The year's best records.

It was a good year for jazz recordings. Yes, sales continued to slip, a few more labels shut their doors, and the next John Coltrane or Charlie Parker—some genius-messiah who transcends all boundaries and pushes jazz to a startling new level—failed, once again, to materialize. Still, young musicians scaled new heights, elders renewed their spirits, and, in the reissue bins, forgotten masterworks returned to astonish us.

Here, then, in very rough order, are my picks for the 10 best new jazz albums of 2004 and the four best reissues.

Chris Potter, Lift: Live at the Village Vanguard (Sunnyside) Chris Potter, 33, has been an impressive sideman since he turned 18, playing tenor saxophone with Red Rodney, Dave Holland, Dave Douglas, and (on Two Against Nature) Steely Dan. But his efforts as a leader have never dazzled, until this live quartet session. Potter has found his voice: gruff yet lyrical, ceaselessly imaginative, thoroughly commanding. The album starts with a skittish blues solo that combines dexterous speed, Alpine-sharp turns, and barroom bravura and concludes with a six-minute a cappella intro to a lively take on Mingus' rarely played "Boogie Stop Shuffle."

Geri Allen, The Life of a Song (Telarc) The pianist Geri Allen is another musician who had been strongest as a side player—to such giants as Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Abbey Lincoln, and Lester Bowie—until she uncorked this album, her first as a leader in six years and her best by far. It may simply be that, all this time, she needed to hire better underlings. Here she heads a trio with Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, two of the best jazzmen around, who both play in top form. Allen is nearly peerless among jazz pianists at coaxing chromatic riches from the simplest chords, and she combines this gift for harmony with a rhythmic deftness, shifting in and out of tempo without ever losing the beat. The album is a mix of original compositions, unbridled improvisations, and a few jazz standards, most notably a meticulous deconstruction of Bud Powell's "Dance of the Infidels."

Masada String Trio, 50¹ (Tzadik) In September 2003, John Zorn—protean saxophonist, composer, and impresario of New York's downtown music scene—celebrated his 50^th birthday by putting on a month's worth of concerts, featuring a different one of his many bands each night, at the Lower East Side club, Tonic. This is the first volume of live CDs from those sessions; it features the Masada String Trio, his most accessible and festive ensemble. Zorn leads several bands that play Masada music —a series of 200 pieces he wrote, based on jazz cadences and the "Jewish scales." The string trio consists of Mark Feldman on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, and Greg Cohen on bass, with Zorn sitting before them, conducting their cues. This is high-spirited music that weaves threads of klezmer, Bartok, avant-bluegrass, and straight-ahead jazz into a fabric that's bracing and truly original. The CD captures the trio at their most vigorous.

Don Byron, Ivey-Divey (Blue Note) Don Byron must be the most versatile jazz musician around, a clarinetist with classical training who plays all genres in all styles with impeccable tone and phrasing (though he can also play rough when he wants). This is a novel concept album, inspired by a 1945 trio album by Lester Young, Nat King Cole (just playing piano), and Buddy Rich on drums—here ghosted by Byron, the amazing Jason Moran, and the irrepressible Jack DeJohnette. The new trio traverses the same songs, many of them ancient even back then ("Somebody Loves Me," "I Cover the Waterfront," "I've Found a New Baby"), injecting them with a modernist zest while preserving the originals' insouciant swing.

Maria Schneider, Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare) Maria Schneider, the composer, conductor, and leader of her own jazz orchestra, drew her first influences from Gil Evans' stacked harmonies and Bob Brookmeyer's staggered rhythms, but she's lately added her own blend of Spanish spices. Her music is complex but accessible, lush and lyrical, with an edge just sharp enough to evade sentimentality. She gives her band members lots of space for solos, and they return the favor with some of the tightest musicianship in modern jazz. This is her fifth album in a dozen years, her first on an artist-controlled label that sells CDs (and bonus-feature downloads) exclusively over the Internet.

The Great Jazz Trio, Someday My Prince Will Come (Eighty-Eights/Sony) It's a lofty name for a band, but the title fits: The pianist Hank Jones, his drummer brother, Elvin, and bassist Richard Davis are veteran titans who rousingly refute the cliché that jazz is a young man's game. Hank Jones is 85; Elvin was 75 when he died earlier this year; Davis is the fledgling at 73; they swing harder than most players a third their age. Listen especially to Elvin, who pounds and caresses the drum kit with a stunning polyrhythmic agility and a keen feel for melody. The album, mainly of standards, was recorded in analog and direct-stream digital and is available in standard CD, Super AudioCD, and LP (the latter two formats available, by mail order, from Acoustic Sounds).

Ben Allison, Buzz (Palmetto) Ben Allison is a riveting young bassist-composer who, for the past decade, has co-led the Jazz Composers Collective, a group of musicians that plays together under various names (and with various concepts), depending on which of them has composed the music. The band on Buzz is Allison's sextet (the collective's other bands, and albums, are led by pianist Frank Kimbrough, saxophonist Ted Nash, and trumpeter Ron Horton, but for the most part feature the same personnel), and its music is laced with rhythmic wit, off-centered blues, and a film noir air of mystery. The playing is tight and loose all at once, a feat best managed by musicians who have come to know each other very well.

Matt Wilson, Wake Up! (Palmetto) Matt Wilson, a drummer who has the rare ability to play all kinds of music with all kinds of musicians, isn't as well-known as he should be. Maybe he's too modest. Case in point: Wake Up! Here's an album led by a drummer, yet it features no long, loud drum solos. Still, this is clearly a Matt Wilson production; the signposts are the music's playful swing and the ensemble's casual confidence. That said, the star here is trumpeter Terell Stafford, who blows with a sterling tone, restrained passion, and a brilliant instinct for knowing when to lay back behind the rhythm and when to catch up.