The Best Recordings of 2022 (Honorable Mention List)
This is NOT my best-of-year list—that’s coming in a few days. I will share it with paid subscribers in two installments, and it features my 100 favorite albums of 2022 (all styles, all genres).
Today I’m publishing my honorable mention list. These albums almost made my best-of-the-year survey. In fact, as I listen to them, I start wishing I’d made room for them in the top 100. But then I’d have to remove something else. That’s the math, and I can’t escape it.
But these 50 recordings are outstanding—each is worthy of your time and focus.
I listened to more new albums in 2022 than ever before—well over one thousand. I devote hours every day to this. But I tried to exercise some restraint in compiling this survey. In the past, I’ve had 100 albums on my honorable mention list, but this year I’ve cut it in half. I’m hoping to make this guide more manageable for readers—because the goal is to invite you to listen and expand your musical horizons, not overwhelm you with tracks.
That said, I’m still serving up generous portions here.
One final comment: I make no apologies for the obscurity of some of these recordings. My purpose in undertaking this project each year is to guide people to great music they might otherwise miss. This is disappointing to some readers, who prefer lists of familiar names, and like to find confirmation that they have already heard all the best recordings.
This is not that kind of list. My goal in listening to all these albums is the same as my goal in publishing the list: namely the joy in discovering something new, something exciting, something different, something fun.
I suspect many of you are looking for the same thing. I know from past experience how many of you share my concern that much of the finest music of our time is ignored by mass media outlets. If, dear reader, you’re part of that group, this list is made with you in mind.
There’s a link with each album on the list, which will let you hear at least some of the music.
Happy listening!
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50 OUSTANDING RECORDINGS OF 2022 (HONORABLE MENTION LIST)
A Moving Sound
Starshine
Experimental Taiwanese Alt Folk
Antonio Adolfo
Octet and Originals
Late Night Brazilian Instrumentals with a Taste of Jazz and Bacharach
John Luther Adams
Houses of the Wind
Wind and Soundscape Music
Maria Argentiero
Alexandre Tansman: Piano Music Piano
Music by the Polish Gershwin (Born in 1897)
Robert Barnett
Voiceless
American Primitive Guitar
Black Flower
Magma
Intersection of Ethio Jazz, Afrobeat, and Psychedelia
The Black Keys
Dropout Boogie
Rock Infused with Roots-and-Blues
Fábio Brum (with Santiago Báez)
Nine Trumpets and One Piano: Trumpet Music from Around the World
Contemporary Music for Trumpet and Piano (Mostly from Latin America)
Raffy Bushman
E Minor String Quartet + Rhythm Section
Chamber Music for Dancing (CMD)
Bokyung Byun
Guitar Works
Modern Music for Solo Classical Guitar
Canticum Novum/Emmanuel Bardon
Samâ-ï : Alep la Cosmopolite
Trance-Induing Trans-Mediterranean Music of Aleppo in Syria
Choir of Girton College, Cambridge
Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, Vol. 2: Missa "Voce Mea" A5 & Motets for Double Choir
Renaissance Choral Music from Monteverdi's Teacher
Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini
Auburn Whisper
Brazilian Vocals with a Large Dose of Trombone
Dr. John
Things Happen That Way
Posthumous Release from a New Orleans Music Legend
Etran de L'Aïr
Agadez
Wedding Band from Niger
Ferris & Sylvester
Superhuman
Contemporary British Blues Rock
The Flat Consort
Matthew Locke
Consort Music from Britain, Circa 1672
