West Coast jazz has always been a conversation—between generations, neighborhoods, and the artists who keep stretching the sound forward. These five essential albums trace that lineage from Central Avenue to today’s innovators. To hear how these threads intertwine, check out our curated playlist and let the state’s jazz story unfold in real time.•
1. Horace
Dwight Trible, 2001
2. The Epic
Kamasi Washington, 2015
3. After the Rain: A Night for Coltrane
Teodross Avery, 2019
4. Jackie Robinson: Stealin Home
Bobby Bradford, 2022
5. 60 Years
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, 2023
Lynell George is an award-winning Los Angeles–based journalist and essayist. She has been a staff writer for both L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in various news outlets including the New York Times; Smithsonian; Vibe; Boom: A Journal of California Preservation; Sierra; Essence; and Ms. She was selected to be a University of Southern California Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism fellow in 2013 and received the Huntington Library’s Alan Jutzi Fellowship for her studies of California writer Octavia E. Butler in 2017. She is the recipient of a 2017 Grammy Award for her liner notes for Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go. George is the author of three books of nonfiction: No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday); After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame (Angel City Press); and her most recent book, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler (Angel City Press), published in 2020, which was a Hugo Award finalist in the Best Related Work category in 2021.
