The 20th Annual
Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll:
2025 Mid-Year

Ballot 2025 Mid-Year

Phil Freeman (Burning Ambulance, DownBeat, Stereogum, The Wire)

NEW JAZZ ALBUMS

  1. Isaiah Collier - William Hooker - William Parker, The Ancients (Eremite)
  2. Kamasi Washington, Lazarus (Sony Music)
  3. Jeremy Pelt, Woven (HighNote)
  4. Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner, The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi)
  5. Mary Halvorson, About Ghosts (Nonesuch)
  6. James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Abstraction Is Deliverance (Intakt)
  7. Matthew Shipp, The Cosmic Piano (Cantaloupe Music)
  8. Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith, Defiant Life (ECM)
  9. Yazz Ahmed, A Paradise in the Hold (Night Time Stories)
  10. Wolf Eyes X Anthony Braxton, Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023 (ESP-Disk)

RARA AVIS (REISSUES/ARCHIVAL)

  1. Peter Brötzmann - Jason Adasiewicz - Steve Noble - John Edwards, The Quartet: Cafe Oto, London, February, 10 & 11, 2023 (Otoroku)
  2. Music Inc. [Charles Tolliver - Stanley Cowell - Cecil McBee - Jimmy Hopps], Live at Slugs' Volume I & II (1970, Strata-East/Mack Avenue)
  3. Rashied Ali & Leroy Jenkins, Swift Are the Winds of Life [Expanded Edition] (1975, Survival)
  4. Horace Tapscott's Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971 (The Village)