Dean Nardi's Best Jazz Albums Of 2024

This has been the year that musicians collaborated and cross-pollinated, experimented within and outside jazz. Best of all, some of the more avant-garde musicians seemed to find value in sculpting their music like a potter with clay, trimming away the excess, shaping a harmonious vessel. Those were some of the records I listened to more than once anyway.

That said, handpicking from the albums that caught my ear in 2024, I appreciated the times when jazz musicians stretched the boundaries of their form and got a little weird—and the moments when more outré musicians weren't afraid to go a little straight ahead. In general, this list represents the music piled on the shelf marked "Not ready to be filed in the cabinet to make room for 2025 releases.

Several new (to me) musicians found their way into my CD player in 2024. It almost seemed that around any corner of either the music press or Bandcamp lurked a record beckoning to be heard like Lauren Bacall's come-hither line to Humphrey Bogart in the classic film, To Have and Have Not: "Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

It might be just an unexpected combination of sounds; it might be an artist honing his style one song at a time. Some of this year's best albums were eagerly awaited while others arrived via stranger pathways. It mattered not. These 20 pushed the boundaries of greatness ever so slightly, enough to leave a lasting impression.

All Species Parade
Jenny Scheinman
Royal Potato Family






My Prophet
Oded Tzur
ECM Records






Echoes Of The Inner Prophet
Melissa Aldana
Blue Note Records






Beyond This Place
Kenny Barron
Artwork Record






The Blue Land
Matthieu Bordenave
ECM Records






Riley
Riley Mulherkar
Westerlies Records






Spirit Stronger Than Blood
Frank London
ESP-Disk






Visions
Norah Jones
Blue Note Records






Transylvanian Dance
Lucian Ban
ECM Records






Origin Story (Live At The Velvet Note)
Russell Gunn
Self Produced






Artform Revisited
Louis Hayes
Savant Records






Plot Armor
Taylor Eigsti
GroundUP Music






Rong Weicknes
Fievel Is Glauque
Fat Possum Records






The Touch of Time
Arve Henriksen
ECM Records






Tone Forest
Tone Forest
Outside in Music






The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
Charles Lloyd
Blue Note Records






The Messthetics And James Brandon Lewis
The Messthetics And James Brandon Lewis
Impulse! Records






Francesca
David Murray
Intakt Records






Spi-raling Horn
Jason Stein, Marilyn Crispell, et al
Irritable Mystic






Gilad Hekselman
Life, at the Village Vanguard
Diggers Factory