The Best Jazz Albums of 2024

Another list? Another list! But this time… it’s personal.

Making a list, checking it twice: ‘Tis the season, as they say. Earlier this month, I reflected on our Year of the Soft Radicals, which was one lens through which to view the sonic landscape we’ve just traversed. Last week, for NPR Music, I compiled a year-ender with a carefully bifurcated focus: The Essential Jazz Discoveries of 2024.

I’m looking forward to the further perceptions and provocations that will come out of tonight’s virtual roundtable, The Year in Jazz. (Please join us!) But a working critic can only put off the inevitable for so long: it’s time I finally show my hand and publish a fully committed Best Albums list of my own.

So here it is below, with a small preamble. I claimed executive privilege and made this a Top 12, because why stop at 10? And in order to acknowledge the buzzing network of collaborative potential on the scene, I followed each pick with two more picks, featuring overlapping personnel or some other natural resonance; consider it my version of “If you like this, you might like these, too.” For those keeping score, that means my Top 12 is actually more like a Top 36. I hope it leads you somewhere.

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The Best Jazz Albums of 2024

1. Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic)

You won’t find another album released this year, in any genre, that strikes a more effective balance between the cerebral and the visceral. Patricia Brennan is a mallet specialist deeply attuned to the purely percussive aspect of her art. On Breaking Stretch, she augments her core ensemble with a whip-smart front line: Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim and Jon Irabagon on saxophones. I lobbied for this album to be included on NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2024, and in my blurb I wrote: “Her compositions play with unstable accord and accumulative density, with a rhythmic brio that occasionally evokes her formative years in Veracruz, Mexico. But the core coordinates of this music are fixed someplace that hasn’t yet been charted; Brennan and her expeditionary forces make us feel flush with its discovery.”

Related / Also Hear:

• Mary Halvorson, Cloudward (Nonesuch) 🔗

• Kim Cass, Levs (Pi) 🔗

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2. Immanuel Wilkins, Blues Blood (Blue Note) 🔗

When I experienced the bittersweet bloom of Blues Blood at Winter Jazzfest in January, a thought flashed across my prefrontal cortex: how can this translate to an album? Chalk that up to shortsightedness on my part, and farsightedness on the part of alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins — and presumably on the part of his producer, Meshell Ndegeocello. This is a song cycle and a meditation, as interested in generational trauma and inheritance as it is in matters of moral justice. Among other things, I’m grateful to Wilkins for elevating singer-songwriter June McDoom, one of four arresting vocalists in rotation; the others are Yaw Agyeman, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Ganavya, who released two powerful albums of her own this year.

Related / Also Hear:

• Ganavya, Daughter of a Temple (Leiter) 🔗

• Micah Thomas, Mountains (Artwork) 🔗

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3. Kris Davis Trio, Run The Gauntlet (Pyroclastic)

Kris Davis has earned considerable critical acclamation over the last several years, mainly for work that foregrounds sleek conceptual intention. If that came at the cost of her reputation as a beast on the piano bench, here’s the course correction. Working with two rough-and-tumble rhythm partners, bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, Davis pushes all the way in and also far outside — dedicating each track to a woman who has inspired her at the keys, including both exalted elders like Marilyn Crispell and near-contemporaries like Angelica Sanchez.

Related / Also Hear:

• Tarbaby, You Think This America 🔗

• Matthew Shipp Trio, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz 🔗

4. David Murray Quartet, Francesca (Intakt)

What a deep pleasure it is to hear David Murray, on the cusp of 70, playing his tenor saxophone with this much alert presence, at the helm of such an agile and responsive band. Pianist Marta Sánchez, bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Russell Carter are more than a strong young rhythm section for Murray to play against; they also represent an adventurous jazz cohort that came of age with his burly sound rattling in their ears. The swinging equilibrium they all find together is a welcome balm.

Related / Also Hear:

• Marta Sanchez Trio, Perpetual Void (Intakt) 🔗

• Luke Stewart Silt Trio, Unknown Rivers (Pi) 🔗

5. Vanisha Gould and Chris McCarthy, Life’s a Gig (Fresh Sound New Talent)

Vanisha Gould is a jazz singer whose bell-like tone and dusky timbre can evoke the likes of Dinah Washington and Carmen McRae, though she operates with a self-conscious savvy that puts her in the neighborhood of a peer like Cécile McLorin Salvant. She released two full-length debuts this year, and while She’s Not Shiny, She’s Not Smooth is the true breakout, stocked as it is with shrewd original songs, I think this duo session provides the ideal introduction. “I dreamed when I played, I would play my way,” Gould sings on “Monk’s Dream,” borrowing McRae’s lyrics to a Thelonious classic. Damned if she doesn’t sound like she’s speaking her truth.

Related / Also Hear:

• Kurt Elling & Sullivan Fortner, Wildflowers, Vol. 1 (Edition) 🔗

• Jazzmeia Horn, Messages (Empress Legacy) 🔗

6. Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey, Compassion (ECM) 🔗

So many eventful weeks and months have passed since the release of Compassion, in early February, that it isn’t surprising this album has slipped a bit in the year-end discourse. But every time I return to it, I’m struck by how focused and spirit-filled it sounds. “Spearheaded by pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, it’s recognizably stamped by his point of view, which favors brisk, slippery kineticism and a trust in the collective ideal,” I wrote in the NPR Music 50 Best Albums package. “That trust is beautifully placed in two exceptionally astute partners: Linda May Han Oh, a bassist who imparts the sensation of a deep moving current; and Tyshawn Sorey, an ever-surprising drummer who released a stunning trio album of his own this year.”

