This contains the poll results for the New Jazz Albums category. For Rara Avis (Reissues/Archival), see The Old World Gets Weirder. For a more general overview, see Warming Up a Riff. For even more results, ballots, and notes, go to the poll archive website.
Francis Davis had a knack for taking the vast pile of data produced by his annual polls and finding some overarching theme, which varied from year to year. I'm too literal-minded to do that. While I can find lots of variety within any given year, as a totality each year looks pretty much like any other. I think this is somewhat analogous to the differences between weather and climate: weather changes significantly from day to day, even hour to hour, while climate change is extremely hard to detect with one's immediate senses.
After initial skepticism, I eventually came around and conceded the reality of anthropogenic climate change. But it took a lot of analysis, both gathering tangentially-related evidence and seeing how theory fit it together. And it took a time frame much longer than a single year. Statisticians preach the need to separate the signal from the noise. In their view, climate is the signal that is obscured by the plentiful noise of weather. Longer-term shifts in jazz are similarly obscured, by the broad range of artists and the enormous numbers of albums they produce. Pace Francis, when I look at any given jazz critics poll, I tend to see the literal, which is to say the noise.
But in my desperate search for a handle on this essay, I took a look at Francis's old essays, and found one from 2019 that seems relevant today: The Fringe Fills the Gap. The "gap" was something that Francis often thought about: the loss of critical consensus. In retrospect, I doubt that jazz critics have ever been so much in agreement as they were in 2006, his poll's inaugural year, when Ornette Coleman's Sound Grammar appeared on 80% of all ballots. Just one year later, the winner (Maria Schneider's Sky Blue) only appeared on 44.8% of the ballots, and no album has done better since. That still felt like some kind of consensus was possible, but when Sonny Rollins won with 29.5% (in 2011) and Wayne Shorter with 24.2% (in 2018) the gap had opened wide.
Aside from Schneider, who won again in 2020 after a "tie" in 2014, and Henry Threadgill in 2016, the older musicians listed above gave way to younger generations, led by Vijay Iyer (with three wins), with two wins for Mary Halvorson and James Brandon Lewis, and one each for Jason Moran, Steve Lehman, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kris Davis, and Patricia Brennan. Those, and another dozen, perhaps as many as twenty, names have dominated our poll since the mid 2010s (with elders like Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, and Charles Lloyd still hanging on). None of those (except possibly Lewis) seem to have any ambitions let alone prospects of crossing beyond the narrowly circumscribed universe of serious jazz. But as Francis noted:
A musician's arrival is now measured by Guggenheims and MacArthurs, orchestra commissions, university appointments and maybe a week at the Village Vanguard. But a major-label contract or an appearance on late-night network TV? Out of the question. At risk of being self-serving, but thinking of Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson and Tyshawn Sorey, among others, another sure sign you're gaining a reputation might be finishing at or near the top of a survey such as this one . . . And I'll go one boast further in saying that a surprise showing in this particular poll, more than simply reflecting a musician's arrival, sets the wheels for it in motion.
Or perhaps the critics are following the MacArthurs? Halvorson won hers in 2019, then topped the poll in 2022 and 2025 (after 6 top-ten finishes through 2018). Sorey got his in 2017 (after 3 top-ten finishes, with more to come). Moran and Iyer have MacArthurs, as do our perennial Latin and Vocal winners (Miguel Zenón and Cécile McLorin Salvant). So does Tomeka Reid, who wound up one vote short of Sorey in this Mid-Year poll. (Both Sorey and Reid started off by winning Francis's Debut category, and have 3rd place finishes in 2017 and 2019.) Sorey appeared on 35.4% of the 127 ballots, which is a higher share than the winners of the previous Mid-Year polls (30% for Iyer in 2024, 30.9% for Lehman in 2025), and higher than any annual share since Schneider's 36.2% in 2020.
I'll have more comments, but first I want to point out a few things. We sent out invitations to a large number of print and broadcast journalists, including a few who, like myself, mostly just self-publish (I have a long-running blog and also now a free newsletter). We received ballots back from 127 voters, which is up from the 90 and 113 voters from the 2024-25 Mid-Year Polls, but only 75.5% of the 168 voters who voted in the 20th Annual poll at the end of 2025. Like the "mid-terms" in US politics, interest slacks off in what's perceived as a lesser-stakes election, especially one that occurs in the middle of summer, when people are easily distracted and often unprepared. Whether that skews the results is hard to say.
