Preston Frazier’s Best of 2018 list includes a broad array of sounds and genres from familiar names and legends in the making.

Not everyone is cut out to take on such an ambitious project but one look at Michael Leonhart’s background makes it undeniably clear that he could.

Adam Hopkins is one of the few talents with the vision to make jazz directed at the current and future generations, not the past ones.

Steve Kuhn just doing his regular jazz trio thing with Joey Baron and Steve Swallow – as they do on ‘To and From the Heart’ – is always exceptionally good.

Preston Frazier’s jazz-focused survey of Best of 2018 albums includes Mark Wade, Chris Carver, Peter Erskine and Stanley Clarke, among others.

The upheaval seen in Washington and elsewhere since 2016 has amped up the political awareness of a lot of people, and Dave Douglas is no exception.

Joshua Redman’s sophomore album, released 25 years ago, represented a bold new direction for the just-debuted saxophonist.

The freewheeling ‘Lebroba’ is a solid entry in Andrew Cyrille’s lengthy catalog, and could be considered a solid entry in the catalogs of Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell, too.

This completes a year-long celebration of Satoko Fujii’s 60th birthday with the same inventiveness, grace and genius shown throughout the entire series.

Casey Golden still has a knack for subtly subverting jazz from within by bringing in indie-rock sensibilities.