Related / Also Hear:

• Tyshawn Sorey Trio, The Susceptible Now (Pi) 🔗

• Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers, Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook) 🔗

7. Matt Mitchell, Illimitable (Obliquity)

I had my first taste of Illimitable at the Big Ears Festival, and had to tear myself away after about 20 minutes, in order to moderate a panel up the street. Thankfully, Matt Mitchell made this album, an absorbing solo piano inquisition that reminds me (in the best way) of the more restive improvised recitals by Keith Jarrett. This year also brought us a deft, dynamic Matt Mitchell Trio album, Zealous Angles, which I also highly recommend — but something about Illimitable captured my deeper intrigue.

Related / Also Hear:

• Sylvie Courvoisier, To Be Other​-​Wise (Intakt) 🔗

• Ben Monder, Planetarium (Sunnyside) 🔗

8. Jihye Lee Orchestra, Infinite Connections (Motéma)

Here is the modern big band album that most impressed me this year, not only for its sterling execution of a complex design but also for the ingenious way Jihye Lee brings traditional folk forms — most notably, rhythmic patterns from Korea — into her musical frame. She has an excellent roster to carry out this mission, as well as a couple of featured guests, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and percussionist Keita Ogawa, who make the most of their time. The whole enterprise feels smartly contemporary even as it pays homage to Lee’s grandmother, and the seismic changes she lived to see.

Related / Also Hear:

• John Hollenbeck & NDR Big Band, Colouring Hockets (Flexatonic) 🔗

• Mike Holober & The Gotham Jazz Orchestra, This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters (Palmetto) 🔗

9. Nala Sinephro, Endlessness (Warp)

The London-based harpist and keyboardist Nala Sinephro grew up outside of Brussels, to a Belgian mother who taught classical piano and a Martiniquan / Guadeloupean father who played jazz saxophone. Those personal details provide a touch of context for Endlessness, an electro-acoustic suite that gradually won me over with its accretive logic and atmospheric beauty. But Sinephro obviously has her own point of view, and she imbues this album with a clear arc and a serene yet firm sense of pacing. In some ways it occupies the same space as Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders’ Promises; at certain moments, notably on “Continuum 3,” it also reminds me how much I love the hushed, velvety stir of Björk’s Vespertine.

Related / Also Hear:

• Nubya Garcia, Odyssey (Concord) 🔗

• Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt) 🔗

10. Charles Lloyd, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Blue Note) 🔗

When I saw the Charles Lloyd Quartet at Big Ears in March, Lloyd was a week or so past his 86th birthday — a plain yet remarkable fact, given all of the illumination he was throwing with his tenor saxophone. He projects with an admittedly less forceful sound now, but the lyrical insight in his phrasing is often profound, and he has an absolute gem of a supporting band. In addition to pianist Jason Moran, with whom he has a famous mind-meld, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow features bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade, who access a rare empathic grace.

Related / Also Hear:

• Walter Smith III, three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not (Blue Note) 🔗

• Melissa Aldana, Echoes of the Inner Prophet (Blue Note) 🔗

11. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

There’s always so much cool elasticity in guitarist Jeff Parker’s music that it can scan as low-effort, when the reality is much more beguiling. His ETA 4tet, which forged an identity over a years-long residency in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood, features Josh Johnson on alto saxophone with electronics, Anna Butterss on bass and Jay Bellerose on drums. The Way Out of Easy, which gathers one stealth-methodical track for each side of two LPs, suggests a chilled-out answer to early Electric Miles, with an undercurrent that’s often no more insistent than the hypnotic whirl of a ceiling fan.

Related / Also Hear:

• Josh Johnson, Unusual Object (Northern Spy) 🔗

• SML, Small Medium Large (International Anthem) 🔗

12. Amaro Freitas, Y’Y

To those familiar with Brazilian pianist Amaro Freitas, his latest album — inspired by the natural sounds of the Amazon — might seem a disarming dip into New Age atmospherics. (See again: Year of the Soft Radicals.) But the prepared pianos and neatly curated guest list (notably Shabaka, Jeff Parker, and harpist Brandee Younger) all serve a larger purpose, invoking a natural world both rich in glory and steeped in peril. Freitas presides over it all with an alluring balance of patience and poise.

Related / Also Hear:

• Shabaka, Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace (Impulse!) 🔗

• Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding, Milton + esperanza (Concord) 🔗

And there you have it, my Top 12 — er, 36 — Jazz Albums of 2024. This isn’t the last you’ll hear from me in this year-end mode: there’s The Year in Jazz, of course, and also a forthcoming Year-in-Review episode of The Late Set podcast. As we approach the actual end of 2024, I’ll also bring you The Year in Gigs. Too much? I hope not. And I hope you’ll let me know what captured your ear in 2024.