Adam Beaudoin's 15 Favorite Albums of 2025

Year-end lists are a strange creature, as conceptually absurd as they are genuinely useful. They contend to distill a year's worth of recorded music into "the very best," a laughably conceited claim for any one listener or editorial board, no matter how erudite and steeped in the music, to make. For jazz, the situation is even more ridiculous, as this art form we call a genre has developed so laterally in recent decades that it encompasses musics so stylistically varied that to pit them against one another only erases the context they exist within.

And yet, the sheer volume of music being released makes year-end lists an invaluable tool for casual listeners (and even serious but non-professional listeners) to discover more of the music they love. I personally use them every year to expand my horizons and see what I've missed out on. All About Jazz takes a healthy approach to this annual tradition, encouraging all of its critics to submit their own lists, on whatever terms are meaningful to them. I hope that you who are reading this have or will also browse through the selections made by my colleagues.

My own caveats to the following list are these: there is no "best," so what I'm offering here is a collection of the jazz albums that have captivated me, excited me, and gotten stuck in my inner ear. With a minor exception or two, I'm not going to rank them. They are presented alphabetically by artist. There's also unquestionably some album that would have made it onto this list if I had heard it, except I didn't. I've listened to well over 100 new releases this year, and still I have a long list of others I'm looking forward to spending time with. Finally, I will end this article with a list of some of the artists whose incredible work didn't quite make the arbitrary cut. If you haven't explored what those musicians released this year, I hope you will seek some of them out.

With all of that said, here are my 15 favorite jazz albums of 2025.

Arboresque
Artemis
Blue Note Records

One of the aforementioned exceptions, this was my single favorite album of the year, and coincidentally it comes in first alphabetically as well. Arboresque feels like a product of 1960s post-bop, paradoxically transported to the present day. The 2-horn arranging is pitch-perfect, and the original compositions (one contributed by each band member) are stunning. The setlist is rounded off with Donald Brown's infectious but slippery "The Smile of the Snake," a nod to Wayne Shorter, and a wryly off-kilter arrangement of  "What the World Needs Now is Love." I have listened to this masterpiece many dozens of times since it came out in February, and will be listening to it for years to come.


Love and Anger
Theo Bleckmann
Sunnyside Records

Love and Anger is a remarkable set of arrangements spanning Purcell, Lennon/McCartney, Sylvester, Massive Attack, and more. A majority of these covers come from a set he occasionally performs called "Mixtape," and which were long overdue for a studio release. Whether fronting a standard quartet, or accompanying himself as a multitracked choir, Bleckmann is in his usual unparalleled voice, and deploys it here to reach out through the speakers and connect intimately with the listener.


Ones & Twos
Gerald Clayton
Blue Note Records

Ones and Twos has a bit of everything: sophisticated compositions, catchy melodies, deep grooves, compelling improvisation. A handful of tracks fuse acoustic jazz with electronic production in a remarkably natural and purposeful way. And helping Clayton bring this to fruition is the incredible band of Elena Pinderhughes, Marquis Hill, Joel Ross, and Kendrick Scott.


Consentrik Quartet
Nels Cline
Blue Note Records

Cline's first release with the eponymous quartet of Ingrid Laubrock, Chris Lightcap, and Tom Rainey is a captivating journey. The music is at turns lively and contemplative, and constantly searching. Laubrock is a standout here, melding perfectly with Cline at the lead of the group, and unleashing powerful torrents of improvisation at every opportunity.


Bone Bells
Sylvie Courvoisier
Pyroclastic Records

Two masters of the avant-garde come together in Bone Bells to astounding effect. Angular and probing, their alternating compositions are also remarkably accessible. Halvorson and Courvoisier are both in top form, and their interplay is sophisticated and delightful.


Radio Paradise
Yaron Herman
Naive

This was a sleeper hit for me, not having been very familiar with his previous work. But what a hit it is. The compositions are exceptional, the energy infectious, and Herman's improvising complex yet thoughtful. One of those rare albums that hijacks my limbic system whenever I put it on.


