For all of my jazz snobbery, picking best-of-year albums in the genre is somewhat difficult for me. In my opinion, the genre sort of peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Roland Kirk... I could go on for a long time, but that period is just hard to beat.
Still, there is good jazz being made today. Just, not as much of it. I'll recommend Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan's Small Town, as with just about any Bill Frisell album. Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau put out an interesting duet album. I'll listen to nearly anything Thile does, being one of the shining lights in bluegrass, although Mehldau isn't usually one of my favorites. Still, an interesting album.
For an album pick for the year, though, I'll go with a tribute to the late, great John Abercrombie, who died in 2017. He was one of my favorite jazz guitarists, and while Up and Coming was not his greatest album (I'd go with either Gateway or Characters), Abercrombie was always good. Here's "Flipside."
