2025

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Like the transcendentals in philosophy (truth, beauty, and goodness) Armageddon Flower resonates with a purity that transcends the limits of music itself. The album isn’t simply listened to; it’s 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, while 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
Releases June 20, 2025

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When listening to a new album, we often have a series of questions we can ask ourselves to guide our approach. These questions create a framework based on criteria that are important to us, whether essential or superficial, that help shape our first listen. For instance: Is it innovative? Is it different? Is it unique? and while doing this, we try to ignore the names of the artists involved. We might also focus on uncovering the message or intention behind the project, among other things.

But sometimes, we become completely absorbed by the music, almost hypnotized by the sense of well-being it brings, without feeling the need to rationalize anything. Solace of the Mind is one of those albums, where all questions fade away in favor of pure experience.

Then, after the listening, if one question arises, it is the only one that truly matters: Is it remarkable? And the answer is clear: Yes, Solace of the Mind is, profoundly so.

“In this album she reveals to us her inner peace, with renderings that are evocative and profound, while simultaneously showing the deft of one’s craft gained by decades of experience. It is Amina’s hope that these musical portraits will provide moments of comfort and solace in this ever-changing world.”
–Robert Thurman, in the liner notes

Amina Claudine Myers: piano, Hammond B3 organ, voice
Releases June 20, 2025

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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’s 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

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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 3 – L’Invisible

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

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Yikes Too is a major moment, not just because it is the latest Tim Berne release, but because it marks the long-overdue debut of his new trio with Tom Rainey and Gregg Belisle-Chi. This double album, split between a studio session at Firehouse 12 and a raging live set from Seattle, delivers everything you would hope for from a Berne-led project: intricate compositions, fearless improvisation, and that unmistakable sense of urgency. This is Berne at 70: restless, inventive, and as essential as ever.

Tim Berne: alto saxophone; Tom Rainey: drums; Gregg Belisle-Chi: guitar
Released January 17, 2025

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Steve Lehman’s The Music of Anthony Braxton is more than a tribute; it’s a bold, high-energy celebration of one of jazz’s most visionary composers. With his long-running trio with Matt Brewer (bass) and Damion Reid (drums), joined by Mark Turner (tenor saxophone), Lehman reinterprets Braxton’s small-group compositions with sharp precision and raw expressiveness.

Lehman contributes two original compositions, “LA Genes” and “Unbroken & Unspoken,” which show how Braxton’s ideas continue to shape his own evolving voice. And with a closing take on Thelonious Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle,” he highlights the deep connection between radical jazz innovation across generations.

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 small-group 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

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Branches is an exceptional release.

Read our full review here.

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

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Unheard, primal, abstract, for a unique experience. It is a magnificent improvisation.

Read our full review here.

Pat Thomas: piano
Releases on May 29, 2025

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“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, delivering the ballad album we did not know we were missing so much.

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

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Best Jazz 2025

• Ambrose Akinmusire – Honey From a Winter Stone (Nonesuch Records)
• Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, William Parker – The Ancients (Eremite Records)
• Myra Melford, Michael Formanek, Ches Smith – Splash (Intakt Records)
• Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio – Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms)
• Amina Claudine Myers – Solace of the Mind (Red Hook Records)
• Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson – Bone Bells (Pyroclastic Records)
• Christer Bothén 3 – L’Invisible (Thanatosis)
• Tim Berne – Yikes Too (Out Of Your Head Records)
• Steve Lehman – The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)
• Evan Parker, Bill Nace – Branches (Open Mouth Records, Otoroku)
• Pat Thomas – The Bliss Of Bliss (Konnekt)
• James Brandon Lewis Quartet – Abstraction Is Deliverance (Intakt Records)

Discover our monthly selections: January, February, March 2025 / April 2025 / May 2025 / June 2025 / July 2025 /

…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.