I originally wrote these notes as part of the piece on the New Jazz Albums totals.
Scanning down the list, I'd like to make several points (numbers in parentheses usually refer to position in the final standings):
Tyshawn Sorey (1): Won a MacArthur in 2017, the year he finished 3rd in the poll, but he's been a poll favorite since his 2007 That/Not won the debut category, one of 11 top-50 places, with 4 albums in the top-5. Most jazz musicians identify as composers, but few go as far as Sorey on his debut to switch from their main instrument (drums) for long stretches of solo piano. (He played some piano there, but assigned the 42:50 solo to Cory Smythe.) But this album was written by others, with 4 (of 7) pieces by Stanley Cowell, a quintet with Adam O'Farrill (trumpet) and Mark Shim (tenor sax), and Fay Victor doing her best Abbey Lincoln on the Max Roach finale.
I had this album pegged as the favorite, partly due to Sorey's reputation, partly the album's enormous size and sustained energy, partly because the label (Pi Recordings) always seems to get its albums heard (their other albums so far this year placed 18 and 19, their August 28 Henry Threadgill advance also picked up a vote). Still, this turned out to be a very close race, with a 1 vote margin and only slightly more points (3.7).
Tomeka Reid (2): Cellist, also won our debut category (in 2015), also has placed as high as 3 (2019), also a MacArthur Genius, also on a small label that seems to have figured out how to get our voters' attention (Out of Your Head, which also has albums at 3, 11, and 28, plus 3 albums with 1 vote). Plus she has two-time poll winner, fellow MacArthur Genius, Mary Halvorson in her quartet. I often find that I like Halvorson more as a performer on others' albums than as auteur of her own, and this is one such case. Plus the title here (Dance! Skip! Hop!) sets a mood that the competition lacks.
Adam O'Farrill (3): Trumpet player, could have had a very respectable career following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps, but his networking with the upper crust of the New York avant-garde has landed him on high-polling albums by Halvorson, Sorey, Patricia Brennan, and Rudresh Mahanthappa (Bird Calls, the poll winner in 2015). Two previous top-50 places for his own work, and a near miss in 2025 (a cautionary tale, as For These Streets dropped from 13 in the Mid-Year to 54 in the Annual). Also on Out of Your Head (as was his 2025 release).
Ahmed (4): British quartet, with Pat Thomas (piano) and Seymour Wright (alto sax), formed in 2017 for a tribute to American bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik (originally Jonathan Tim), whose 1959-63 albums did much to connect jazz to Middle Eastern and African music. But they soon developed a reputation as the best live jazz band in the world, and few who heard their 5-CD Giant Beauty could disagree (it finished 10 in 2024). A 2025 album placed 28, and the extra familiarity of Monk as a springboard for avant improv helps here. It may also help that I've been trying to expand the voter pool to include more free jazz writers and more Europeans, and I've had most success where the two groups intersect. Free jazz writers rarely have much effect on the top standings, as they tend to vote for scattered obscurities, but artists that can appeal more to a broader range of critics (like Cecil Taylor, our Rara Avis winner), can climb up the list. It's harder to generalize about European critics, but they're most likely to have seen Ahmed live, and that could help. I don't have the data handy, but it's safe to say that this is the highest a European artist has placed on a European label (Brexit be damned!) in the history of the poll. While the voting population is still pretty US-centric, that may become a trend. While Thomas has been prolific since 1993, his first appearance in the poll under his own name was in 2025 (Hikmah, at 31, on an American label, TAO Forms). Also note that an album by Thomas & XT (Wright and Paul Abbott, on a Finnish label) got 3 votes, to place at 96.
Ambrose Akinmusire & Mary Halvorson (5): A duet album between the two-time poll winning guitarist and a many-time contender (5 top-5 finishes, including runner-up to Sonny Rollins' Road Shows, Vol. 2 in 2011, plus a top-10 and two albums in 2023 that were only released in December but wound up 38-39). Helps that this was on a major label (Nonesuch), which seems to be the label major artists go to once they're established. (Blue Note is another, but does much more of their own artist development, as they did with Akinmusire.) But it hurt that the album didn't appear until June 12, which was about when voting started. Also that no matter how brilliant the leaders, most albums benefit from bass and drums.
