In a year overflowing with mixed blessings, the opportunity to hear more recorded music must rank in my Top Ten--not that I always had the taste or mental energy for doing so. Still, this extraordinary year brought so much extraordinary music to my ears that this alphabetical list is 15 items long. The fact that all releases are by BIPoC and women artists is not an accident.

Ambrose Akinmusire: On the tender spot of every calloused moment (Blue Note)

Camilla Nebbia: Aura (ears & eyes Records)

Code Girl: Artlessly Falling(Firehouse 12)

Dayna Stephens Quartet: Right Now! Live at the Village Vanguard (Contagious Music)

Eric Revis: Slipknots Through A Looking Glass (Pyroclastic Records)

Ingrid Laubrock: Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt (Intakt Records)

Ingrid Laubrock+Kris Davis: Blood Moon (Intakt Records)

Irreversible Entanglements:  Who Sent You? (International Anthem)

Manuel Valera & New Cuban Express Big Band: José Martí En Nueva York (Greenleaf Music)

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords (ArtistShare)

Matthew Shipp: The Piano Equation (Tao Forms)

Shabaka And The Ancestors : We Are Sent Here By History (Impulse!)

Steph Richards: Supersense (Northern Spy)

Thumbscrew: The Anthony Braxton Project (Cunieform)

Tyshawn Sorey: Unfiltered (self released)