Monthly & Yearly Jazz Selections—Jazz Reviews—Jazz Playlists—Jazz ツ
Bestofjazz.org aims to help its visitors discover amazing jazz releases. To do so, we review all the new jazz albums that we believe are worth your time. We also create monthly selections of jazz to be released in the coming days or weeks. This way, you will always be up to date with the newest releases and informed on what to wait for.
Get the next selections directly by email:
Every year, we publish a dedicated post and a related playlist. It covers the 10 best albums of the year, plus 10 extra tracks from 10 additional records. The playlists are on Spotify for now; more streaming options will be provided soon. For every album selected, we hand-pick a track and share as much information and links about it as possible. This makes it easier to investigate a preferred artist or record further. All the albums are listed in no rank order at all. The ranking of the albums and tracks is always random. It is the same for the playlists; play them in order or shuffle them—the next track will always be surprisingly good!
The yearly selections are based on the albums’ release dates. We try to make sure we have the correct date using the artists’ and record labels’ websites, but if you find any mistakes or corrections to be made, then please contact us.
In addition to running Best of Jazz, we also take part in some of the most respected jazz critics’ polls around the world, a way to connect and celebrate the music we care about most:
- Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll (since 2021) – organized by Tom Hull and Francis Davis, this is the largest annual survey of jazz critics, originally hosted by NPR and now published by The Arts Fuse.
- El Intruso International Critics Poll (since 2021) – organized by Sergio Piccirilli and Abel Gilbert, this independent global poll from Argentina gathers critics from more than 30 countries.
- DownBeat Critics Poll (since 2025) – organized by DownBeat Magazine, one of the most historic and respected voices in jazz journalism.
Being part of these polls is both an honor and a joy!
This website was born in February 2021.