Music 2025
The years are short but the days are long. Another year has come and gone at the waning end of a golden age. But still, there’s music.
Ready to queue up the 2025 playlist and read some super deep thoughts on music from the year just gone?
Wellington Jazz
Wellington has had a rough couple of years with the New Zealand government in an austerity phase. Maybe it’s like the cartoon character running in the air off the edge of a cliff, but the Welly music scene is going strong. Someone at the New Zealand School of Music is doing something right, judging by the quality of musicians with associations of one kind or another with that institution.
This year, when I wasn’t busy at the lab, I got out to witness talented Wellington musicians creating something. Most Sundays, you can start out at the Undercurrent Bookshop in the afternoon then head over to the Rogue and Vagabond for another gig.
Wellington Jazz Festival
The Wellington Jazz Festival had a strong year in 2025. The headliners were impressive, for a small town near el culo del mundo, but the local talent really shined. I went to shows at the Rogue, upstairs at Bedlam & Squalor, the Library, Undercurrent, Meow Nui and even the rooftop terrace of a law firm. But there was so much on that you couldn’t possibly see everything.
Next year’s Jazz Fest will be October 14-18. In the meantime, keep up with what’s on in Welly with their handy Gig Guides.
So much great music is lost into the air, never to be captured again, or so said Eric Dolphy. We should count ourselves lucky when some of the good stuff gets recorded. A cabal of Wellington Jazzers put out albums in 2025. It’s nice to see a group of musicians that play on each other’s albums, go to each other’s shows and clearly push each other further into inspired sonic territory.
Callum Allardice - Elementa
Released: January 24, 2025
- Callum Allardice - composer, guitar
- Luke Sweeting - piano
- Tom Botting - bass
- Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa - drums
Composer and guitar player Callum Allardice released a quartet album in 2025 full of good stuff. That follows the 2024 release of big-band album Cinematic Light Orchestra completed during a composition residency at Victoria University of Wellington.
Callum played in several combinations during Jazz Fest that featured some strong but as-yet unreleased material, at least as far as my Googling skills can dig up. Song titles I managed to catch included The Curse, The Right Hand of the Blessed and The Left Hand of the Damned. I hope to hear recordings of these tunes someday soon. Sounds to me like they should be a suite - The Cursed, the Blessed and the Damned - but what do I know?
Allardice and Sweeting also played as part of Antipodes, along with Jake Baxendale (sax), Tom Botting (bass) and Tim Geldens (drums). Good Winter was released back in 2018 with slightly different personnel. This group played Jazz Fest, then did a New Zealand mini-tour that ended up back in Welly sounding tight after a few weeks playing together. We can hope some of that material is sitting on a hard drive somewhere waiting to be released.
Louisa Williamson - Groundwork
Released: April 17, 2025
Louisa Williamson is a sax and flute player, band leader, and composer of jazzy, soulful and funkified music. This year’s Groundwork follows the excellent What Dreams May Come, an ambient suite for jazz orchestra taking inspiration from Brian Eno and Maria Schneider.
- Louisa Williamson - saxophone/flute/vocals
- Kaito Walley - trombone (In Tune, Lake Glass, Lou Lou)
- Callum Allardice - guitar
- Daniel Hayles - piano
- Johnny Lawrence - bass
- Cory Champion - drums, percussion
- Maarire Brunning-Kouka - vocals (In Tune)
Clear Path Ensemble - Black Sand
Released: May 15, 2025
The official blurb on this one is unbeatable: “Inspired by the deep listening ambient and jazz record bars of Japan, Black Sand continues with Clear Path Ensemble’s jazz-funk fusion sound while folding new elements of minimalism, ambient, techno and library music into a restrained, yet highly exploratory sound world.”
- Cory Champion - drums, percussion, vibraphone, guitar, electric bass, rhodes, synthesizers
- Johnny Lawrence - double bass, electric bass
- Daniel Hayles - piano, rhodes, clavinet
- James Illingworth - synthesizer
- Louisa Williamson - flute
- Mike Isaacs - bass clarinet
When this crew announced they were playing at the Begonia House, I was skeptical about having a show in a greenhouse in the Botanic Garden. Turns out, it’s a super cool venue and it was a great show. Even the plants were grooving.
Daniel Hayles - On the Grid
Released: October 20, 2025
Whether it’s solo piano or 17-piece big-band, I always leave a Daniel Hayles gig with homework. He’s great at turning up great material and making it sound amazing in sometimes radically different formats. Digging up the original when you get home is part of the adventure.
Daniel led a fantastic performance of the Other Futures Big Band doing a thing they describe as “turntablism sensibility on a symphonic scale” at Meow Nui. The super-diverse set list featured works by Steely Dan, Notorious B.I.G., Madlib, Mark de Clive-Lowe, South African pianist/composer Nduduzo Makhathini and NZ pianist/composer Jonathan Crayford.
- Sylvester Green - Trumpet
- Tyaan Singh - Alto Saxophone
- Louisa Williamson - Tenor Saxophone and Flute
- Chris Buckland - Tenor Saxophone
- Matthew Allison - Trombone
- Daniel Hayles - Piano
- Seth Boy - Bass
- Abe Baillie - Drums
- Mana Waiariki - Violin
- Eden Annesley - Violin
- Abby Wheeler - Viola
- Lavinnia Rae - Cello
The Outside World
Out in the wider world, things are a mess. A world order is collapsing. But still, good music is being made.
Gogo Penguin - Necessary Fictions
Released: June 20, 2025
Necessary Fictions is the seventh studio release from GoGo Penguin, not counting an album of remixes, a couple of live albums and a slew of singles and EPs. GoGo Penguin’s sound exists on the border between jazz and electronic music, with their latest shifting further towards electronica.
The 2023 release from this crew, Everything is Going to Be OK carries a message to counter the pervasive feeling of doom.
Aaron Parks - By All Means
Released: November 7, 2025
Seattle native pianist Aaron Parks’ By All Means on the Blue Note label is just good straight-ahead jazz. Nothing wrong with that. Parks is a prolific sideman, for instance, playing on guitarist Tom Ollendorff’s tasteful Where in the World.
- Aaron Parks - piano
- Ben Solomon - tenor saxophone
- Ben Street - bass
- Billy Hart - drums
Raven Gnosis
Released: February 14, 2025
Not to be confused with the 1980s metal band, San Francisco–based electronic musician Raven brews up a batch of synth pads washed over jazzy chord progressions, equal parts introspective and meditative.
Other good stuff
- Artemis - Arboresque
- Shai Maestro - Solo: Miniatures & Tales
- Julia Hülsmann - Under the Surface
- Tom Ollendorff - Where in the World
- lvdf EP
- Tourismo - Torque (2023)
- Lucy Clifford - Between Spaces Of Knowing (2024)
- Antipodes - Good Winter (2018)
3 Shades of Blue
Kind of Blue is one of the great works of American culture, a high water mark. For those interested in the history and the personalities behind the music, James Kaplan’s 3 Shades of Blue is a great read centered around the making of that album. If you’re on Apple Music, check out the 3 Shades of Blue playlist.
A Fond Farewell to a Golden Age
So much in the world is moving backwards, degraded by retrograde authoritarianism and tribalism. It’s healthy to intentionally appreciate what humans at our best can achieve, deeply flawed creatures that we are. Wrecking things is easy. Making good things is hard. But creating will always be cooler.