*The WDR Big Band's "Bluegrass" (MCG Jazz), feat. mandolinist Mike Marshall, violinist Darol Anger and saxophonist/ WDR music director Bob Mintzer, earned plenty of spins on "Breaking Jazz" over the last year. But was it good enough to earn being called Breaking Jazz's Top Album of the Year? Here's a hint, it's on the list, but you'll have to keep checking to see if it earns the top spot.
Between now and the end of the calendar year, I’ll be revealing my favorite albums of the past year. I’ll present a new one each day or every couple of days, one at a time. It’ll be a list that will continue to grow as we approach the final day of 2025. Whether on paper or on digital screen, lists are inert, but for our purposes you might liken this list to something organic, a thing you can almost see growing in real time, like jazz itself.
This first group of ten albums comes from a group of musicians I call The Varsity. These are artists of proven, consistent excellence. They don’t audition for anyone anymore. They’ve developed signature sounds — and yet, they’re always evolving.
Note: There is nothing definitive about this list, except that it is mine. It doesn’t speak for jazz as a whole, nor does it attempt to prescribe how anyone else (but me) ought to define jazz or the scope of its boundaries; it speaks only for the Breaking Jazz universe as I’ve conceived it.
Airing every Sunday evening from 6:30 to 8 p.m., “Breaking Jazz” brings you the music and musicians of the moment — jazz as it’s being played today.
Breaking Jazz, to me, champions diversity of sound within and across the jazz landscape. It champions the music and musicians of the moment, musical omnivores with superb jazz training, the products of which are truly awe-inspiring technique, facility, and feel. How about respect for the giants on whose shoulders they stand? That reverence for tradition; the curiosity about history, timelines, lineages…it’s all there. These are artists who’ve had great mentors, and jazz is about nothing if not that. L’dor v’dor. Generation to generation.
They make music and leave the categorizing to the record labels and publicists.
If all that sounds a bit too postmodern for you, I get it. Stick to the rivers and lakes you’re used to. The best thing about jazz today is that the waters are warm and teeming with life everywhere! I’ve asked my colleagues here at the radio station to share their own year-end best-of lists with me, and I hope they choose to do so. I will happily publish their lists here, on our humble website, right alongside my own. My hope is to provide our audience with jazz’s entire sonic kaleidoscope.
So over the next couple weeks, I’ll present my favorite albums of the year. Not necessarily the best, but those that feel most representative of the Breaking Jazz aesthetic, such as it is. As we get closer to the new year, I’ll unveil Part II of this series, my favorite of those presently on the come-up.
I call this group my Select Team.
The future of the Varsity, the Select Team is assembled of young, up-and-coming talent with less name recognition right now…but that’s only temporary. The Select Team exists to push the Varsity, to prevent against laurel resting. It is not unprecedented for the Select Team to upstage the Varsity if and when the senior club grows sluggish, complacent, or static.
It’s not a matter of if the Select Team becomes the new Varsity; it’s just a matter of when…
In the meantime, though, we’ll start with 10 brilliant records — covering the expansive cross-section of jazz’s sonic palette — by the established ones, those from whom genius is consistently expected and most consistently delivered: The Varsity.
Coming in at No. 10 in Breaking Jazz's Varsity Category...
Brad Mehldau: Ride Into the Sun, released Aug. 29 | Nonesuch Records
Earlier this month, Brad Mehldau’s “Ride into the Sun” was nominated for a Grammy at this February’s awards in the Best Alternative Jazz Album category.
Hearing Mehldau play Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake is like watching how Cézanne might use watercolors on canvas to reinterpret an Ansel Adams photograph. Mehldau’s sorcery is nothing short of supernatural. But it’s also incredibly humble. He brings colors to the fore with so much respect for the source material that he makes you believe they’d been there the entire time, just dormant, waiting to be unlocked. He’s the type of guy who applies just the right amount of elbow grease to open the most stubborn of pickle jars only to credit those who attempted before him with doing all the heavy lifting by loosening it up.
And, to be sure, the musical muses he so thoughtfully chooses (or, maybe better stated, choose him) do deserve a lot of credit; Mehldau can’t get blood from a stone, so to speak, and it doesn’t serve him to try. The trick is, he trusts his massive ears. He hears what’s there, of course, but, most importantly, he hears what’s not quite there but could be; he hears the ghost notes and feels the unexpressed emotional contours of a piece of music…and then he re-animates them.
In the 1990s, the chemical company BASF had a TV ad that went something like this: “At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy; we make a lot of the products you buy better.”
So it’s kind of like that with Mehldau and Ride Into the Sun, his tribute to the late indie/folk singer-songwriter Elliot Smith. But, then, also…this album presents four incredible Smith-inspired Mehldau originals.
Prior to making this album centered around the late Elliot Smith’s songbook, Mehldau had worked with Smith’s producer, Jon Brion, on two albums, 2002’s “Largo” and 2010’s “Highway Rider.”
