Even if you aren’t actively seeking out jazz, it’s inescapable. It directly informs so much hip hop and electronic music, and we frequently hear it popping up in punk, metal, and indie rock too. It doesn’t hurt that the contemporary jazz world has recently been heavily embraced by world-famous people like André 3000, whose debut jazz album New Blue Sun appeared on our list of last year’s great jazz albums and who contributes to some of this year’s best jazz albums, or that another of this year’s standout jazz LPs came from one half of Fugazi. But even outside of a few recognizable-to-non-jazz-heads names, there was so much to love about jazz in 2024. The present-day greats are constantly finding new ways to innovate within the form, and, speaking from a personal standpoint, my favorite jazz albums of 2024 offered a type of escapism that nothing else I heard this year did. Whether it was being utterly consumed by the meditative ambience of artists like Nala Sinephro and Shabaka, or getting lost in the multi-genre mazes of artists like Kamasi Washington and Nubya Garcia, the experiences provided by the albums on this list were the gifts that kept on giving.
Read on for the list, in no particular order…
Nala Sinephro – Endlessness (Warp)
Nala Sinephro is a master of relaxation and suspense all at once. Her second and so far best album Endlessness effortlessly toes the line between ambient/electronic music and jazz, with pulsating arpeggiated synths, twinkling pianos, orchestral swells, airy textures, and the soaring horns of fellow UK jazz staples like Nubya Garcia, Sheila Maurice-Grey, and Ezra Collective’s James Mollison. A subtly effective rhythm section puts an extra stop in Endlessness‘ step when it’s needed and cuts out for entire extended passages when it’s not. Like Nala’s debut, the album broken up into a series of numbered movements that all share the same title (“Continuum 1, 2, 3, etc”), fitting for an album that functions best as one large piece. And for something so meditative, it might surprise you how consistently attention-grabbing it is.
Shabaka – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace + Possession EP (Impulse!)
As a member of Sons of Kemet, Shabaka and the Ancestors, The Comet Is Coming, and more, Shabaka has been at the forefront of modern jazz for years, but he traded his usual saxophone for woodwinds on 2022’s gorgeously ambient Afrikan Culture EP, and he keeps those same vibes going on his first full-length as Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, as well as on its accompanying EP Possession. Shabaka plays flute on almost every song, André 3000 contributes flute to “I’ll Do Whatever You Want,” and Carlos Niño–one of the core collaborators on André’s album–is the percussionist on most of this album too. Other marquee names include bass by Esperanza Spalding on multiple songs, Rhodes Chroma by jazz/electronic master Floating Points on “I’ll Do Whatever You Want,” and harp by Brandee Younger, strings by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and the blissful ambience is broken up by some guest vocalists, including Moses Sumney on “Insecurities,” Saul Williams on “Managing My Breath, What Fear Had Become,” Laraaji on “I’ll Do Whatever You Want,” Eska on “Living,” Lianne La Havas on “Kiss Me Before I Forget,” Anum Iyapo on “Song of the Motherland,” and an especially show-stealing performance by ELUCID of Armand Hammer on the 7+ minute ambient jazz-rap centerpiece “Body To Inhabit.” Possession keeps those same vibes going, with ELUCID and his Armand Hammer partner billy woods both showing up, Esperanza Spalding contributing wordless singing, and André 3000 reprising his role for the nearly-eight-minute centerpiece “To The Moon.” The calming, ambient-leaning material of these projects feels almost like the polar opposite of his past projects, and Shabaka grabs and holds your attention just as much in this setting as he does in more maximal ones.
Nubya Garcia – Odyssey (Concord Jazz)
The London jazz scene has been on fire these past few years, and Nubya Garcia has played no small role in keeping it ablaze. In the four years since her 2020 bandleader debut Source, the saxophonist/composer has lent her talents to an array of other recordings, and now she returns with her sophomore album, Odyssey. Picking up where its predecessor left off, it honors jazz traditions and looks to the genre’s future all at once. At times, Nubya and her core band of Joe Armon-Jones (keys), Daniel Casimir (bass), Sam Jones (drums) offer up spiritual jazz compositions that are every bit as timeless and compelling as Nubya’s late ’60s/early ’70s-era forebears. At others, she brings in guest vocalists Esperanza Spalding, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Richie to experimental with neo-soul and R&B; branches out into dub/reggae (“Triumphance”); dips her toes into modern classical (“Water’s Path”); and repurposes elements of hip hop and electronic music in a live-band setting. It’s an album that reminds you why Nubya Garcia became a rising crossover star in the first place.
Kamasi Washington – Fearless Movement (Young)
Kamasi Washington’s first album in six years finds him taking the meaning of “jazz fusion” to new heights, using jazz as the glue as he hops between a variety of different styles of music. Funk legend George Clinton meets rising rapper (and Kendrick acolyte) D Smoke on “Get Lit.” Rap legend turned flute extraordinaire André 3000 instrumentally duets with Kamasi’s sax on one of the album’s most show-stealing moments, the nearly-nine-minute “Dream State.” Psychedelic soul harmonies and a dizzying Thundercat bass excursion make way for bars from Ras Kass and Teedra Moses’ twin sons Ras and Taj Austin (of LA rap group Coast Contra) on the nearly-eight-minute “Asha The First.” Singer Patrice Quinn helps Kamasi turn Zapp’s 1986 electro-R&B hit “Computer Love” into a sprawled-out jazz/soul odyssey that’s double the length of the original, and Kamasi mines similar territory when he brings in BJ the Chicago Kid on “Together.” The latter caps off Fearless Movements‘ guest-filled first half, and the album’s more instrumental-heavy second half is just as gripping. It’s a spiritual jazz journey (with occasional vocals from Patrice Quinn and Dwight Tribble) that finds Kamasi re-asserting himself as the modern heir to Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders’ throne, and it all builds up to the album’s first single and final song “Prologue,” an expansive re-imagining of Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla’s 1988 track of the same name. Kamasi repurposes Piazzolla’s bandoneon melody for sax, synthesizers swirl, and the song’s multiple drummers and percussionists give the piece a hypnotic drive that makes it an entirely different beast than its source material. “Prologue” may be based on something written nearly four decades ago, but it closes Fearless Movement out with its most futuristic moment.
