Playlist: The Best Jazz Albums & Tracks Of 2025

This year’s picks spotlight bold new statements from jazz innovators. Sam Wilkes returns with Public Records, a concise yet expansive set of originals recorded live in Brooklyn, blending his warm Fender bass with shimmering guitar and Moog textures for a syncretic, groove-rich sound. Cécile McLorin Salvant dazzles with Oh Snap? Performance, weaving her signature storytelling into daring harmonic turns and unexpected textures—a masterclass in reinvention. At 100 years old, Marshall Allen astonishes with New Dawn, his first solo album—a cosmic suite that fuses Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist DNA with lush strings and Neneh Cherry’s vocals, oscillating between meditative calm and celestial fire. UK trio GoGo Penguin dives deep on Necessary Fictions, their most adventurous record yet, layering modular synths and cinematic piano riffs into hypnotic rhythms that blur the line between acoustic jazz and electronica. And Kassa Overall flips the script on CREAM, reimagining hip-hop classics like “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Big Poppa” as virtuosic jazz improvisations—no samples, just raw, live interplay that bridges two Black American traditions with fearless creativity. And that’s just the beginning—this playlist is packed with discoveries that will keep you exploring long after the last note fades.