For anyone in the habit of touting jazz as a living art form, it can feel both nourishing and a little perilous to stand in awe at the wonders of the past. It's especially tricky in a year when some of the most eagerly greeted new releases — like a McCoy Tyner & Joe Henderson dispatch from 1966, for which I wrote a liner essay — hail from some distant shore. What does that say about the current state of the music? How can today's beleaguered artists possibly compete?
These questions are worth posing, but they don't really identify the problem. Because the jazz tradition lives on a continuum, fresh intel can arrive in any form, from any point in time. With that in mind, I've compiled a list of the 16 finest jazz discoveries from 2024. It's actually two lists, which I've divided evenly under the headers "Then" and "Now." This shouldn't be seen as a tally of the year's best jazz albums, though a few of them would make such a list; instead, it's meant as a guide to standout offerings from old masters and new faces alike.
As the designation implies, "Then" is an assortment of previously unissued archival material, mostly recorded live. I set my criteria to prioritize music that alters perceptions, or greatly expands the available public record. (This is the only reason to exclude, say, the Miles Davis Quintet compendium Miles in France 1963 & 1964, which finds a game-changing band in transition. That band's story has already been well illuminated elsewhere.) The earliest date here is 1959, but most of this trove was gathered over the last 30 years or so — a helpful reminder that mining the past isn't always a matter of deep retrieval.
Which brings us to "Now," a collection of thrilling breakout statements from eight artists across the style spectrum. With one or two exceptions, these are debuts. That cutoff explains why we don't see saxophonist Isaiah Collier, who with his band The Chosen Few released not one but two rafters-raising albums this year. (His debut landed in 2018.) Like Collier, a couple of these artists dropped two releases, bringing our total here up to 10 albums.
Before we dive in, a final thought: There's a lot of evidence here to confound our binary, including the fact that some of the musicians from "Then" are still challenging expectations today. I'm thinking of Cyrille, and Frisell, and Pérez, and Blade. I'm thinking of DeJohnette, who is 82, but was all of 23 when he took the stage at Slugs' with Henderson and Tyner. "There was an excitement about getting on the bandstand to see what we could get into," DeJohnette recalled in a recent interview on The Late Set. "So it had that feeling, [as if] it might be the last time we ever play." Jazz will keep thriving as long as that spirit endures.
Then
McCoy Tyner & Joe Henderson
Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs'
There's almost no way to overhype this incredible 1966 recording, which captures a moment when post-bop articulacy and avant-garde fervor were in molten dialogue. If it hasn't already, it will cement Joe Henderson's stature as a first-tier tenor saxophone titan, and deepen reverence for McCoy Tyner's genius at the piano. But there's just as much reason to herald the work of Henry Grimes on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, each operating on a superhuman plane.
Alice Coltrane
The Carnegie Hall Concert
The term "spiritual jazz" has rarely felt more warranted than it does in the case of this absorbing 1971 concert tape, from an all-star benefit for Swami Satchidananda's Integral Yoga Institute. Alice Coltrane — serene on harp, surging at the piano — presides over a mixed cohort of fellow seekers, like tamboura player Tulsi Reynolds, along with heavyweights-in-training, like saxophonists Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders. Enlightenment takes many paths.
Sonny Rollins
Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings
The banner Sonny Rollins release this year was A Night at the Village Vanguard: The Complete Masters, a deluxe reissue of an iconic trio engagement in 1957. (I contributed to the booklet.) This captivating set captures the Saxophone Colossus in the same garrulous format a couple of years later, with bassist Henry Grimes and a succession of assertive drummers (Pete La Roca, Joe Harris, and the legendary Kenny Clarke). Essential? Darn close.
Roy Hargrove's Crisol
Grand-Terre
A surprise sequel to trumpeter Roy Hargrove's late-'90s classic Habana, this is our sole archival gem that was recorded in a studio, with the clear intention of commercial release. When it made NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2024, I compared Grand-Terre favorably to its predecessor, calling it "an even more fluent and focused celebration of Afro-Cuban musical lineage, with Hargrove and his Crisol band both in exceptionally strong form."
Keith Jarrett Trio
The Old Country
A surprise sequel to pianist Keith Jarrett's early '90s classic At the Deer Head Inn, this is a testament from the same one-time-only trio stand, with Gary Peacock on bass and Paul Motian on drums. Nothing about this music suggests second-tier remainders; it's all brightly realized, joyous, crisp and alive.
Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy
The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp
Pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy were frequent collaborators, and indisputable masters, at the time of this Belgian concert in 1995. Their smartly discursive rapport has an adaptable engine in the rhythm team of bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It's a joy to hear such swinging epiphany, which still has lessons to impart.
Wayne Shorter Quartet
Celebration, Volume 1
Before he left this earthly plane last year, saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter spent quality time with his own recorded archive, planning a trove of live albums. The series commences with a Stockholm Jazz Festival set from a decade ago: a typically expeditionary jaunt by his fearless, peerless quartet, which can make any form feel elastic and new. Pianist Danilo Pérez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade all deserve commendation, but it's the sound of Shorter's dartlike soprano and squawking tenor that will quicken the pulse.
Ron Miles
Old Main Chapel
Cornetist-composer Ron Miles, who died in 2022, had few musical partners as perfectly attuned to his introspective wavelength as guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade. Their rapport as a trio on Old Main Chapel, from a 2011 concert in Boulder, dynamically favors a low, patient simmer — but in its extravagant deep focus, illuminates a world within a world.
Now
Riley Mulherkar
Riley
Over the last decade, Riley Mulherkar has earned acclaim as an unflappable member of The Westerlies, a new-music brass quartet. His long-awaited solo debut beautifully balances a reverence for Louis Armstrong with the conviction that jazz can only move forward — a point underscored by some subtle programming and sound design by co-producers Rafiq Bhatia (of Son Lux) and Chris Pattishall (who's on piano here).
Vanisha Gould
She's Not Shiny, She's Not Smooth / Life's a Gig
Two of the best jazz vocal albums released this year, against stiff competition, were the work of Vanisha Gould, who combines a blues cry with a storyteller's point of view. Life's a Gig presents her in sparse yet fully furnished dialogue with pianist Chris McCarthy, who reappears on She's Not Shiny, a set of playful and pointed original songs. These are Gould's first solo albums, and they introduce a major talent.
Ganavya
Daughter of a Temple / like the sky I've been too quiet
Two of the best jazz-adjacent vocal albums released this year, against stiff competition, were the work of Ganavya, a serenely transfixing vocalist who draws from South Indian traditions but collaborates intently with jazz improvisers and iconography. This is music of low surface tension and deep flowing undercurrent, mysterious and sustaining.
Devin Daniels Quintet
LesGo!
Strictly speaking, the alto saxophonist Devin Daniels released his first album a couple of years ago. But this ambitious young Los Angeles native undeniably broke out in 2024, on tour with Herbie Hancock and at the helm of his own quintet. In the liner notes to LesGo!, from a blazing live session at the club Sam First, I quote Daniels' own appraisal: "We're out the gates running." It's a good read on a hyperdynamic peer group with something to prove.
Julien Knowles
As Many, As One
Julien Knowles, a key member of the Devin Daniels Quintet, presents a more controlled burn on his auspicious debut, which likewise features a five-piece band with his trumpet and Daniels' alto saxophone in a mercurial front line (atop Benjamin Ring's agile drumming). The compositions, sometimes accommodating a string quartet, show Knowles to be a sophisticated thinker with a gift for unforced connection.
Sarah Hanahan
Among Giants
Sarah Hanahan, recently profiled on Jazz Night in America, exudes a taut incandescence on alto saxophone, and she's admirably unfazed by the giants this album invokes — pianist Marc Cary, bassist Nat Reeves and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, a blue-chip rhythm team that could push any soloist around. Hanahan, whether waxing lyrical or spitting fire, makes it clear that she won't be budged.
Luther Allison
I Owe It All to You
There's a fat, ringing gospel tonality in Luther Allison's piano sound, which has been heard to fine effect behind one of his contemporaries, singer Samara Joy. On his assured first outing, Allison leads a locomotive trio — and stakes a conscious, credible claim to the lineage of blues-rooted pianists from the South, like Mulgrew Miller, James Williams and Donald Brown.
Zacchae'us Paul
Jazz Money
Jazz singing is always, on some level, a polyglot proposition — but rarely does it achieve the breezy confluence found on Jazz Money, a head-turning debut by Zacchae'us Paul. Here's a lithe, swaggering studio product that cribs from trap, millennial R&B, ambient hip-hop and multiple Afro-Caribbean traditions. At its center is a satiny voice, a corps of ace collaborators and the insistence that Black music is still, as Amiri Baraka notably argued, a changing same.
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