We compiled our top 50 new releases and top 10 historical/reissue recordings of 2009 from year-end lists by our critics. To see each voter’s ballot, go to this page. Only CDs and box sets released between Nov. 1, 2008, and Oct. 31, 2009 were eligible. Some releases may have slipped through the cracks, however, as release dates shifted or weren’t available.

Original blurbs by Evan Haga and Jeff Tamarkin. Review excerpts by Thomas Conrad, Steve Greenlee, Christopher Loudon, Bill Milkowski, Mike Shanley, George Varga, Michael J. West and Josef Woodard.

Top 50 New Releases Read more »

Miguel Zenón’s ‘Esta Plena’ and Claudia Acuña’s ‘En Este Momento’ are two of Howard Reich’s “Top 10 innovative jazz releases of 2009” featured in the Chicago Tribune! Reich writes that these releases represent “Innovative work abounded in 2009, with particularly strong contributions from Chicago artists.” Congratulations, Miguel and Claudia!

Here are the descriptions of the two Marsalis Music releases from Reich’s list: Read more »

Like a nimble jet aircraft, Miguel Zenón’s Esta Plena leaps into flight from its very first notes. The album arrives not long after Awake (Marsalis Music, 2008), Zenón’s jazz quartet/string quartet outing of 2008, but it follows more logically on the heels of 2005’s Jíbaro (Marsalis Music), a jazz meditation on the rural music of Zenón’s native Puerto Rico. Esta Plena, different but related, finds the alto saxophonist melding authentic plena music with the forward-thinking jazz aesthetic he’s developed as a New Yorker. Read more »