So, how you like them apples, BASF?!
Understanding Mehldau requires close listening, but he makes it easy; this music draws you in as comfortably and naturally as going home. The massively talented Chris Thile contributes voice and mandolin to two tracks, unforgettably so on “Colorbars,” where Thile presents the tone of Smith’s clever lyrics faithfully, nailing the addictive personality’s self-loathing side square and true.
Breaking Jazz’s favorite cuts: “The White Lady Loves You More,” “Sunday,” “Sweet Adeline,” “Sweet Adeline Fantasy,” “Colorbars,” “Satellite”
Coming in at No. 9 in Breaking Jazz's Varsity Category…
Anthony Wilson Nonet: House of the Singing Blossoms, released Aug. 29 | Sam First Records
Recorded before a live audience at Sam First in Los Angeles, the Anthony Wilson Nonet’s “House of the Singing Blossoms” presents a full compliment of musical flavors, from heavenly chamber jazz to rollicking soul jazz, amplifying the essence of works by Keith Jarrett, Joe Zawinul, Ben Wendel, The Beatles, and the bandleader’s father, Gerald Wilson. Photo by Brian Bixby.
This one’s something of a homecoming for the celebrated LA-based guitarist and son of legendary bandleader Gerald Wilson. Long a member of Diana Krall’s quartet, the now 57-year-old Wilson is once again here at the head of a nonet, the nine-piece “little big band” format that first catapulted him to notoriety in the late 1990s when his first two albums as a leader — 1997’s self-titled debut and 1998’s Goat Hill Junket — received Grammy noms for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance.
Recorded before an engaged and enthusiastic live audience at Sam First in LA and released on that venue’s in-house record label, House of the Singing Blossoms finds Wilson reinvigorated by the format and its inherent dynamism — and, this time, by his own admission, committed to, let’s say, a more laissez-fair approach to bandleading. “I’ve been feeling for quite some time that I wanted to revisit that instrumentation, the whole ethos of the larger ensemble,” he writes in the album’s liners. “And, over a period of years…I learned to have less of a hold over what we were doing, turning it into the kind of ensemble that incorporated improvisation in a more open, natural way.”
Photo by Brian Bixby.
Required, of course, is a band full of musicians Wilson trusts implicitly and self-assuredness in how his own musical sensibility has developed. The lynch-pin of it all might be the band’s pianist Gerald Clayton, in whom Wilson finds something of a musical kindred spirit. “I’ve come to depend on the beauty of what he… embodies as a musician,” he says of Clayton, himself the son of another jazz legend, the bassist John Clayton, “[which is] both a real, abiding interest in all the traditional elements of what we love, and then a look forward and outward that isn’t super contained by a traditional identity.”
That’s a needle Wilson and co. are able to thread owing, at least in part, to the makeup of the band, which is intergenerational and, in some instances, intra-familial. Twin brothers Mark and Alan Ferber — drums and trombone, respectively — are veterans of past iterations of Wilson’s nonet and have led some of the most acclaimed big bands in recent memory. Then there’s the sonically omnivorous tenorman Bob Reynolds, who’s won three Grammys with global fusion sensations Snarky Puppy while balancing more traditional jazz-club-style gigs with modern masters like Aaron Goldberg, Gregory Hutchinson, and Brian Blade.
It’s the youths, though, who push this one over the top, acknowledges Wilson. Alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe, bari sax man Henry Solomon, bassist Anna Butterss, and French hornist/trumpeter CJ Camerieri are all increasingly influential players in an LA scene that feels overwhelmingly stacked with early career musicians who are ambitious, scary talented and respectful but not beholden. It’s all a little terrifying but also exhilarating.
“I like to be surrounded by people…who most of all make me feel inspired by their presence and energy,” says Wilson of his affection for the group’s younger cohort.
Photo by Brian Bixby.
One thing this album really proves is that youthful energy does not come at the expense of beauty and sensitivity. The presentation of Joe Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way,” — originally written for Miles Davis’s “electric” 1969 release of the same name — is simply sublime. Nearly three and a half-minutes of Wilson’s searching, atmospheric solo guitar punctuated by a five-horn harmony, the sheer beauty of which is hard to describe. Do this: think of the person who means more to you than anyone in the world, and then try not to cry. Whomever taught Wilson to write such beautifully textured horn arrangements deserves an “atta boy” from the gods. Seriously. Transition next to Wilson’s arrangement of Lennon and McCartney’s “Because.” Don’t overthink it. If there’s another place — a next place — this is the music playing in the elevators there.
Other highlights include:
“Walk Tall,” a warm, rollicking boogaloo originally written by Zawinul for Cannonball Adderley, highlighted here by the kind of weighty, substantial bottom — in the form of Solomon’s bari sax — that one expects in a premium rocks glass.
