This list is adapted from the bal­lot I sub­mit­ted to Fran­cis Davis for the 6th Annual Jazz Crit­ics poll, which will be hosted at Rhap­sody this year. I’ve con­sol­i­dated his cat­e­gories into one, and since opin­ions change with greater knowl­edge, I’ve rearranged the rank­ings after a cou­ple of addi­tional weeks of expe­ri­ence. The first four selec­tions in par­tic­u­lar I want to sep­a­rate out as mer­it­ing extra atten­tion for their deep ambi­tion, as well as their sheer musi­cal accomplishment.

1. Gold­berg Variations/Variations, Dan Tepfer: Beau­ti­ful Bach play­ing, beau­ti­ful impro­vis­ing, beau­ti­ful musi­cal think­ing. The range of expres­sion and ideas is thrilling. The album of the year, across all genres.

2. Art of the Impro­viser, Matthew Shipp: Deep, gnarly, bril­liant. An explo­ration of what this music is all about, not just idiomatic jazz but impro­vis­ing in gen­eral. Shipp has been argu­ing with the jazz tra­di­tion for quite awhile, and this feels like hear­ing an artist fight­ing for and expe­ri­enc­ing enlightenment.

3. Heart’s Reflec­tions, Wadada Leo Smith: What a year for Leo Smith, book-ended last week by the release of his new, ter­rific disc from his Mbira group and a two night cel­e­bra­tion of his artistry at Roulette. Six ensem­bles played free and elec­tric jazz, cross-genre impro­vi­sa­tions and struc­tured and notated works for both cham­ber ensem­ble and cham­ber orches­tra. It says some­thing good about Smith’s expres­sion as an artist and his nota­tional tech­nique that the mod­ern clas­si­cal play­ers seemed imme­di­ately com­fort­able with and excited by his idiom, while some of the jazz play­ers seemed to have been tossed into the deep end and asked to swim. The sets grew in com­fort and stature as the music went along and Smith led with con­fi­dence and played with imag­i­na­tion, sen­si­tiv­ity and the power of a lip that belied his age (his upper reg­is­ter and mul­ti­phonic play­ing on the flugel­horn was impressive).

This double-disc is music from Smith’s guitar-heavy, thud­dingly funky band Organic, and it brings together two impor­tant par­al­lel streams in jazz that have had, strangely, a greater influ­ence across pop­u­lar music than they have with their orig­i­nal fam­i­lies: Miles Davis elec­tric period and Don Cherry as musi­cal griot. Jazz still holds point­less argu­ments about these musics, espe­cially Miles. It’s hard to believe the basic fea­tures of Bitches Brew — a direct con­nec­tion to the blues, an aban­don­ment of pop­u­lar song struc­ture for groove and vamp, an empha­sis on impro­vi­sa­tion and group inter­play rather than on get­ting back to the head and hit­ting the last cadence — and beyond were ever con­tro­ver­sial, but they still are. But jazz is not a set of tunes, it’s a com­plete style of play­ing music, and elec­tric Miles was about as jazz as jazz ever gets. And so is Heart’s Reflec­tions, the best so far of Smith’s explo­ration of Miles legacy (his Yo Miles! bands with Henry Kaiser are strong, and you can hear the music col­lected in two good reis­sues, but Organic has a rhyth­mic vital­ity that is fre­quently more sup­ple and propul­sive). As Smith explained to me, stitch­ing together all his musi­cal endeav­ors, it’s about a fun­da­men­tal value in and con­nec­tion to an expres­sive idea that comes out of the blues, but needs as lit­tle of strict form and genre as Skip James, Robert John­son, Son House and Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son did. And that’s where Don Cherry comes in. The sound of this music is full of the col­ors of Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way and Jack John­son, but Smith’s wide-ranging phras­ing, ear and abil­ity to gather together what seem to be dis­parate musi­cal ele­ments into a nat­ural sound­ing whole is straight out of Cherry’s gift for speak­ing in musi­cal lan­guage across cul­tures and idioms. Smith incor­po­rates that implic­itly, mak­ing this a true ‘world-music’ record of freely played, strictly com­posed, tra­di­tional, open-ended elec­tric jazz. Almost two hours of music, each sec­ond cast­ing a spell. An awe­some record.