Abstraction Is Deliverance
James Brandon Lewis
Intakt Records

It feels unfair to Lewis, but the comparison to late Coltrane is impossible to avoid. At several moments while listening to Abstraction is Deliverance I felt like I was in the middle of listening to Crescent. But despite those similarities, it stands alone as its own artistic achievement. Lewis' compositions and improvisation are engrossing, and Aruán Ortiz is stellar on piano. This is a deeply transporting record, which moves between meditative serenity and urgent chaos.


Belonging
Branford Marsalis
Blue Note Records

Belonging is a complete cover of Keith Jarrett's 1974 album of the same name. While Jarrett's thorny virtuosity is not something easily recreated, to Marsalis' band's credit they didn't try to. Instead, they infuse Jarrett's somewhat clinically-presented compositions with an incredible sense of groove and soul. This album is a joy to listen to.


Lullaby for the Lost
Donny McCaslin
Edition Records

A muscular fusion of rock and jazz, Lullabye for the Lost is always enjoyable, and often transcendent. Its irresistible melodies and fun harmonic progressions not only make for some powerful compositions, but also provide a backdrop for McCaslin's extraordinary improvisation.



Woven
Jeremy Pelt
HighNote Records

Somehow both fiercely forward-looking and deeply rooted in the past, Woven is an enigma of an album. It is consistently inventive, and packed with expert playing from everyone in the band. The best moments, though, are when Pelt has a chance to stretch out and improvise.


Words Fall Short
Joshua Redman
Blue Note Records

The first album for Redman's new quartet lineup already displays fantastic chemistry. Beautiful melodies anchor a set of mostly very tender compositions. He coaxes a sweet, rich tone out of both Soprano and Tenor Sax, and of course his improvisation is as exceptional as ever.


Oh Snap
Cecile McLorin Salvant
Nonesuch Records

The other exception: the title track from Oh Snap was, by far, my favorite song of 2025. A shocking fusion of jazz harmony with electronic music, carnatic-inflected vocal delivery, and thoughtful bittersweet lyrics, it is the most propulsive and joyful song I have heard in a long time. The album it lends its name is also unbridledly creative, packed to the brim with beautiful music. If anything keeps it from excellence it's that its stylistic heterogeneity prevents it feeling like a unified art object. But that's a small price to pay for the best album yet from this musical polymath. Genius is difficult to contain.


Cream
Kassa Overall
Warp

Hip-hop and jazz have always been in conversation with each other, since before Q-Tip rapped "my pops used to say it reminded him of bebop." And artists from Robert Glasper to Madlib have been exploring that connection for years. With CREAM, though, Kassa Overall takes a novel approach: he treats the beats from hip-hop classics (many of which were themselves built on samples from jazz recordings) as standards to be arranged and blown over. Simple, but remarkably effective.


Quiet Flow
Sam Yahel
La Reserve

The most recent album on this list, released only at the beginning of December. Of course, it's hard to make a bad record when the two other members of your trio are Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade, but the most compelling playing on the album actually comes from Yahel himself. His organ playing is the true highlight, as he coaxes nuances of tone and dynamic from the instrument that are rare even among the best jazz organists.


Gadabout Season
Brandee Younger
Impulse! Records

Gadabout Season takes jazz harp to new places. It is perhaps unavoidably in conversation with Alice Coltrane in particular, and with spiritual jazz in general. What's more surprising is how deeply it also draws from R&B, and how incredibly satisfying that aesthetic combination turns out to be. But ultimately, this is the record of an artist who has genuinely discovered their own personal voice, and the result is spectacular.

Honorable Mentions

Johnathan Blake, My Life Matters
Milena Casado, Reflection of Another Self
Sullivan Fortner, Southern Nights
Ari Hoenig, Tea for Three
David Kikoski, Weekend at Smalls
Charles Lloyd, Figure in Blue
Linda May Han Oh, Strange Heavens
Aaron Parks, By All Means
Jason Rigby, Mayhem
Jerome Sabbagh , Stand Up!
Jaleel Shaw, Painter of the Invisible
Yuhan Su, OVER the MOONs
Kalia Vandever, Another View

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