20 Kenny Barron and Dave Holland The Art of Conversation Impulse!
Originals and standards, four of Holland’s compositions, including a sumptuous waltz dedicated to Holland’s friend Kenny Wheeler, and three of Barron’s plus a very jaunty take on Monk’s ‘In Walked Bud’, Bird’s ‘Segment’, and the Ellington/Strayhorn tune ‘Daydream’ just gorgeous. An album more or less bound, for all the right reasons, to engender a lot of real love.

19 Polar Bear In Each And Every One The Leaf label
A band that continues to grow and stay ahead of the game as the torch bearers of a generation who have grown up on what Paul Morley termed in his memorable phrase “dream jazz.” The only real jazz heirs to Soft Machine.

18 Julian Argüelles Circularity Cam Jazz
There’s nothing fragile about the saxophone lines and drummer Martin France, on an anthemic Ballamy-esque tune such as ‘A Lifelong Moment’, has to practically restrain his three other colleagues champing at the bit from just going too far and spiralling out of control. All the pieces have a certain intensity to them, nothing is cut and dried about the themes, and they feel as if there’s a highly evolving thought process at play, Argüelles shimmeringly compulsive on soprano saxophone.

17 Dylan Howe Subterranean: New Designs on Bowie’s Berlin Motorik Recordings
You don’t need to be a Bowie buff (or even a Philip Glass one) to appreciate the album although it does no harm, as Subterranean works as a forum for improvising rather than attempting an arty statement or worse: falling between the two stools of jazz and rock.

16 Blue-Eyed Hawk Under the Moon Edition
Pure and slightly vulnerable yet with a determined inner strength to it Lauren Kinsella’s is a voice that soars and swoops, dream-like on the beautiful ‘Aurora 5AM’ begun with birdsong. A very literary album, full of originality and freshness.

15 Mehliana Taming the Dragon Nonesuch
Brad Mehldau’s own Future Shock of an album, the Nige track his own ‘Rockit,’ it’s a fun outing with plenty of thrills and spills along the way, Mehldau making the transfer from sometimes snoozy acoustic settings in the past to louder more maverick prog keyboards like a duck to water in the company of the hyperactive drummer Mark Guiliana.

14 Black Top # One with Special Guest Steve Williamson Babel
Out-there free improv with Steve Williamson heard to coruscating effect – and live – on his first significant album feature in years.

13 Jacob Young Forever Young ECM
An all-pervasive air of wistfulness embracing the unquantifiable otherness of jazz provides the atmosphere here. The feeling that there is enough space for the players to do their own thing, guitarist Jacob Young keeping stellar company honing his grown-up New Melodic sound to scale his own personal mountains on perfectly formed and delivered arthouse music.

12 Trish Clowes Pocket Compass Basho Records
Strongly inspired by Wayne Shorter, other inspirations of saxophonist Clowes’ here include a poem by Oscar Wilde at the heart of this fine album, a writer who has been a long-time inspiration of Clowes’, the words of ‘Symphony in Yellow’ starkly contrasting natural and bucolic imagery with that of the city held captive by its river-based environment and seasonal shifts.

11 James Brandon Lewis Divine Travels OKeh
Saxophonist Lewis’ inspirational highly spiritual album includes impressive input from the Washington DC-born poet Thomas Sayers Ellis. But above all there’s a remarkable calm, ‘Tradition’ opening out for a sunny walk in the park for William Parker and Gerald Cleaver, Lewis chipping in as the rhythm swallows up all three.

10 Ginger Baker Why? Motéma Music
A quartet record of tantalising quality, the Cream legend joined by tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, Generation Band bassist Alec Dankworth tremendous here, and the percussionist Abass Dodoo yin to Baker’s yang. A record that connects with Baker’s jazz past: relatively recent as ‘Ginger Spice’ was written by trumpeter Ron Miles who Baker worked so well with on Coward of the County at the end of the 1990s; and long gone past, a partial homage to Baker’s Graham Bond Organisation days.

9 Zara McFarlane If You Knew Her Brownswood Recordings
MOBO-winning McFarlane has achieved the remarkable task of making her individuality count just two years on from her debut Until Tomorrow. That tomorrow clearly has arrived.

8 JD Allen Bloom Savant
Mostly saxophonist JD Allen’s own tunes plus Tadd Dameron’s cool ballad ‘If You Could See Me Now’, a song Sarah Vaughan made her own in the 1940s, all stillness and dewy, and Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ glistening and iridescent. The traditional ‘Pater Noster’ will give you chills.

7 Steve Lehman octet Mise en Abîme Pi Recordings
Five years on from Travail, Transformation and Flow, altoist Steve Lehman expands on his interests in timbre, electronics, and microtones in a free flowing fry-for-all. This album is also a formidable homage to Bud Powell with three reconstructions of the bebop pioneer’s compositions contributing to Lehman’s own interpretations. 

6 Tom Harrell Trip HighNote
Harrell paraphrases, prods and pokes at the melodies of his own compositions as he goes along, creating sparkling flurries that stir things up or settles down all gathered in an inconsequential heap expressed in a language that harks back to the glory days of hard bop, sometimes favouring witty melodic turns of phrase, or moving into edgier and harsher territory. A deep, tonally complex record, with a loose imaginative feel to it.

5 Wolfgang Muthspiel / Larry Grenadier / Brian Blade Driftwood ECM
A very open, modern, and of-the-now album amounting to the Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel’s debut as a leader on ECM, Brian Blade stripping away the beat and relying on fundamental pulse for much of the drama of the tunes while Larry Grenadier is so adept at allowing the sound to ring out clearly with the immediacy the music needs, the tender arco solo at the beginning of ‘Highline’ one of the many moments of sheer pleasure.

4 Ambrose Akinmusire The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint Blue Note
Apocalyptic in mood, with a strong socially conscious side to it trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is on extraordinary form with his longstanding quintet here extended by a string quartet plus The Vigil guitarist Charles Altura, and singers Becca Stevens, singer Theo Bleckmann and the startling Canadian singer/songwriter Cold Specks.

3 Michael Wollny trio Weltentraum ACT
A joyously exuberant album stocked with not only a plentiful supply of rock and pop covers by bands as different as The Flaming Lips and Pink but also, via the pianist’s trademark florid virtuoso approach, featuring interpretations of classical music with work by Alban Berg, Hindemith, and Varèse as well as Wollny’s own playful compositions.

2 Jason Moran All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller Blue Note
Certainly not a conservatoire-endorsed or ‘official’ kind of album with so much musicological respect for Fats Waller generated to construct an impossible obstacle to enjoyment. ‘Jitterbug Waltz’, tender towards the end, is where bassist Tarus Mateen comes into his own pulsing like a light caught in the rear view mirror dimming in and out of view. But it’s on this most idiosyncratic of waltzes that Moran shows his mastery of the balladic mood.

1 David Virelles Mbókò ECM
The drums are centrestage, a titanic presence and symbol at the album’s heart. The brilliant pianist Virelles, who has formidable ears and effortless-sounding advanced technique, writes within the overarching tradition of the Abakuá culture, a tradition that stretches far back to Africa and the Cross River region of Nigeria. Very much a state-of-the-art approach from a compositional point of view as well as in performance, the past melting into a vision of the future. Stephen Graham