Seven New and Upcoming Records to Dig

The first installment for 2026 of Listening Sessions' new-music picks

The essays that take the most time for me are the ones that focus on new music. I try to do as much listening as possible to try to pick the cream of the crop. In the past though, I feel like I focused too much on trying to reach a quota—whether it be eight or ten or 12—of new albums to write about that they became a bit of a blur and it was sometimes a challenge to try to write convincingly about them.

This year, my approach is a bit different. I’m listening to more new albums than ever before and being as selective as possible so that what’s below are albums that I truly believe are worth your time, attention and ultimately, hard-earned cash. So far, I’ve found seven gems that I am excited to share with you. All but one are already out and all are fine examples of music-making today. I hope you check them out and enjoy them as much as I have.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

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Seven New and Upcoming Records to Dig
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Another year, another round of trying to keep tabs on new and exciting music. I say trying because there’s no way to approach this work other than as an attempt to try to sample as many releases as possible without getting lost in an impossible-to-distinguish stream of music where discernment of what is good has flown out the window.

I don’t think I’ve fallen into that trap just yet. Yes, I’ve listened to lot of new albums in 2026 already—over 85—but I’m also trying to be more selective in what I recommend in these round-ups. Consider then that anything I write about as being the best of the best. Here goes.

I had the chance to see pianist Craig Taborn at a recital at Columbia University the last time I was in New York. Opportunity knocked but I didn’t open the door. I don’t regret it even as he and his music fascinate me. Just a few weeks ago, Taborn released a new album, Dream Archives (ECM), teaming up with cellist Tomeka Reid and percussionist Ches Smith.

The recording starts off as a compelling, unsettled avant-garde album and then ends as an often-spooky, hallucinatory and mesmerizing voyage into deep space on ‘Dream Archive’ and the concluding ‘Enchant.’

I always find albums that traverse to the outer edge while maintaining a feeling of serenity fascinating. Dream Archives certainly does this while also continuing Taborn’s mastery of circling the jazz cosmos.

If that sounds up your alley too, you’ll also likely want to buckle up for drummer Willy Rodriguez’s In the Unknown (I Will Find You) (Sunnyside), coming out on March 13.

The range of expression here is astonishingly wide. The album is primarily centred on free-form dialogue between Rodriguez, and keyboardist Leo Genovese and tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. The album, Rodriguez’s meditation on the loss of his mother to cancer, really gets interesting with the addition of vocalist Allan Harris on the opening composition and ‘The Perplexity of Eternity.’ His spoken-word contributions—his great The Poetry of Jazz: Live from the Blue LLama from last year showed he has a knack of this—add a veneer of urbane polish as if Johnny Hartman partnered up with Albert Ayler.

The album also periodically switches to dense layers of electronic sound courtesy of Genovese on ‘A Room Full of Confusion’ and ‘Follow the Light.’ Come mid-March, you’ll want to check it all out.

What struck me most about bassist Kelsey Mines’ Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious (OA2 Records), out since mid-October, was the cover. She is holding her double bass with her left hand and appears to be holding a bouquet of flowers in her right. Behind her is a wall painted a pastel orange that then switches to a light purple.

Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious is the Seattle-based musician’s first jazz recording and it is soothing and bucolic. The front line is comprised of Beserat Tafesse on trombone and Elsa Nilsson on flute. Mines is joined in the rhythm section by John Hansen on piano and Machado Mijiga on drums—guitarist Danilo Silva and percussionist Jeff Busch also take part.

I stumbled upon the album on Spotify, started to play it and was immediately drawn to it in how the music slowly insinuates itself. It’s different, neither out there nor derivative. One of a kind.

The cover of pianist Anthony D’Alessandro’s sophomore release, City Lights (self-released), out for about four months now, is pure Francis Wolff, Blue Note vintage. The album title and leader name encircle the rest of the recording’s personnel: trumpeter Summer Camargo, tenor saxophonist Jacob Chung, bassist Jonathan Chapman, drummer Ernesto Cervino and, on one track, vocalist Jennarie.

The retro feel extends to how the album was recorded. It was put to tape straight off the floor and without the musicians using headphones. It also extends to D’Alessandro’s writing. Six of City Lights’ tracks were written by him. A seventh, the smoky ballad ‘Oversight,’ was co-written with Jennarie. The remaining two are interpretations of stride standards by James P. Johnson.

It’s the originals that stand out here. D’Allesandro can write an appealing line. He has a mastery of the lingua franca of Horace Silver and his ilk. The band he has assembled has an easy yet tight camaraderie. The end result is another jazz album that harkens to the past yet isn’t stuck in it. It captures the spirit of a by-gone era in the here and now.

That’s the new jazz that’s really fired up my interest. What’s been doing elsewhere? A lot, as usual. But again, if the aim here is to focus on the really good stuff, what’s really been doing is three singer-songwriters who have put out truly excellent albums in the past few months.

Ny Oh (the stage name of Naomi Ludlow) is UK-born, New Zealand-raised and now domiciled in Topanga Canyon. She’s worked with Harry Styles, Madison Cunningham and Margo Price. Her debut album, Wildwood (self-released), was released in mid-November and is often as radiant as California can be. I guess I would call her music dream pop that remains earthy and focused on the beat. ‘Shine’ and ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ are potent examples of how these opposing impulses can co-exist in a pop music that latches onto both the listener’s heart and head. Oh’s music can also move such as through the driving beat and the intriguing harmonic motion of ‘Don’t Forget.’ There are a lot of treasures here that are only revealed through many listens.

The latest from Courtney Marie Andrews calls out for similar care. She and her music call to mind an adjective like Americana but I’ve always felt that Andrews is someone who writes and delivers songs that are based on what no longer has primacy but are by no means passé: music and lyrics.

Valentine (Thirty Tigers), released in mid-January, continues her gift for songs that yearn and illuminate that just getting through the day is triumph enough sometimes. Here, I think of ‘Outsider’ and ‘Best Friends,’ both songs that have Andrews’ faint cry.

The album also includes two songs that command attention for their structure. The opening number, ‘Pendulum Swing,’ has two moments where there’s a rhythmic break that brings an edge, a sign that Andrews is a true craftswoman. ‘Little Picture of a Butterfly’ dissolves into an ambient fog after its strong harkening to Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night,’ both melodically as well as in the sound of his recording of it on his first LP.

Emily Scott Robinson has been making recordings for a decade now and, as what seems to be always the case, someone whom I’ve only recently discovered. Her new album, Appalachia (Oh Boy Records), which came out at the end of January, is the most gentle and genuine album I have heard this year. Calls for piety and grace, as on the astonishingly beautiful ‘Bless It All,’ can seem like cheap posing these days but in the hands of a gifted singer and songwriter, as Robinson surely is, against a background of all-acoustic, almost-all-stringed instruments, the sentiments it calls up remind that turning away from them is often a reflex of reflection and defence. They cut just a bit too close for comfort.

Other highlights include the heartfelt, empathetic ‘Time Traveller,’ a lovely interpretation of ‘The Water is Wide’ (also known as ‘Waly, Waly’) on which Robinson is joined by Duncan Wickel and the opening ‘Hymn for the Unholy.’ So far, for 2026, Appalachia is the album that has most moved me.