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The 10 best jazz albums of 2024


A Mercury prize winner, a host of fresh collaborations and a posthumous release of a much-lauded live performance are all among the year’s standouts

Korean rhythms (played by Snarky Puppy drummer Keita Ogawa) shift to fast moving jazz; Born in 1935 lets Gil Evans-like chords unleash Maria Schneider alto-sax stalwart Dave Pietro, and Akinmusire’s vaulting solo on the ghostly You Are My Universe is exquisite. Photograph: Luke MarantzIn the 1960s, Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians helped to introduce a raft of young jazz originals, including multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and composer Henry Threadgill – along with Mississippi trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and the gospel-influenced keyboardist Amina Claudine Myers. Photograph: Monika S JakubowskaSeven years after the Anglo-Polish singer, violinist and composer Alice Zawadzki was commissioned by the Bath festival to form any band she fancied playing with but hadn’t yet, her partnership with pianist-composer Fred Thomas and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado produced this ethereal navigation of wistful European, Latin American and Sephardic Jewish songs.

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