Ben Wendel's "Simple Song," presented faithfully as an epic musical narrative, with Clayton (piano), Wilson (guitar), and Reynolds (tenor saxophone) discharging their substantial storytelling duties with aplomb and brio.
And takes on a pair of Keith Jarrett tunes — “Introduction/Yaqui Indian Folk Song” and “Le Mistral” — from 1974’s Treasure Island, with the former serving as a beautiful introduction to Butterss (bass) and McCabe (alto sax), to say nothing of the titular Native American tribe, and the latter an unadulterated soul-jazz hip-shaker that's a tonal showcase for Wilson, the trombone playing Ferber, and, well, pretty much the entire sax section.
The truly crazy part is that this won't be last doff of the cap to the Keith Jarrett songbook this best-of list will contain. In fact, it’s not even the last reference to Jarrett’s 1974 catalog! That’s just a hint of what’s to come as Breaking Jazz’s countdown of the best albums of the year from the fully tenured professoriat — aka The Varsity — continues.
Breaking Jazz’s favorite cuts: "In a Silent Way," "Walk Tall," "Because," "Introduction & Yaqui Indian Folk Song," "Simple Song," & "Triple Chase"
P.S. Yes, I think this album's great, but don't just take my word for it! Hear Wilson's own thoughts on the making of this exceptional new release. In early November, Wilson guested on the award-winning "Inside Art" with Dave Drexler, ahead of his local appearance as part of the Athenaeum's Fall Jazz Series on Nov. 9. Catch that interview in its entirety HERE.
Coming in at No. 8 in Breaking Jazz's Varsity Category…
Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind, released June 20 | Red Hook Records
Amina Claudine Myers’s “Solace of the Mind” doesn’t try to sell you anything, but it sure is generous in its giving spirit. And movingly beautiful. Photo by Crystal Blake.
Raised on God and gospel, pianist Amina Claudine Myers has gone from the pastoral Arkansas church choirs of her youth to the forefront of avant-garde jazz, playing with Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, Lester Bowie and others associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and its offshoots, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
With Solace of the Mind, she's come home again.
This record makes me think of the delayed reaction we often have to lessons we’re taught when we’re younger. Wisdom comes from perspective, and perspective comes from time and experience. When you get to be Amina Claudine Myers’s age (named an NEA Jazz Master in 2024, she’s been a professional musician now for six decades), you may not remember every aspect of your youthful education but you’ve got all the tools to apply to — and find profound meaning in — those lessons you do remember.
You get the overwhelming sense while listening to this one that this is the true distillation of Myers’s soul in musical form; it’s who she really is at her core. It makes sense, then, that every time I play a track from this album, I picture in my mind’s ear a narrator in a Ken Burns documentary waxing poetic about “going home.”
Take the opener, “African Blues.” From here on out, if you’re going to make a documentary about, say…the history of Negro Leagues baseball, and you don’t include this rendition, it’d almost feel like malpractice.
So somber. So solemn. So dignified. In the way causes once were.
In a way, there’s a real sadness in listening to recordings like these. We’ve become so conditioned to thinking in motifs and presenting them with passing authenticity that the sanctity, the actual transcendence, of spiritual music like this — after being filtered through our postmodern lens where everything’s been said and every emotion felt and every revelation made and every epiphany had — too often falls flat, reduced to a well-meaning but ultimately soulless simulacrum. But the real thing did exist once, a long, long time ago. And whomever those spirits talked to those many years ago when things were still real — it’s directly from them that Amina Claudine Myers seems to have learned to speak through music.
Overseen by former ECM producer turned Red Hook Records founder Sun Chung, who made a point of stressing melody over improvisation in striving for a collection of solo piano tunes with hymn-like effect, Solace of the Mind revisits staples of Myers’s catalogue (“Africa Blues,” “Cairo,” and “Song for Mother E,” to name a few) but presents them conspicuously stripped of adornment. It all feels very intentional on Myers’s part. The goal: to communicate her faith and spirituality in the most straightforward way possible.
“I feel that in everything I do, God has always been in it, then and now,” Myers told JazzTimes’s A.D. Amorosi earlier this year. “He speaks in small miracles. I remember in Chicago, going to a blues club, hearing this 18-year-old bass player and telling him that his music was from God. He looked at me as if I was crazy. I’m not, though. God is in all music.”
There certainly would be much less likely places for God or godliness to reside. Still, Solace is never didactic; there’s no preaching or proselytizing. As jazz journalist Howard Mandel writes in the liner notes, the album offers “respites from strife without rhetoric or faith professed in anything but sound itself.” In other words, the music speaks for itself and stands on its own. There’s no need for a press release telling reviewers “what the album is about.” Show, don’t tell, applies to music, too. At least it used to. If Myers and Chung have anything to say about it, it will once again.
Breaking Jazz’s favorite cuts: “African Blues,” “Steal Away,” “Song for Mother E,” “Cairo,” “Hymn for John Lee Hooker”
