Looking Forward to Looking Back: 2025 in review and 2026 to come

I did a post a year ago entitled "What does 2025 hold for Yes fans?" So, what did we get and were my prognostications remotely accurate?

To quote my earlier self: I believe 7 Yesmen have releases or live dates announced for 2025: Jon Anderson (Band Geeks live album and tour), Bill Bruford (Pete Roth Trio shows), Rick Wakeman (solo shows), Geoff Downes (Asia live), Trevor Horn (one festival appearance announced), Billy Sherwood (on Dave Kerzner’s Genesis tribute album), and Jon Davison (at John Lodge live shows).

All those happened. Indeed, Horn fit in some more dates (see my previous blog entry for a review of his 20 Dec 2025 show). Bruford continued touring with the Pete Roth Trio, including playing a new composition of theirs entitled "Looking Forward to Looking Back". Indeed, Bruford, I believe, played more live dates than any other current or former Yes member in 2025.

I would pick my favourite Yes-related concerts of the year as 1. Trevor Horn and his band, featuring Seal; 2. the Pete Roth Trio featuring Bill Bruford; 3. the Pete Roth Trio featuring Bill Bruford. Five years ago, the idea of Bruford back touring was fantastical. Twenty-five years ago, the idea of Horn regularly playing live was also fantastical. How things have changed.

Sadly, John Lodge, Davison’s father-in-law, passed away in 2025, leaving a final EP release, Love Conquers All (with both Davison and Downes guesting).

I think we can have strong expectations for: a new Yes album and tour, a new Downes Braide Association album, and a new Rick Wakeman solo piano album.

Fifty fifty here. Wakeman’s piano album came out, as Melancholia. Yes did tour. However, both the Yes and DBA albums remain delayed and are now expected in 2026, with some recording work for Yes still happening in December 2025.

More up in the air, but possible, is plenty more. There are three albums with Billy Sherwood that look like good bets for 2025: exo-X-xeno’s (also with Patrick Moraz); a new CIRCA: album (also with Tony Kaye and Jay Schellen); and an album with Dave Kerzner and Fernando Perdomo. There is a whole suite of Jon Anderson projects that might appear, with various follow-up albums (Anderson Stolt 2; 1000 Hands: Chapter 2; and a second studio album with the Band Geeks) and maybe the eventual realisation of some very long-running projects, Zamran (dating back at least to 2000) and Chagall (from 1980!). Other projects we could see include a new Asia album and more touring; maybe another Trevor Horn album; and various projects with Oliver Wakeman (maybe a tour, but more probably a release).

The exo-X-xeno album came out as Luminous Voyage. It’s my pick for the best Yes-related release of the year.

However, nearly everything else I listed did not happen, although they remain possibilities for 2026.  2025 was rather low on Yes-related releases. However, Asia did play dates in 2025 and the Asia album is now promised for 2026. Oliver Wakeman has announced several dates for 2026 (some with his band, some with his dad).

It seems like work with the Band Geeks continues to crowd out anything else for Jon Anderson. A second studio album with the Geeks is expected late 2026, as well as touring earlier in the year. All of Anderson’s other projects: who knows?! He keeps talking about Zamran in interviews, but are we any closer to a release?

Most obviously missing from this list is Trevor Rabin. He had talked of another solo album to follow Rio and possible touring, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything.

And still silence.

In terms of things I did not foresee, my second favourite Yes-related release of the year is probably Steve Howe’s Signals Crossed EP. As for archival releases, I would like to mention Keith West’s Cross That Bridge - The Anthology 1965-1999, with various tracks with Steve Howe.

I’m not doing a longer post about what 2026 will bring, although I will note that it’s shaping up to be Geoff Downes’ year, with Yes and Asia live dates, new studio albums from Yes, Asia and DBA, and multiple live Asia albums, all expected. There has even been a little talk of a Buggles tour.

REV: Pete Roth Trio, 1 Nov 2024

I happened to be looking straight at Bill Bruford the moment he started playing, kicking off the Pete Roth Trio’s evening at the Hampstead Jazz Club. He had a huge smile on his face. That, I think, is the story of the night.

For over a decade, Bruford had put down the drumsticks. However, in 2022, he started playing again, working with guitarist Pete Roth, who many years before had been a drum tech for Bruford in Earthworks. That was just in a rehearsal space. The band, with basically no publicity, then started playing in front of audiences in 2023. It is only now that the band are doing any serious promotion, and playing a short tour in England. More dates follow in 2025, in the UK and possibly Europe.

The Hampstead Jazz Club is a cramped basement below a pub, with a capacity of 50 people. The trio were squished into the performance space, Roth’s guitar banging against the ceiling when he took it off. Nothing about the performance context would have let on that Bruford once played to packed arenas. And that's how he wants it. Reading his autobiography, it is apparent how unhappy he was before his retirement with all the stuff around the performance, the organisation, the repetitive interviews, the endless business paperwork. But here the band are having fun. (Before the final piece, Roth was talking to the audience: “as you can hopefully see, this is a fun project. We are enjoying ourselves.” Bruford then interjected, “I’m here for the money!”)

The earlier part of the set suggested that Bruford was picking up where he left off: a small acoustic drum kit, playing jazz. This was an improvisational set, using standards plus themes from classical music as a starting point, including Charlie Parker’s "Billy's Bounce", Gershwin’s "Summertime", Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 and Bruford’s own "If Summer had its Ghosts". I keep talking about Bruford, because, let’s face it, that’s why you’re reading this, but this is a trio. All three were intent on each other’s playing. Roth leads the band with dextrous guitar playing, using a variety of effects to go from cleaner playing to something much more fuzzed out. Mike Pratt on bass took solos too and could lead the groove.

Halfway through and we got the first piece by the band, “Trio of 5”. (Roth explained this was the first piece they wrote together. They decided to write a blues, with Bruford suggesting using 5 time.) Two more band pieces followed in the latter half of the set: “Full Circle” (Roth: “at the beginning, Bill had this absolutely killer groove, and the two of them grooving, and I did something probably rather ‘nice’ to it, and Bill said, ‘No, we need a crazy chord there,’ so I hope the chords were crazy enough”) and “Looking Forward to Looking Back”, interspersed with more standards, like Wayne Shorter’s “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”. It was with “Full Circle” and “Looking Forward to Looking Back” that other elements in the music became more apparent. Roth’s playing became more aggressive. “Looking Forward to Looking Back” is a multi-part piece with echoes of progressive rock to it. Roth in conversation after the show was explicit about how they incorporated prog and other elements as well as jazz.

Roth likened them to a “garage band” and said the group was very new and they were still working out what to do, but that there is “lots of laughing and joking at rehearsals”. They are having fun, and you will to if you go see them.

I saw the show with Simon Barrow: check out his review for Edinburgh Music Review.

The Pete Roth Trio, with Pete Roth (electric guitars), Mike Pratt (electric bass) and Bill Bruford (drum kit). Set: "Billy's Bounce" (originally by Charlie Parker), uncertain (possibly something by Chopin), "If Summer had its Ghosts", "Summertime" (originally by Gershwin), improvisation on the largo movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "Trio of 5", another Charlie Parker piece, "Full Circle", "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum" (originally by Wayne Shorter), "Looking Forward to Looking Back", unidentified.