Francis Davis organized a Jazz Critics Poll in 2006, in The Village Voice, supplementing his own end-of-year list with top-tens from 29 other journalists. Davis kept the Poll going through the 16th Annual Jazz Critics Poll in 2021, with input from 156 distinguished journalists and critics.
For 2022, the 17th Annual Jazz Critics Poll is organized by Tom Hull, who wrote The Village Voice's Jazz Consumer Guide from 2005-2011, and continues to review jazz and more albums on his blog. Hull has hosted the critic ballots and complete results since 2009, and has helped Davis manage the Poll for many years.
The Poll has had various sponsors over the years. The sponsor for this year, as in 2021, is Arts Fuse. Results and essays were published on January, 6, 2023. As always, complete results and ballots are available below. Invites went out the week of November 15, with a deadline of December 12.
The following pieces were published in Arts Fuse:
Some of these pieces are also archived locally:
The 151 voter ballots are presented in batches of 20 ballots each:
The complete list of voting critics, with links to individual ballots, is here.
Methodology
Voters were asked to submit choices for their top 10 new releases in descending order. Points were weighted by preference: 10 for 1st place, 9 for 2nd place, etc., down to 1 for 10th place. Albums on unranked lists were awarded 5.5 points each.
Voters also submitted their top three reissues/historical recordings -- scored 3-2-1, or 2 each for unranked lists -- and their choices for the year's best vocal, debut and Latin jazz albums. To be eligible for reissues/historical, an album had to either have reissued music or previously unreleased music that had been recorded ten years or more ago. Every year some critics get confused on this and vote for a few records in the wrong category.
Critics were asked to refrain from voting for any CD in which they were directly involved as performer, producer, annotator, or in any capacity whatsoever.