Bill Frisell (6): Long-established guitarist, has placed top-50 in the poll 11 times, but never before this high. It must help that he's on Blue Note, which had been slipping in recent years, but is certainly a formidable label this Mid-Year, placing albums at: 6 (Frisell), 7 (Immanuel Wilkins), 17 (Melissa Aldana), 25 (Julian Lage), 43 (Joel Ross), 46 (Walter Smith III), 54 (Nduduzo Makhathini), 78 (Gabrielle Cavassa), plus 3 more at 1 vote each.
Immanuel Wilkins (7): Alto saxophonist, a former Debut winner (finished at 11 that year, rising to 2 in 2022) on Blue Note, which decided to release his whole Village Vanguard stand on three separate volumes, one per month, rather than edit them down to a highlight reel (which I would have preferred). This left voters in a bind, having to decide which volume they preferred, or voting for the whole thing and hoping I didn't call them on it. I saw no reason to, so rather than playing them off and diluting the vote, I combined all of the volume votes under the single title.
Angelika Niescier (8): Polish alto saxophonist, on the Swiss label Intakt, has two previous top-50 poll appearances, but nowhere near this high (38 in 2018, 41 in 2023, the latter a trio with Tomeka Reid). The Chicago names may help, but only Nicole Mitchell has a top-10 poll place (5 in 2017, but her Artifacts trio with Reid and Mike Reed has an 8 in 2021 and a 28 in 2015). Intakt is a well-regarded label with a mix of Swiss, other European, and American artists, including James Brandon Lewis and David Murray. Other albums this year: Lewis (12), Michael Formanek (22), Alexander Hawkins (27), Sylvie Courvoisier (35); also Alexis Marcelo (2 votes), and with 1 vote each: Luciano Biondini, Nite Bjuti.
Jeff Parker (9): Guitarist, four previous top-50 places, including a 10 in 2020. He started in the "post-rock" group Tortoise, but he's mostly played with jazz musicians, and there is no reason here not to consider what he's doing jazz. But his label (International Anthem) does a lot of publicity beyond the jazz media, so their albums are likely to be reviewed in places like Pitchfork that review very little jazz. And that gives the label some crossover opportunities, even though most of what they release is as esoteric within jazz as jazz is in the pop world. This outreach doesn't help them much with our voters (although they have released top-10 albums in the past, by Jaimie Branch and Makaya McCraven as well as by Parker). This Mid-Year SML and Kalia Vandever got 3 votes each, and Alabaster DePlume 1. SML shares some band members with Parker. Their album was handicapped by a late release, on June 26, just a week before voting closed. Still, five other June 26 releases finished higher.
Mark Turner (10): One of many mainstream/postbop tenor saxophonists to emerge on major labels in the 1990s. This is his sixth album on ECM since 2009 (counting two as Fly), and his highest place since 5 in 2014 (5 top-50 finishes, plus a co-credit with Steve Lehman that came in 6 in 2025). ECM is a German label distributed by Universal, which has given them enough publicity and distribution to count as a major label, especially as they signed up prominent Americans, like Keith Jarrett, Paul Motian, Charles Lloyd, Joe Lovano, and Vijay Iyer. After Turner, they placed: Craig Taborn (13), Joe Lovano (14), Marilyn Crispell & Anders Jormin (48), Steve Swallow (65), as well as getting 3 votes for Julia Hülsmann and 1 vote for Judith Berkson. Turner also played in The Phoenix Trio, Tomorrow Is Today, at 64.
James Brandon Lewis (12, 15, 47): Tenor saxophonist, two-time poll winner, usually has 2-3 albums competing for votes, giving him 13 top-50 finishes since 2014. His Intakt album was only released on June 26, well into our voting, and literally came from behind on late ballots. His second Messthetics album, with Anthony Pirog on guitar and the Fugazi rhythm section appealing more to rock fans, got a major label boost (on Impulse!, a Universal label). Lewis is so powerful, and so consistent, that his poll variability suggests that labels and publicity strategies can have a lot of impact on standings. This is a subject too big to unpack here, but Intakt, Anti-, Impulse!, and TAO Forms are each pitching different audiences in different ways. Intakt covers many of our voters, but far from all. Anti- covers very few. Impulse! has widespread coverage, but it's not very effective. TAO Forms, through their independent publicist, has by far the most effective coverage. When critics hear Lewis, especially when he comes up with a major concept, he wins. And he gets attention even when he doesn't try.