The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis – The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis (Impulse!)
Jazz and punk have gone together perfectly since even before punk was called “punk” (look no further than side B of The Stooges’ Fun House), so it should come as no surprise that they make such great bedfellows on the first collaborative album from The Messthetics (whose lineup includes Fugazi members Joe Lally and Brendan Canty) and jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. It’s sort of the inverse of those Stooges songs; punk-infused jazz rather than jazz-infused punk. The album moves like a jazz album, and it also gets pretty distorted and heavy like a punk album. And on top of all that, Brendan Canty and Joe Lally’s groovy rhythm section is often as recognizable here as it is on those classic Fugazi albums. Music fans love to see worlds colliding, and The Messthetics and James
Vijay Iyer (with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey) – Compassion (ECM)
Compassion is New York jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer’s first album since last year’s widely acclaimed Arooj Aftab / Shahzad Ismaily collaboration Love In Exile and first with the trio of Vijay, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey since they debuted with 2021’s Uneasy. Like that album, Compassion is inseparable from the state of the world it’s being released into–“The unease I experience making art in times of suffering never goes away, nor should it; that tension shapes the creative process at every stage,” Vijay says in an essay accompanying the album. Having toured together since releasing Uneasy, the trio’s chemistry is even stronger on Compassion, and they continue to convey so much through these instrumentals. Vijay’s piano playing in particular is dripping with emotion.
Colin Stetson – The Love It Took To Leave You (Envision)
I don’t know if Colin Stetson’s new album technically counts as jazz, but he tags it as “jazz” on Bandcamp and it’s filled with skronky sax that scratches the jazz itch, so why not include it here? On top of Stetson’s dizzying sax work, the album’s also powered by droning, dark ambience that feels as cinematic as his recent film work. Listening to The Love It Took To Leave You can feel as much like watching an apocalyptic horror, and given the state of the world lately, it’s a pretty perfect soundtrack for real life too.
Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, Carlos Niño – Subtle Movements (Leaving)
If you liked André 3000’s ambient jazz album as much as the Grammys did, you’ll also want to make sure you’ve heard Subtle Movements, an album by the three core collaborators on André’s album: Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, and Carlos Niño. The same cosmic spirituality of New Blue Sun is present all throughout Subtle Movements, which shares its more famous companion album’s ability to feel minimal and towering all at once. Made with a mix of analog and electronic synths, bells, chimes, gongs, whistles, guitars, vocals, live-band sampling, and more, it’s an album that can make organic textures sound like electronically-manipulated ones and vice versa. Its long stretches of ambience can warp your sense of time, and sometimes its most powerful moments are in its tiniest details. Subtle Movements couldn’t be a more perfect title.
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem)
On his latest full-length, Tortoise member and prolific jazz leader Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet deliver immaculate vibes across four lengthy composition. It was recorded and mixed live, and it finds Parker and his band in full improvisational force, stirring together freeform jazz, groovy hip hop beats, post-rocky guitar patterns, hypnotic dub, and more. In true improv fashion, you can hear the band bringing these pieces to life in real time. It’s all about the journey.
Alice Coltrane – The Carnegie Hall Concert (Impulse!)
Last but definitely not least is an album that was recorded in 1971 but not released until this year, and which is absolutely one of 2024’s most crucial releases. On February 21, 1971, just one week after Alice Coltrane’s now-classic, massively influential Journey in Satchidananda came out, Alice and her band performed at NYC’s iconic Carnegie Hall for a benefit for Swami Satchidanda’s Integral Yoga Institute. Her band included two musicians who also played on Journey in Satchidananda (the equally-legendary Pharoah Sanders on sax and Cecil McBee on bass), along with saxophonist Archie Shepp (also a collaborator of Alice’s late husband John Coltrane, who played on his albums A Love Supreme and Ascension), drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis, bassist Jimmy Garrison, Kumar Kramer on harmonium, and Tusli Reynolds on tamboura. They performed four lengthy pieces: two from Journey in Satchidananda, and two of John’s compositions, including “Africa” from 1961’s Africa/Brass and “Leo.” The recording of “Africa” was unearthed for 2018’s single-track live album Carnegie Hall ’71, but this year Impulse! finally released the full concert, marking what is actually a rare official live album for the late Alice Coltrane. It should come as no surprise that hearing Alice Coltrane live in the Journey in Satchidananda era is about as good as it gets, but what might come as a surprise is how freshly entrancing this album sounds, even if you’ve played Journey in Satchidananda to death. Alice and both saxophonists take show-stopping solos that bring her late husband’s compositions to life in new ways, and Alice’s own compositions sound as timeless as ever. The spiritual jazz pioneer directly paved the way for some of the most widely-loved newer artists on this very list, and her performances of “Journey in Satchidananda” and “Shiva-Loka” on this album sound as current as any of them, and not because today’s greats aren’t innovative in their own ways. It would be a treat for The Carnegie Hall Concert to finally see the light of day in any era, but it’s some nice icing on the cake that it comes at a time when Alice Coltrane’s influence is more prevalent than ever.
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SEE ALSO:
* 50 Best Albums of 2024
* 30 Best Rap Albums of 2024
* 50 Best Punk Albums of 2024