Sam Gendel (with Antonia Cytrynowicz)
Live a Little
Alt Jazz Artist Makes Homemade Album with Untrained 11-Year-Old Singer
Gonora Sounds
Hard Times Never Kill
Zimbabwean Singer-Songwriter
Beth Hart
A Tribute to Led Zeppelin
Blues Singer Celebrates Rock Band
Brian Jackson
This Is Brian Jackson
Old School Funk/Soul/R&B
Samara Joy
Linger Awhile
New Jazz Singer with a Retro Vibe
Kalisz Philharmonic Orchestra/Pawel Kotla
Calisia 1: New Music for Strings
Contemporary Classical Music by 9 Composers
Julian Lage
View with a Room
Jazz Guitar
Biréli Lagrène
Solo Suites
Solo Guitar from a Jazz Manouche Legend
Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder
Get on Board
Roots and Blues Masters Reunite (After 57 Years)
Magic Malik
Ka-Frobeat
Funky Afrobeat Flute
Dorothee Mields/Jan Kobow/Andreas Arend
Sebastian Ochsenkun: Heidelberger Lautenbuch
Hottest New Lute and Voice Music Release from 1558
Charlie Musselwhite
Mississippi Son
78-Year-Old Blues Harmonica Master Digs Into His Mississippi Roots
中山 道 (Michi Nakayama)
Daily Contrapuntal Variations via Improvisation for Solo Piano
Daily Contrapuntal Variations
Night Owls
Versions
Reggae Reworkings of Familiar Soul/R&B Songs
Organ Tapes (Tim Zha)
唱着那无人问津的歌谣 / Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao
Surreal Acoustic Alt Pop
Ensemble Peregrina
Mare Balticum, Vol. 4: Pomerania
Medieval Music from the Baltic Region
Nicholas Phan (with Brooklyn Rider)
Stranger: Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly
Contemporary Art Songs
Stefan Prigmore
Everything Is At Least Both
Country Music from East Texas
Flora Purim
If You Will
Brazilian Singer's Final Album
Marcos Sacramento
Caminho para o Samba
Acoustic Brazilian Popular Music with a Tinge of Samba
Sam Sadigursky
The Solomon Diaries Vol. I
Alternative Music for Clarinet and Accordion and Other Miscellaneous Sounds
Samo Salamon
Dolphyology: Complete Eric Dolphy for Solo Guitar
Eric Dolphy Memorial Guitar Album
Oumou Sangaré
Timbuktu
West African Music Fused with Blues, Funk, and Rock
Sault
Unititled (God)
Experimental Alt-Soul and Alt-Gospel from Britain
John Scofield
John Scofield
First Homemade All-Guitar Album from 70-Year-Old Jazz Star
Ana Silvera
The Fabulist
Singer-Songwriter (Joni Mitchell Fans Take Note)
Mark Turner
Return from the Stars
Hard Bop Transformed Into Chamber Jazz
Unknown to Known
Live at the Crypt
Ruminative New Jazz from London
Elean Urioste & Tom Poster
From Brighton to Brooklyn
Populist and Neglected Early 20th Century Music for Piano and Violin
Julian & Roman Wasserfuhr
Mosaic
Contemporary Jazz from Germany (with a Dose of Fusion and Funk)
The Whole World
Window Volume 1
Melancholy Vocal-Driven German Alt Pop
Carolin Widmann
L'Aurore
Solo Violin Music, Medieval to Modern
The Wilderness Yet
What Holds the World Together
English/Irish Folk
COMING SOON (for paid subscribers): My 100 favorite albums of 2022.
It’s also been my experience that the vast (VAST!) majority of music fans I know want only to hear the music they’ve already heard. I make playlists that subtly move them from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Otherwise, you put on Fela Kuti or Ismaël Lo or Los Mocosos and or Yerba Buena or Flor de Toloache or Junior Parker or Kurt Elling or Cake or Brave Combo and they quickly get very uncomfortable.
Bring on the new!
A problem is that back in the 70s fewer albums were released in 2 or 3 genres. And you were able to listen to Electric Ladyland or Live Dead or Santana Abraxis 25 times until you became intimate with every note and nuance. Now, with 100s of genres and sub-genres, and thousands of releases, I don’t have that kind of time. I have to work!
Nice to see Black Keys made the cut.