We asked critics to list up to 10 New Jazz Albums, preferably released in 2026 (but 2025 releases were allowed), in ranked order or not. If ranked, we added extra points, but we only use the points to break ties between albums that receive the same number of votes. So all voters are given the same importance. The points are only available as extra information. In the table that follows, the votes are in parentheses, after the points. A high points-to-votes ratio may indicate that voters who rank lists liked it better, but that tells you nothing about the critics (31 this year, so 24.4%) who didn't rank their lists.
Here are the top 58 New Jazz Albums, including all the albums that got 5 or more votes:
The full list is available here, including 14 albums that got 4 votes, 28 that got 3, 71 that got 2, and 261 that only got 1 vote.
You may also click on the arrow icon at the end of each album line to get a list of all of the critics who voted for that album. You may then click on a voter name to see that voter's ballot, and possibly to click on another album. The website has more detailed notes on every aspect of the poll.
New Jazz Albums are defined as the first release as an album of music that was initially recorded within the last 10 years, so since Jan. 1, 2017. Any album that contains previously released music, or any music recorded before the cutoff date, should be considered instead under Rara Avis. Inevitably, some albums are hard to classify, and some critics have their own ideas of what these words mean, so voters are given considerable leeway to vote for a record in whichever category makes the most sense to them. The website explains this in greater detail, but the upshot is that some albums appear in both category lists, and we make vote adjustments to treat them fairly. Also, some albums only get votes in the "wrong" list, and we leave them there.
For further notes on the New Jazz Albums totals list, follow this link.
Francis Davis always ended his Annual essays by reviewing his own ballot. I haven't been doing that, because I'm not Francis, and don't presume that I can fill his shoes. And also because my own picks have always been much more unorthodox, shall we say, than his. However, I wound up with the top four poll albums on my ballot, for what is surely the first time ever. Moreover, my other picks finished: 23, 24, 37, 40, 85, 89 (the last two with 3 votes each, so I don't even have a singleton, possibly another all-time first). Moreover, I want to avail myself of the pollmaster's prerogative of adding an honorable mention list.
I keep an ongoing list of all the new records I hear in each year. It is coarsely graded, but I only attempt to order the top rank (down to A−, although I reserve the higher grades for albums I've lived with for some time, and I almost never linger enough to do that with new albums). But I know that every album is different, as is every experience, so I don't put much stock in the exact order. When I hear a new album, I start with vague ideas of high or low within A−, then just slip into the deck somewhere. The "sort" does let me generate a ballot on a moment's notice. I may then fiddle a bit, not because I'm seriously comparing albums but I because I feel the list would scan a bit better one way or another.
I usually wait until the end of a voting cycle, because I know that I'll be finding new albums (especially as I read other voters' ballots; about half of the ones they vote for were previously unknown by me), and I want to be as authoritative as possible. But this Mid-Year, I went ahead and filled my ballot out first. I needed data to test the software. I wanted to set a good example. And I didn't want to have to think about it again. But I allow other voters to change their minds up to deadline, so I could always take advantage of that. (I did, only in that I added a 5th Rara Avis to my original 4.) Here's my ballot (the numbers in brackets are the placement; I've added notes only where I haven't said enough already):
Meg Okura & Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, Isaiah (Adhyâropa) [37]: Much here, starting with the violin, that I don't normally like, so the surprise that I do factors in.
Rodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet, Wailers (European Echoes) [23]
Tyshawn Sorey, Members . . . Don't! (Pi) [1]
[Ahmed], Play Monk (Otoroku) [4]
Anthony Joseph, The Ark (Heavenly Sweetness) [85]: A spoken word artist from Trinidad who started setting his words poems to jazz; this is neither that spoken nor that jazzy, but all the more remarkable.
The Tomeka Reid Quartet, Dance! Skip! Hop! (Out of Your Head) [2]
Irreversible Entanglements, Future Present Past (Impulse!) [24]
Adam O'Farrill, Elephant (Out of Your Head) [3]
Mark Lomax II & the Urban Art Ensemble, The Unity Suite (CFG Multimedia) [89]: Drummer from Indiana, his secret weapon the least famous great saxophonist of our time: Edwin Bayard
Myra Melford & Satoko Fujii, Katarahi (RogueArt) [40]
My current A-list has 38 jazz albums released in 2026, and 38 non-jazz albums. Aside from the 10 albums listed above, the other 28 jazz albums will serve as my "honorable mentions." (Normally I'd use that term for the next tier of B+ albums, but they're too many to list here.) The numbers in brackets are the votes for the record in the poll. The order is from my list, but don't take it too seriously:
I should also a few mention albums I counted in non-jazz:
It occurs to me that in my essays and notes I haven't written very much about the actual music on these albums. The easiest way to remedy this is for me to pull out my reviews, and sort them in chart order.