Voting for the Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll is closed. Results have been posted at ArtsFuse and are fully archived here. See the links below.
Francis Davis founded The Annual Jazz Critics Poll in 2006. It was published by The Village Voice through 2010. It has since been picked up by Rhapsody (2011-2012), NPR (2013-2020), and The ArtsFuse (since 2021). The Poll was supervised by Davis through 2021, with various degrees of help from Tom Hull, who keeps it going, and manages this website. Hull published a memoir and history of the poll in 2022, which is still useful, although somewhat dated.
The First Mid-Year Poll was conducted by Hull in 2024. This is the second, so maybe we can start referring to as the Second Annual, but it's really just a warm up for the real 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, which we'll start working on in November, and publish shortly after January 1, 2026 -- assuming we're still free and able to do so.
Ballot invitations were sent out on June 13 (see invitation). Deadline for voting was Tuesday, July 1. The Poll will be published by The Arts Fuse the following week, with complete totals and ballots here.
One change to the website as of 2023 is that album titles in the complete results and ballots files have a link (look for →) which will print out a list of everyone who voted for the album. From there, you can get to the ballots for each voter.
The Mid-Year Poll has omitted the special categories for Debut, Latin, and Vocal. New Jazz Albums and Rara Avis (historical releases, including reissues and compilations) continue, the dividing line set 10 years back, so for this year the dividing line is January 1, 2015. Anything recorded earlier, in whole or substantial part, should be considered under Rara Avis (as well as reissues of later material). Anything recorded later should be reckoned a New Jazz Release. The meaning of the word "jazz" is up to the voters, but the voters were invited due to their recognized interest and expertise in what we consider jazz.
Voters are allowed to submit unranked lists, but are encouraged to rank albums, 1-10 for New Jazz Releases, 1-5 for Rara Avis. Ranked albums are awarded extra points. As of 2024, the point scale was compressed, so that now we are using a sliding scale from 3-to-1 for New Jazz Albums, 2-to-1 for Rara Avis, resulting in fractional points. However, starting in 2025, the totals lists are sorted first by votes, with points only used to break ties. The reason for the change is to minimize the penalty for submitting unranked lists, while retaining the extra information that ranking provides. Note that a high ratio of points/votes can help identify the albums voters most esteem.
The following pieces were published in Arts Fuse:
The 113 voter ballots are presented in batches of 20 ballots:
The complete list of voting critics, with links to individual ballots, is here.
Voters were vetted and invited based on their expertise and interest in recorded jazz, and their experience in writing and/or broadcasting about jazz. There are few hard-and-fast rules here, and for every one we could state, there is probably an exception. Every year we look for more new voters, so we are always open to nominations.
Voters were asked to refrain from voting for any CD in which they were directly involved as performer, producer, annotator, or in any capacity whatsoever.
Voters are asked to submit lists of up to ten albums in the New Jazz category, and up to five albums in Rara Avis. An album is considered New if all of it is previously unreleased (at least in album form), and if all of it was recorded within the last ten years. Rara Avis covers reissues of any vintage and previously unreleased music that was recorded more than ten years ago. While these guidelines seem straightforward, every year there are cases that are hard to classify. See album notes for details on this year's most problematic albums.
Lists may be ranked or unranked. Albums on unranked lists are counted as one point each. Albums on ranked lists are accorded extra points, based on a sliding scale, but the extra points are only used to break ties between records that appear on the same number of ballots.
The points for ranked lists are as follows:
In the year-end polls, we also ask voters to pick a record in each of three special categories: Vocals, Latin Jazz, and Debut. (In 2024, to increase coverage, we allowed up to three choices in each category, in addition to any designated albums on the New Jazz Albums list.) To simplify the mid-year poll process, we skipped these extra categories.
We allow critics to vote for any album released in the poll year, or any album in the previous year. This allows some coverage of albums that appeared too late in the previous year to get a fair hearing. But, in the year-end polls, if any album gets more votes in its second year, we add the votes and points together. Again to simplify, we don't bother with this in the mid-year polls.
There is a great deal of additional information about how the poll works scattered about the site, in need of better organization. In particular, see these files:
In addition, there are several files which were designed to help voters during the open voting season. These are:
Additional Notes
We should establish a contact link here. Until then, you may use this one, which will reach Tom Hull.