The best music I heard in 2025

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Another good year for music. Thanks to some lucky coincidences I saw the Sun Ra Arkestra, led by Knoell Scott, three times this year. Every show was different, and each a fun and life-affirming musical experience—see them if you can! Their most recent studio album is very charming, even if it lacks the wild avant-garde energy of yesteryear. The best-known standard-bearers of today’s jazz avant-garde, guitarist Mary Halvorson and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, both had outstanding albums this year (About Ghosts and Abstraction Is Deliverance) that have been widely reviewed; if you follow jazz you probably know about them already. I liked both records a lot, but for my list this year I wanted to highlight some other names. Here are my favorite discoveries from a year of listening, listed by date of original release: Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith – Defiant Life (2025). At 84, Smith remains astonishingly productive, a true jazz elder at the height of his powers. His second collaboration with pianist Iyer is if anything even more wrenchingly beautiful than the first, A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke from 2016; they should record more than once a decade. Smith’s abstract yet lyrical trumpet playing also appeared this year on another duet album, Angel Falls with Sylvie Courvoisier—also worth hearing but for me not quite at the same level—and two records with Danish guitarist Jakob Bro that I haven’t heard yet but look promising. Nels Cline – Consentrik Quartet (2025). One of the best small-group jazz albums of the year, out of a strong field. Cline’s quartet, featuring his guita…