Posted by NevilleMorley
https://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/12/the-year-in-music-2025/
http://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/12/the-year-in-music-2025/
One of the minor unexpected consequences of having a playlist of gentle, mostly piano trio jazz tracks designed to help me relax and drop off to sleep, that sometimes gets left on all night, is that it completely skews end-of-year listening stats. The number of quiet piano trio pieces on which Paul Motian is playing drums is indeed remarkable, but the claim that I’ve listened to him twice as much as any other artist doesn’t reflect the artists or albums I’ve actually listened to this year.
Since I’m not on Spotify, I wouldn’t have got the ‘Your listening age is 78’ message that various fellow-students on my jazz composition course have received; the system assumes “a tendency to listen to music from one’s formative years”, so in other words if you listen to a lot of records from the 1950s and 1960s, it assumes that your listening age is defined by how old someone would be if they’d started listening to them when they first came out. This does raise the intriguing possibility that I might be assigned a listening age in the low twenties, or even teenage, on the basis that most of the time I’m listening to a lot of contemporary stuff. Unless they automatically weight it against jazz on the basis that, at least in the UK, this tends to swing towards the middle-aged if not elderly, in which case the fact that I found the new The Last Dinner Party album rather disappointing, and for some reason haven’t listened to Lorde’s Virgin as much as I’d have expected, will certainly undermine my youthful credibility.
Anyway, what this means is that I have to curate my own ‘Year in Music’, rather than taking an app’s word for it – something which is being urged on us anyway as part of algorithm resistance. It seems rather unlikely that people will be hanging eagerly on my recommendations, but nevertheless I’ve decided to organise this into three different categories: my favourite new albums of 2025, my favourite other discoveries this year (i.e. old stuff that I’ve only just come across), and the already-familiar albums I’ve listened to the most.
Best of 2025 (new)
(10) Dino Saluzzi, Il Viejo Caminante. Given that Saluzzi is ninety, he’s a musician we need to cherish while we still have him. There’s a case that his greatest contributions have come when he’s challenged by, or even subordinate to, other musicians, rather than taking the lead, but perhaps it’s also possible to be challenged by new playing situations; here he appears with two guitarists, one of them his son. Hovers on the edge of a sort of easy listening (to be honest I’d rather hear him with a single pianist, or even just a single guitarist), but lovely and restful.
(9) Scandinavian Art Ensemble with Tomasz Stanko, Copenhagen Sessions. Obviously I’m going to lap up any new material from Stanko, my great jazz hero; these two volumes record a one-off meeting with a group of young Scandinavian (and Polish ex-pat) musicians, and it’s interesting to see how far he tries to step back and play as part of the ensemble, insofar as they let him. I prefer volume 2 as it reminds me more of his peerless work with the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, but they’re both great.
(8) Mary Halvorson Quartet, Anthony Braxton: Bagatelles. It’s not that I’m afraid of Anthony Braxton, to quote the Ganelin Trio song, but I’ve never got much of a handle on his music. This record may not help, as mostly it just sounds like Mary Halvorson in particularly rocking-out mode, plus occasional weird noises, but in any case it’s great. H/t to Erik Loomis on Lawyers Guns Money, without whose regular music posts I probably wouldn’t have found this (it gets listed under Braxton’s name and classified as ‘Classical’, which it really isn’t).
(7) David Helbock and Julia Hofer, Faces of Night. Especially notable for Hofer’s bass- and cello-playing – Helbock is quite understated compared to some of his earlier records, but his love of Prince songs shines through as usual, alongside some more traditional choices. This is fun! Which isn’t something that can be said about a lot of my listening preferences…
(6) Amir AlSaffer, New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal. The most recent release on this list, so I am still in the process of exploring what is quite a challenging listen, but this is a great example of interplay between four top musicians (including Tania Giannoulli on microtonal piano, which is why I got this in the first place) with just a day or so’s preparation/rehearsal. I would love to see this group live, as I suspect it might be completely different every time.
(5) Anouar Brahem, After the Last Sky. Yes, I would be quite happy to receive automatically every ECM jazz album issued, and in lots of ways this is utterly typical – small group, calm and almost chamber music, lots of emphasis on different interactions between the musicians, largely mid-paced. But when it clicks, it’s wonderful; I particularly love Anja Lachner’s cello here, and as in Brahem’s other albums, the meeting of eastern sounds and rhythms with more conventional Western European sounds and scales.
