Fred Kaplan's 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2025

many sounding very good!

Every year since 2003, my editors at Slate—my main output, where I write a (roughly) twice-weekly column on national security—indulge my outside passions and lets me post a piece on my favorite jazz albums of the previous 12 months. Here’s the piece for this year, filed last week, replete with a bite-size essay on each album and a link to an audio track that, I think, best captures its vibe.

 As I have done since the revival of Tracking Angle, I submit  below a reproduction of the list alone, with some special bonuses. For the albums that I have reviewed in these pages (seven of the 10), I include a link to those reviews. And I add, at the end, special notes on sound quality, which I mentioned only in passing, if at all, in the Slate version. I also type an asterisk (*) next to those albums that are available in vinyl (this year, encouragingly, half the titles).

 The list:

 Mary Halvorson, About Ghosts (Nonesuch)*.

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Bone Bells (Pyroclastic).

Fred Hersch, The Surrounding Green (ECM)*.

Sullivan Fortner, Summer Nights (Artwork).

Patricia Brennan, Of the Near and Far (Pyroclastic).

Amina Claudine Myers, Solace of the Mind (Red Hook)*.

David Murray, Birdly Serenade (Impulse!)*.

Dave Douglas, Alloy (Greenleaf).

Charles Lloyd, Figure in Blue (Blue Note)*.

Jason Moran & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Go to Your North

      (Yes!/Bandcamp).

 

Now for the sound. All of these albums sound for the most part quite good; most sound very good, period; a few, remarkably good. The standout is the Fred Hersch, the most vivid piano-trio album in a long time; it would hold up well in the catalogue of just about any “audiophile label.” The David Murray is one of the two or three best-sounding albums he’s ever put out, notably for the clarity of the piano, usually a weak link in recordings from Rudy Van Gelder’s studio (maybe Maureen Sickler, who now sits at the controls, has figured out the tricks). The Myers LP is also wonderfully resonant (as are all the vinyl albums from Red Hook).

 Usually, I also list the top few historical releases, focusing on new discoveries (as opposed to reissues). This year, there were so many excavations, and I didn’t have enough time (it was a busy year) to listen to enough of them to assess, fairly, which were best. That said, I’ll make a few remarks. First, the longstanding audiophile reissue houses (e.g., Analogue Productions) are broadening their horizons. Second, Blue Note’s Classic Vinyl series is fast approaching the sonic quality of its more expensive Tone Poet series—and also reaching into the more adventurous corners of the label’s catalogue (more on that, soon). Third, Craft’s Original Jazz Classics (OJC) series continues to rival the more esoteric ‘phile houses at half to two-thirds the pricetag. (It bears repeating, from last year’s summary, that its pressing of Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby, one of the great and great-sounding live jazz albums ever, outshines any previous reissue, though, oddly, its pressing of Evans’ Sunday at the Village Vanguard—which was taken from the same set of analogue master tapes—falls a little, though only a little, short of some.)

 Anyway, it is a great time to be a jazz-leaning audiophile. Labels of all sorts—commercial, indie, those offering new recordings, and those digging out treasures from the vaults—are focused on sound quality in a way, and to a degree, that they haven’t in the past. In many respects, it’s a new golden age.