Best New Music of 2025

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Album of the Year

Concerti per violoncello by Hanna Salzenstein & Le Consort.

Runners up

  • Stygian Wavz, Envy of None

  • Mark Lettieri Group Meets WDR Big Band at Studio 4, Mark Lettieri, WDR Big Band

  • Abracadabra, Beatrice Berrut

Other notable albums of 2025:

Ambient

The Reverent Sky (Steve Roach)

Classical

Guess Who? (Olga Pashchenko)

Ravel: Fragments (Bertrand Chamayou)

J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (Phantasm)

Sleep Circle (Max Richter, Louisa Fuller & Max Ruisi)

Shostakovich: The Piano Concertos & Solo Works (Yuja Wang, Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons)

Classical Crossover

Peter Gregson (Peter Gregson)

The Summer Portraits (Ludovico Einaudi)

Downtempo

Scapes (Data Rebel)

Chrome Ocean (Data Rebel)

Jazz

Barn Sessions, Vol. 1 (Four80East)

New Age

Where the River Widens (Erik Wøllo)

Smooth Jazz

Fasten Up (Yellowjackets)

Best Music of 2024

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These are my favorite albums released in 2024:

  1. Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle)

  2. MoonDial (Pat Metheny)

  3. Earthcycle (Orchestra of the Swan)

  4. Études Mélodiques (Marie Awadis)

  5. Arium (Thom Brennan)

  6. Can I Tell You Something? (Mark Lettieri)

  7. Stay By My Side (Gerard Cousins)

  8. LIFE (Extended) (Mari Samuelsen)

  9. Bach (Alexandre Tharaud)

  10. Brisk - single (Aukai)

  11. Upgraded (soundtrack; Isom Innis)

  12. Solastalgia (Erik Wøllo)

  13. Blurring the Edges (Data Rebel)

Best Music of 2022

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Here’s my personal list of the top new music releases in 2022 in the genres to which I pay the most attention….

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The Death of Decency

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Periodically I hit the “Browse” tab on Apple Music to see what’s happening in the broader—or more accurately narrower—world of mass musical culture. The featured music is usually quite dull, musically. (See Rick Beato’s video, “Why Today’s Music Is So BORING. The Regression of Musical Innovation.”) Lacking musical skill and creativity, the artists instead focus on the excitement of crass, racist, hyper-sexualized, and violent language. This is not new, one could find such songs throughout my lifetime and before. The popular music, however, relied more on innuendo and suggestion, and generally not gaining widespread listening without a catchy chorus or hook.

What is relatively new, I suspect, is that while the writing and musicianship is gone, nearly every single charting song is marked “Explicit.” Take a look at today’s Apple Music US Top 100:

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Best Music of 2020

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These are the albums I enjoyed the most in 2020, based on stats from Apple Music and my self-curated playlists, broken into loose groupings:

Minimalism:

In a stressful year, contemplative music, especially piano, helped me stay calm. I love music inspired by Erik Satie, reflected in these albums:

  • Prehension (Joep Beving)

  • Mompou: Silent Music (Jenny Lin)

  • Night (Ola Gjeilo)

  • The Spheres (Ola Gjeilo)

  • Fiori - I (Milana Zilnik)

  • Into Silence: Pärt Vasks Górecki Pelēcis (Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra)

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