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Don Ball’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2025

By Don Ball
December 8, 2025
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Whether these are best releases in 2025 or not, they are the ones that resonated most with me. And 2025 seemed a good year for guitarists; they were often a driving force on many of these recordings and an important element in the mood and atmosphere of the songs. There's Anthony Pirog on Skullcap's Snakes of Albuquerque, Radomir Milojkovic on Muriel Grossmann's Breakthrough, Marvin Sewell on NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd's Figure in Blue, Nels Cline leading his Consentrik Quartet and Mary Halvorson on her own About Ghosts and Adam O'Farrill's For These Streets (which seemed like companion releases with both featuring a core group of Halvorson, O'Farrill, Patricia Brennan and Tomas Fujiwara and assorted horn players and bassists), as well as teaming up with fellow guitarist Liberty Ellman on Ches Smith's Clone Row (and she is on several other recordings this year as well. Halvorson is very busy). Then there's the slew of acoustic guitarists on NEA Jazz Master Henry Threadgill's Listen Ship. Jacob Garchik tops that with TWO bands fronting three guitarists each on his Ye Olde 2 release (which, of course, includes Halvorson). All good stuff.

My faves this year, in alphabetical order by artist:

A Paradise In The Hold
Yazz Ahmed
Night Time Stories
2025

Of the Near and Far
Patricia Brennan
Pyroclastic Records
2025

Consentrik Quartet
Nels Cline
Blue Note Records
2025

Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time
Jacob Garchik
Yestereve Records
2025

Breakthrough
Muriel Grossmann
Dreamlandrecords
2025

About Ghosts
Mary Halvorson
Nonesuch Records
2025

The Hemphill Stringtet Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill
The Hemphill Stringtet
Out Of Your Head Records
2025

Rites & Revelations
Laura Jurd
New Soil
2025

Window
Kirk Knuffke
Royal Potato Family
2025

Apple Cores
James Brandon Lewis
Anti-
2025

Figure In Blue
Charles Lloyd
Blue Note Records
2025

Splash
Myra Melford
Intakt
2025

Around You Is A Forest
Thomas Morgan
Loveland Records
2025

Disquiet
The Necks
Northern Spy
2025

For These Streets
Adam O'Farrill
Out Of Your Head Records
2025

Créole Renaissance
Aruán Ortiz
Intakt Records
2025

Snakes of Albuquerque
Skullcap
Cuneiform Records
2025

Clone Row
Ches Smith
Otherly Love Records
2025

Listen Ship
Henry Threadgill
Pi Recordings
2025

Synchronicity
Jeong Lim Yang
Sunnyside Records
2025

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