Clarice Jensen, In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness
The restless cellist, who swims in several ponds — classical, electronic, experimental, drone — has left most of her high-tech gear behind on an album that places the sounds of the acoustic cello up front. The result is a blanket of string sound that caresses, mesmerizes, sings and swirls with subtle help from loops, delays and octave shifters. Jensen's inspiration comes from J.S. Bach's set of six suites for solo cello, an encyclopedia of voices, textures and emotions worthy of a lifetime's study. The album's title track riffs on the opening arpeggiated flow of Bach's first cello suite, but then gets looped and layered with an expansive, aching line that soars above. Another track, 2,1, unfolds as a quasi-Bachian sarabande that pits a buzzing electronic pulse against undulating layers of wistful cello double stops. In holiday clothing might be too out there for some classical purists (their loss), but it did strike a chord with the emo crowd when Jensen toured with My Chemical Romance this summer, playing the piece From A to B as an interlude between sets. You're never quite sure what you'll get with a Clarice Jensen album; this time, I think we got her best yet.
Rosalía, LUX
They said Sgt. Pepper's was a perfect album. Here's another one — and it's arguably more ambitious. That Rosalía sings in 13 languages isn't exactly the point, but neither is it a gimmick. It's her voice, in full flamenco-meets-opera bloom like we've never heard, backed by smart, symphonic arrangements, some by Caroline Shaw. Rosalía's lyrics commingle the sacred, profane and personal, setting up a heady gestalt that would make William Blake proud.
Arvo Pärt, And I heard a voice
Of the half-dozen albums released in the beloved Estonian composer's 90th birthday year, this one, by his compatriots in the superbly blended Vox Clamantis choir, shines brightest, with gloriously precise and subtle performances, capturing the beauty, gravitas and open spaces of Pärt's so-called timeless music.
Hannah Frances, Nested in Tangles
Still in her 20s, Frances' commanding, maverick voice sounds wise well beyond its years — as if your grandmother fronted an experimental folk band. She reigns over an album which unapologetically merges Americana, prog rock, jazz and singer-songwriter sensibilities, offering eccentric guitar tunings and routinely jolting time signatures. I've never heard saxophone, pedal steel, clarinet, piano, spoken word and squalling guitars all sound so revelatory together.
Gabriela Ortiz, Yanga
Oops, they did it again! Last year, the Mexican composer's sparkling album, featuring her champion Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic, topped my best of 2024 list. And now, here's more proof that Ortiz's music, again in the hands of Dudamel, is among the most vibrant — and booty-shaking, for classical music at least — you'll hear today. Anchored by a prismatic cello concerto, inspired by the geography of the Yucatán Peninsula and performed instinctively by Alisa Weilerstein, the album offers a history lesson in its title track, a percussion-fueled cantata based on a 16th century Robin Hood figure named Yanga, and includes an homage to the Chilean folk icon Violeta Parra, dressed in contemplative strings.
Natalia Lafourcade, Cancionera
Playing the role of a wandering troubadour (a cancionera), the 18-time Latin Grammy winner takes us on a warmhearted, cinematic trip down a memory lane of old-school styles. We meet a Mexican chanteuse in "Cariñito de Acapulco," a seaside, cumbia-crooning coconut vendor in "Cocos en la Playa" and a child under the spell of a witch, via a gently swaying waltz, in "La Bruja." The retro feel extends to how Lafourcade built the album — with her entire band in a single room, recording to analog tape.
James McVinnie, Dreamcatcher
If you thought the pipe organ only made music for fusty old churches, James McVinnie will change your mind about the instrument. This strong album of contemporary works for organ ranges from luminous minimalist tendencies to baseball stadium boogie-woogie. He also shows off his piano prowess in pieces by John Adams, Meredith Monk and inti figgis-vizueta, plus a pounding showstopper by the rising young California composer Gabriella Smith.
Brandee Younger, Gadabout Season
Busting the harp out of its classical music confines, Brandee Younger makes a bold statement about the pursuit of beauty, honesty and personal ambition in an album featuring lithe performances on an instrument that once belonged to her hero — Alice Coltrane. The spirit of Coltrane's Afrofuturism wafts through Younger's compositions, built from jazz but embracing elements of R&B, hip-hop and classical. Younger can shred, but she also whispers delicate glissandos — and offers keen partnership to guests such as saxophonist Josh Johnson and pianist Courtney Bryan.
Sofia Gubaidulina, Figures of Time
Everything about Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who died earlier this year at age 93, was bold. That she frightened off a supposed KGB agent trying to strangle her in a Moscow elevator in the 1970s pretty much says it all. Her music is fearless too. This album, which might serve as a primer to Gubaidulina's sound world, contains the rarely heard Revue Music, her audacious mash up of jazz, funk, classical modernism and film music, which infuriated Soviet officials in 1978 and remains astonishing today. The other orchestral works, including a revised version of her piano concerto Introitus, are deftly dispatched by the Basel Sinfonietta and reveal a composer of endless imagination.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ubique
The intrepid flutist Claire Chase wrestles with this beautiful beast of a piece, performing on three instruments, including the 6-foot-tall contrabass flute with its 9 feet of tubing. It helps anchor the 45-minute chamber work — written for Chase, plus cello, piano and electronics — in the Icelandic composer's signature subterranean tones and shifting blocks of mutating sound. You won't come away humming any memorable tunes, but careful listening will leave you a changed person.
Read about more of NPR Music's favorite albums of 2025 and our list of the 125 best songs of 2025.
Graphic illustration by David Mascha for NPR.
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