Music Mondays: Best Jazz Albums 2016: A list of lists [Confessions of a Science Librarian]

Another annual obsession to add to the list, along with the listings of best science books? Look like it, if last year and this year are anything to judge by.

This particular post collects lists of “best of the year” jazz albums I’ve found across various websites. For the purposes of this project, I’m not giving each list its own post and showcasing the albums that are part of the list. That’s an awful lot of work, which I’m reserving for the science books project which is more core to the mission of this blog.

Note: I’ve included a few not-exclusively-jazz lists if they’ve happened to include either jazz sections or lots of jazz-ish items. If this project has any happy outcome, it would have to be my readers broadening their musical horizons by discovering great new music through these lists, the wider and more varied the better.

Enjoy! And happy listening!
 

• 2016.xx.xx. The best jazz albums of 2016 by Martin Chilton / The Telegraph
• 2016.xx.xx. Best Jazz Albums of 2016 by Sputnik Music
• 2016.11.27. Jazz Recommendations – 2016 releases by Bird is the Worm
• 2016.11.28. The 100 Best Albums of 2016 (all styles, all genres) by Ted Gioia
  my top 5, in no particular order
• 2016.11.30. The 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2016 by Jeff Terich
• 2016.12.01. From Wynton Marsalis to Vijay Iyer, the best jazz albums of 2016 by Howard Reich / The Chicago Tribune
• 2016.12.04. The best jazz albums of 2016 by Clive Davis
• 2016.12.05. The Best Jazz of 2016 by Will Layman / Pop Matters
• 2016.12.05. Best Records of 2016 by Francis Bradley / Jazz Right Now
• 2016.12.05. Palmarès 2016 : 50 albums incontournables by Radio Canada Ici Musique
• 2016.12.07. The Best Albums of 2016 by Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Nate Chinen
• 2016.12.08. Karl Ackermann’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.08. Dan Bilawsky’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.08. Complete Communion: The Best Jazz Of 2016 by Stewart Smith / The Quietus
• 2016.12.09. Mark Sullivan’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.09. Jazz: Bret Saunders’ top 10 list of jazz music from 2016 by Bret Saunders / Denver Post
• 2016.12.09. The 10 Best Jazz Albums Of 2016 by Phil Freeman / Stereogum
• 2016.12.10. Dan McClenaghan’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.10. This was a good year for weird jazz by Russell Brandom / The Verge
• 2016.12.11. Troy Dostert’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.12. Geno Thackara’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.12. The 20 Best Jazz Albums of 2016 by Ron Hart / The Observer
• 2016.12.12. Notes on Jazz Best of Jazz for 2016 by Ralph A. Miriello / Huffington Post
• 2016.12.12. Top 20 Jazz Albums of 2016 by Jon Newey / Jazzwise
• 2016.12.13. Jerome Wilson’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.14. Troy Collins’ Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.14. AllMusic Loves 2016 by Various AllMusic writers
• 2016.12.14. Nextbop’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2016 by Nextbop Staff
• 2016.12.14. Best Albums of 2016 by Jazz Standard
• 2016.12.14. The Ten Best Albums of 2016 by David Hajdu
• 2016.12.15. Best of 2016: Jeff Parker, Jack DeJohnette and Mary Halvorson continue pressing jazz forward by Chris Barton / LA Times
• 2016.12.15. The Best Jazz and Noise of 2016…? by A Jazz Noise
• 2016.12.15. C. Michael Bailey’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.16. Robert Bush’s Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2016 by Robert Bush / NBC San Diego
• 2016.12.16. Mark Corroto’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.17. C. Andrew Hovan’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz
• 2016.12.18. The best Jazz Albums 2016 by Contemporary Jazz Club
• 2016.12.18. Top 5 jazz albums of 2016 blaze their own trail by Carol Banks Weber /AXS
• 2016.12.18. Budd Kopman’s Best Releases Of 2016 / All About Jazz

There are certainly many more lists to come, probably many of them only popping up well into the first week of January. I’ll probably update this post a few more times up until that point. In particular, there are not too many Canadian lists yet so I’m looking forward to catching up with some of them.

If I’m missing any lists, please let me know in the comments.

Related, from last year here’s a huge list of lists of lists covering jazz, even very marginally. I’m looking forward to this year’s compilation. Avant Music News is collecting lists for jazz and experimental music. Eric Alper is doing the same thing for “best of” lists across a wider range of genres.

As for my own “Best of the Year” list, given how much I love reading and aggregating such lists, I’m surprisingly not so much into making one for myself. That being said, here are a few albums from the jazz & blues world that I found particularly wonderful in 2016.

• Take Me to the Alley by Gregory Porter
• Let Me Get By by The Tedeschi Trucks Band
• Blackstar by David Bowie
• A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke by Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith –
• Ride the One by Paul Reddick
• Perfection by The Murray, Allen & Carrington Power Trio
• Emily’s D+Evolution by Esperanza Spalding
• Heal My Soul by Jeff Healey
• Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny by Cuong Vu Trio with Pat Metheny

(Yeah, I know, it’s not quite Monday as I’m posting this, but close enough…)