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Best jazz albums of 2025 were made by young mavericks and veteran greats alike

Today, Marshall Allen's debut album New Dawn, listed as the oldest male debut, was released at age 100, according to the reviewer’s 2025 favorites list.
Fresh-Faced artists reshaped 2025 jazz, including Brandon Woody, Xhosa Cole, Milena Casado, and Samara Joy, who has five Grammy wins, prompting a wide-ranging year-end roundup.
Xhosa Cole, 28, enlivens Monk and Ellington, while Patricia Brennan's six-piece Amaryllis offers cinematic scope, and Mary Halvorson and Joshua White deliver standout projects.
Linda May Han Oh's Strange Heavens pairs her with Tyshawn Sorey and Ambrose Akinmusire, producing music that ranges from combustible to contemplative, while Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith's Defiant Life reflects the year's thematic weight.
Together these releases suggest genre fusion and respect for jazz roots, as Yazz Ahmed's A Paradise In The Hold blends Arabian melodies with jazz and Ambrose Akinmusire and the Branford Marsalis Quartet show adventurous yet traditional styles.

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Best jazz albums of 2025 were made by young mavericks and veteran greats alike

Rising young talents and revered veterans helped take jazz to a multitude of exciting new destinations in 2025. But the most notable debut album of the year, the aptly titled “New Dawn,” came from a musician who is very likely the world’s veteran living jazz artist. Saxophonist Marshall Allen, who turned 101 in May, is now in the Guinness Book of Records as “the oldest person to release a debut solo album (male).” Allen was, in fact, only 100 wh…

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