(4) Tomasz Stańko, Polish Radio Sessions Vols 1-6. It really is a bumper year for Stanko fans; the only thing wrong with this collection, which embraces many different aspects of his work in the 1970s and the 1980s, from early work in the same idiom as the Krzysztof Komeda group to his experiments in fusion, is that by the time I heard about it (completely by accident) it seemed as if the cd edition had sold out. Yes, it’s available on Apple Music, but I can only imagine the accompanying liner notes (maybe even archive photos?) that I’m missing out on. Now hoping that this may have been a hiccup on the Bandcamp listing… Anyway, these are fabulous in different ways; I’m particularly keen on Vol. 1.
(3) Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson, Bone Bells. Yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of Halvorson since seeing the Thumbscrew trio last autumn. Not entirely persuaded by her most recent biggish group records, to be honest, but this is beautiful – constantly hovering on the edge of atonality, or indeed microtonality when it comes to Halvorson’s string-bending; endlessly varied and intricate.
(2) Benedicte Maurseth, Mirra. Yes, but is it Proper Jazz..? Honestly, who cares? It has Mats Eilertsen on it, which is how I came across it in the first place, but primarily this is a beautiful bit of folkish improvisation dominated by Maurseth’s Hardanger fiddle, unmistakably Scandinavian. And I cannot resist the idea of a concept album based on the life cycle of the reindeer.
(1) Linda May Han Oh, Strange Heavens. This is a delicate, beautiful record, which I think has a lot to do with Ambrose Akinmusire’s trumpet sound, as Tyshawn Sorey’s drums and the leader’s bass are more of a rolling storm. Obviously as a bass player I like the fact that this demonstrates how far the bass can establish and then play with the harmonic structure without any need for a piano player. In some ways, a very European ECM record…
Older Stuff Discovered
Geri Allen & Kurt Rosenwinkel, A Lovesome Thing. Having seen Rosenwinkel play these songs with Gerald Clayton in Berlin in the summer, as the act playing at my favourite jazz venue that coincided with my visit and seemed likely to appeal to my wife, I then had to listen to the original album – and there’s no doubt about the superiority of Allen’s playing.
Obara International, Komeda. Picked up in an excellent little record shop in Wroclaw when I was there in the summer. I can never have too many different versions of songs by my favourite composer.
Jazz Sabbath, Jazz Sabbath. Very silly but well done and fun. I’d have gone to see them on their tour this year, except that Anne heard the record and hated it.
Jack DeJohnette, New Directions in Europe. Prompted to work through the back catalogue as a result of his death. The studio album is okay, but this live recording is brilliant, especially Lester Bowie.
A whole pile of Ganelin Trio records. It took me years to track down the two cds I own, after the write-ups in the old Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD made them sound like something I would like (which proved to the the case) – and suddenly they’re all on Apple Music and available for purchase? Some things do get better with time.
Jan Johansson, assorted records. Introduced to his album of jazzified Swedish folk melodies by my jazz composition tutor, which was very pleasant – and maybe cutting edge at the time – but a little bland. Learning that he wrote the theme music to Pippi Langstrumpf was enough to prompt me to explore more of his records, and WOW – echoes of 1960s Polish jazz, in the exploration of free and avant-garde ideas in a very European style. Some especially good versions of A Night in Tunisia, both trio and small group. His early death makes it a real ‘what might have been’ moment in Swedish jazz.
Continuing Favourites (in no particular order)
Tomasz Stanko, Litania
Mette Henriette, Drifting
Arild Andersen, Daniel Sommer & Rob Luft, As Time Passes
Keith Jarrett, At The Deer Head Inn
Mats Eilertsen, And Then Comes The Night
Michele Rabbia, Gianluca Petrella & Eivind Aarset, Lost River
Aki Takase’s Japanic, Forte
Tord Gustavsen Trio, Changing Places
Thumbscrew, Wingbeats
Ambrose Akinmusire, Owl Song
Emily Remler, Cookin’ At The Queens
Gary Brunton, Night Bus
Avishai Cohen, Into the Silence
Dino Saluzzi, Once Upon A Time…Far Away In The South
Françoise Hardy, Message personel
Vijay Iyer Trio, Compassion
Joachim Kühn, Komeda (Live)
Miles Davis, Jack Johnson
Lorenzo De Finti, Lullabies from an Unknown Time
Miles Davis, The Cellar Door Sessions
Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Insen
Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Faithful (especially Ballad of the Sad Young Men)
Peter Brötzmann, Die Like A Dog
https://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/12/the-year-in-music-2025/
http://thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/12/the-year-in-music-2025/
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daringfireballfeed_feed) wrote2025-12-12 11:22 pm
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