Lewis also released These Are Soulful Days, which finished 47 even though I'm not sure many more than those who voted for it knew that it existed. I only discovered it by compiling the poll. It is one of the all-time great sax-with-strings experiments. I voted for it as a reissue, because I had heard it before, as a CD bonus to his 2023 poll winner, For Mahalia, With Love (and because I had an open Rara Avis slot, and didn't want to bump my 10th New Jazz Album). Everyone else quite reasonably recognized it as a new album. It is arguably the best album released so far this year, but it only exists because the label decided to press it on vinyl and offer it for Record Store Day, with no other publicity.
Craig Taborn (13): Another MacArthur Genius, just minted in 2025, but he has 5 top-20 finishes plus co-credits at 5 (with Steve Lehman) and 37 (with Vijay Iyer).
Joe Lovano (14) - Dave Douglas (16): Two dominant players from the decade before the poll, prominent in the first decade, and steadily productive since, including two albums together. However, Lovano hasn't made the top-10 since 2011, and Douglas hasn't since 2013. They're not high enough to claim a comeback, but they're definitely showing up. They're also getting help: Lovano has Julian Lage, whose own album is at 25; Douglas has James Brandon Lewis and Tomeka Reid.
Jason Moran (21, 42): MacArthur Genius, won the 2010 poll with one of the highest margins ever, placed 7 with his last Blue Note in 2014, after which he started self-releasing albums, with no promo, at least none that's come my way. He's still placed a few albums in the poll, mostly in the lower ranks of the top-50 (28, 35, 45), but 2023's From the Dancehall to the Battlefield got more attention and placed at 2. His co-credit name has helped others, like Archie Shepp (17 in 2021), and Shards this year. For a solo piano album, 21 is pretty good, but I wonder how many voters got a chance to hear it (other than the Bandcamp samples, not enough to review). It's the highest-ranked album I haven't heard yet, by a fairly large margin — I think I've worked my way to Ben Wolfe (85), although there are many records I haven't heard from there on down.
Rodrigo Amado (23): I've been touting him as one of the world's most consistently superb tenor saxophonists for quite some time, and the voters in El Intruso's Critics Poll have been known to agree (although he slipped to 3rd this year, behind James Brandon Lewis and Camila Nebbia, an Argentinian who got votes for four albums this Mid-Year, after four last year). But he never placed in our top-50 until 2023 (24), and again in 2025 (38). His rise in the poll has been aided by my recruitment of more European critics (especially more El Intruso voters). But his absence from the poll until 2023 is evidence that the poll had been too US-centric for too long.
Irreversible Entanglements (24): DC-based group fronted by poet Camae Ayewa (known to hip-hop as Moor Mother), they've placed three previous albums 24-13-21. Perhaps due to my rock critic roots, I'm drawn to jazz groups that seek to expand their audience without dumbing down. Bassist Luke Stewart placed his own album at 22 in 2024. He got votes for two collaborations this Mid-Year, with Ballister (Dave Rempis) and Aymeric Avice.
Virginia MacDonald (29): I've given up on polling for debut albums, but the Canadian clarinetist would probably have won. The closest competition I can see is DoYeon Kim (32), a Korean gayaguem player who's spent the last decade in New York, with four co-credited albums, but the only first-credit is so obscure one could easily overlook it. (After many arguments over Francis's strict rules, I decided to allow voters to overlook previous albums they considered really obscure or marginal, like this one.) Next up is pianist Yvonne Rogers (44).
