Fitting the past into the present: the year (so far) in rara avis (reissues/archival)
Editor's Note: This contains the poll results for the Rara Avis (Reissues/Archival) category. For New Jazz Albums, see Consensus in Retreat. For a more general overview, see Warming Up a Riff. For even more results, ballots, and notes, go to the poll archive website.
I've long philosophized that we're only capable of apprehending the present through our understanding of the past. But something I've just realized is that our understanding of the past is always changing in the present, especially as we find old music, obscure at the time, breaking through for us now.
While consensus on new jazz albums fragmented quickly after Francis Davis founded his poll in 2006, it persisted longer in our look back at history. Francis recognized the need to separate reissues from previously unreleased recordings, but in insisting that previously unreleased recordings be evaluated as new jazz albums, he opened up several vats of confusion. For instance, why put a newly discovered Mingus live tape in with the new albums while consigning a newly legitimized Mingus bootleg to reissues? And why should musicians trying to break new ground have to compete with Sonny Rollins' newly curated Road Shows? — which won twice, denying Rudresh Mahanthappa a win in 2008, and Ambrose Akinmusire in 2011. After that second rout, Francis merged the vault tapes in with the reissues and compilations, creating a new category he called Rara Avis. And also, I'm pretty sure, precluding further "new jazz" landslides by Coltrane, Monk, and possibly Dolphy.
The winner's share of votes for Rara Avis/Reissues has varied widely, topped by Coltrane (53.5% for 2018's Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album), with more Coltranes at 49.3%, 44.2%, and 41.5%; Monk's at 48.1% and 45.6%, and Dolphy's Musical Prophet at 50.0% (after combining two years' votes): the album appeared on digital in 2018 (20 votes), then was released on CD in 2019 (+50 votes). Miles Davis and Charles Mingus are also repeat winners, but at much lower levels (Mingus won in 2025 with a record low 16.6% of the votes, in a very competitive race).
While the Coltrane and Monk vault albums got a big push from major labels (as did the Davis box sets, which won in 2011, 2013, and 2015, and finished in the top eight six more times), the Dolphy and Mingus sets come from smaller but well-publicized labels (Elemental Music, Resonance, and their affiliates) that specialize in archival tapes. They've dominated the poll in recent years, including a sweep of the top four spots below, plus 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 23*, 26, 35* (* for '25 releases that finished 6 and 8 then).
With the major labels relatively quiet so far this year — aside from reissuing pricey vinyl, which mostly falls under the chart cut-off below — the limited competition comes from small, mostly avant-garde, labels reissuing obscurities (like Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D. at 5 and Charles Tyler's Voyage From Jericho tied for 6) or live shots (like Marion Brown at 9).
Cecil Taylor's win over more mainstream favorites Joe Henderson, Roy Hargrove, and Kenny Barron may be because his appeal transcends niche, but access has something to do with it as well, as is evident when you compare the 34 votes his 1969 tape got to the 7 of his 12th place Words & Music: The Last Bandstand, which appeared on the estimable Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj (aka FSR). I liked both records, but the latter is the one I voted for. Labels and packaging and (especially) distribution matter for new jazz albums as well, but in rara avis, they're the whole game. Nobody is saying that Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens are inferior to 26 higher-ranked albums, but most of us have other editions of the same music, and few of us were even aware of this new edition on an obscure Swiss label (actually related to Hat Hut). I'll note some more examples below. But let's get to the list.
We asked critics to list up to 5 Rara Avis (Reissues/Archival) Albums, preferably released in 2026 (but 2025 releases were allowed), in ranked order of 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 (17 this year, so 17.3% of actual voters) who submitted unranked lists.
Here are the top 41 Rara Avis Albums, including all the albums that got 3 or more votes:
The full list is available here, including 21 albums that got 2 votes, and 74 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 notes on various Rara Avis (Reissues/Historical), follow this link.
Here's the Rara Avis portion of my ballot (the numbers in brackets are the placement; I've added notes only where I haven't said enough already):
Art Pepper, Everything Happens to Me: 1959 Live at the Cellar (Omnivore) [10]
Joe Henderson, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1978, Resonance) [2]
The Lawrence Marable Quartet, Tenorman (1956, Jazz West/Blue Note) [93]: drummer, played on over 200 albums, but only put his name on this one, where the title refers to James Clay.
Sunny Murray & Sabu Toyozumi, Sun's Blessings (1999, NoBusiness) [38]
James Brandon Lewis & Lutosławski Quartet, These Are Soulful Days (2021, TAO Forms) [113]: I figured this sax-with-strings tour de force as a reissue because I had heard it as the bonus to Lewis's poll-winning For Mahalia, With Love, but other voters saw it as a New Jazz Album, placing it 47 there.
My current A-list has 18 rara avis albums released in 2026, and 3 non-jazz albums. Aside from the 5 albums listed above, the other 13 jazz albums are listed below. 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 can, and sometimes do, play vinyl, but I don't seek it out. When I see a vinyl reissue, I note it in my tracking file. If I've heard a previous version, I note that grade, and give it no further thought. If I haven't heard it, I will often stream whatever I can find, and review it. In other words, I use the reissue list as a checklist, to identify albums of possible import I have mave missed. The Marable, Washington, Henderson (Tetragon), and Tyner (Extensions files are examples where this panned out. On the other hand, there were other reissues I had previously A-listed, so didn't include in this year's list. These included:
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.