Cécile McLorin Salvant (30): MacArthur Genius, has won our Vocals category every time she's had a dog in the fight, with overall polls of 4 (2013), 13, 6, 9, 3, 16, and 35 (2025), which is almost by definition the upper limits for a singer. No other singer has cracked the top ten since 2008 (Cassandra Wilson) and 2007 (Dee Dee Bridgewater and Abbey Lincoln). (I'm skipping over instrumentalists who also sing some, like Nicole Mitchell and Jaimie Branch.) While her recent releases have slipped a bit, this could be due to changes in the voting population, as many newer critics have little interest in jazz vocals. But her low (for her) vote this year can mostly be chalked up to the late (June 26) release date.
The top Vocal album this Mid-Year is probably Georgia Muldrow at 18, although she's second-credit behind the group Harriet Tubman, so Salvant could have won, as that doesn't reliably translate into Vocal votes. Looking down the list, I don't see much else: Dominique Eade (67, with Ran Blake), Gabrielle Cavassa (78), Anthony Joseph (85), Catherine Russell (90), Vera Morais (95). I'm sure there are others where voice plays a role, but groups like Irreversible Entanglements have never gotten significant votes in Vocals. One more album that would have gotten Vocals votes is bassist Chuck Bergeron's Bass & Face: Duets With Ten Premier Vocalists (71). But in general, vocal jazz has become as marginalized among jazz critics as jazz has among rock & pop critics. Francis would not be happy.
I might as well note here, for lack of an actual album to hang the comment on, that the situation for our Latin Jazz category is even grimmer. After his first poll failed to give Latin Jazz any attention, Francis added the category, arguing that any publication that claimed to represent New York should honor the music. But it's always been an uphill struggle, especially as the poll has gone nationwide and international, and as the music has diffused way beyond the Bronx. That the category has been won by one musician, the alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón (also a MacArthur Genius), as often as Salvant has won Vocals not only attests to his brilliance but to the lack of competition. That Zenón's El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 3, scheduled for Aug. 28 release, would win again this year is a virtual certainty. (Zenón has second credit on an album at 102, another June 26 release.) Meanwhile, the highest-rated Latin Jazz album so far is probably Carlos Henríquez, Monk Con Clave, at 88 (3 votes).
Maria Schneider (31): Just three proper albums during the 20 years of the poll, but all three have won* (the asterisk a tie that Francis declared in 2015, as The Thompson Fields got the same number of points as Rudresh Mahanthappa's Bird Calls, but fewer votes — the tiebreaker at the time, before I flipped the sort order in 2025). This one is billed as an EP: the title piece is just 10:29, the CD filled out with a shorter second piece, a field recording, and an alternate take, total: 30:02.
Myra Melford & Satoko Fujii (40): Duets with two major free jazz pianists, both established in the 1990s. Melford has placed top-30 in the poll 8 times (as high as 7 in 2018 and 2022). Fujii has only placed in the top-50 twice (both at 31), but has had many more albums with lesser vote totals (two more this year).
Ivo Perelman (49): Brazilian avant-saxophonist, based in New York, documents everything he does, so he winds up with 8-12 albums per year, mostly duos and trios, sometimes a quartet, always showcasing his distinctive and innovative playing, but hard to choose between. It took a long time for him to get noticed, but most recent years his votes have been divided among 4-6 albums. Last year's sax-with-string-trio, Armageddon Flower (on TAO Forms) broke through to finish 14, but Synesthesia is getting less label support. Meanwhile, he has two more albums with Mid-Year votes, and two more (that I'm aware of) without votes.
Charles Downs (51): Another reason I'm glad not to be counting Debut votes: the 82-year-old drummer is having a moment, his name clearly up front for what may be the first time, but I remember him as Rashid Bakr, who recorded extensively (if rarely as leader) from 1977 on, notably with Billy Bang, Jemeel Moondoc, and Cecil Taylor.
Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier (62): Off my chart above, but this was another June 26 release, and coming on a label I had never heard of (Antlia), it got even less publicity than the other late releases. Brennan, a vibraphonist from Mexico, won our Debut category (2022), then the poll (2024), then came in 2 in 2025. Her duo partner is a pianist from Switzerland who finished 12 in 2025 with her second Mary Halvorson duo (the first was 22 in 2021). She's had two more top-50 places (16 in 2018, 19 in 2023), and has another album at 35 this Mid-Year.