4. What is the Beau­ti­ful, Clau­dia Quin­tet + 1: Jazz and poetry has been a bet­ter idea in the­ory than in prac­tice. Although the the­ory is pretty damn good. On the poetry side, it’s moti­vated great work by Lawrence Fer­linghetti, Bob Kauf­man and oth­ers (there are two good col­lec­tions of this style), but on the music side it’s mostly been the kind of flute-and-bongos-with-turtlenecks that is a cliché pre­cisely because it’s true enough. Poets have loved jazz, and musi­cians have dug poetry, but more is needed to make the two work like choco­late and peanut but­ter. There’s a big dif­fer­ence between writ­ing a pop song, even a sophis­ti­cated, com­plex song like “Lush Life” or “The Pea­cocks,” and an art song, and that’s what a com­poser does when they set the poetry of some­one else to music. Pop song lyrics are crafted to work implic­itly with music, poetry must be made to fit, and even more the com­poser must have an idea of what the poetry means to fit it in any way that has meaning.

That was Steve Lacy’s great break­through and con­tri­bu­tion, above and beyond his great musi­cian­ship: he took poetry and made it into jazz art songs. With his pieces, there was the under­ly­ing qual­ity of taste and judg­ment, the clar­ity that came from spend­ing the time to read, sift, think, then make the music. His main com­po­si­tional acolyte, Frank Carl­berg, does the same, and his 2011 release Unciv­i­lized Rumi­na­tions, a solid, enjoy­able record but not quite as stim­u­lat­ing as some of his ear­lier discs, I think because the poetry he selects doesn’t have the same bite as Robert Cree­ley, et. al. A related disc is Nicholas Urie’s My Gar­den, big band jazz set­tings of poetry from Charles Bukowski. This is a strange puz­zle of a record, and it leaves me won­der­ing just where Urie stands as a reader and com­poser. Bukowski was never a major lit­er­ary fig­ure but remains a major cul­tural fig­ure, with a large body of poetry. While he wasn’t always art­ful (he grew into the craft as he aged), he was always com­mit­ted, and he is the great chron­i­cler of the strug­gle to main­tain auton­omy while deal­ing with the nec­es­sary evil of work. He was also a ten­der mis­an­thrope, an out­side who wanted to be accepted on his own terms, which he even­tu­ally was.

Out of a slew of impor­tant books like “The Room­ing­house Madri­gals,” and “The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills,” Urie has selected a minor set of poetry and set it apho­ris­ti­cally. I have no idea what he thinks of Bukowski because I have no idea what he means. The stuff sounds good, but the words just come out of the great Chris­tine Correa’s mouth as phonemes, as they seem to have no impor­tance in the music. And the music itself is a prob­lem. It’s not bad, although it’s pretty ano­dyne, but it sounds so much like the music of Carl­berg, who han­dles the key­boards on the disc, that I’m not sure what Urie him­self has done, other than orches­trate. I don’t think Carl­berg ghost-wrote the disc, I think Urie fol­lows the older man’s style so much that he doesn’t much exist him­self as an artist.

The Clau­dia Quin­tet disc is entirely dif­fer­ent, an impor­tant addi­tion to the jazz art song, and com­pletely sat­is­fy­ing. All the poetry comes from one source, Ken­neth Patchen, an asso­ciate of the beats and of jazz poetry, per­haps most well known for his col­lab­o­ra­tion with John Cage on “The City Wears a Slouch Hat.” He was smart, irrev­er­ent, roman­tic, hip, and from the open­ing sound of the record, Kurt Elling’s dry bari­tone with it’s mor­dant edge, pro­nounc­ing the word “show­time,” you know this is going to be some­thing spe­cial. The +1 in the title ref­eres to Elling and Theo Bleck­mann, who share the vocal­ist duties, with Elling only read­ing, and Bleck­mann singing. It’s a cre­ative, effec­tive choice: Elling is the lead­ing jazz singer on the planet, but he’s also an excep­tional reader. Bleck­mann, with his inti­mately insin­u­at­ing tenor, con­veys the poet’s cool warmth. And leader and com­poser John Hol­len­beck has things to say about the poetry in the best way a com­poser can, by mak­ing the text clear, by mean­ing every note he sets under the words and by push­ing the empha­sis on cer­tain phrases and pas­sages. Since these are art songs, we don’t need to know a spe­cific mean­ing, and that would crip­ple the pieces — we just need to know that they mean some­thing to Hol­len­beck. This is a key, sub­tle ele­ment. What does the met­ri­cally stag­gered beat for “Job” mean? Noth­ing, inher­ently, but it’s a way for the music to sup­port the energy of the poem, which is an exco­ri­a­tion of the worst struc­tural aspects of work, clothed in deranged absur­dity. The music does not dis­guise, nor avoid, the poetry, but reveals it. The craft­ing of “Do Me That Love” is plan­gently beau­ti­ful, the music for the title track is a les­son in how sim­plic­ity is an essen­tial value. This is mod­ern jazz of the high­est order, music that enter­tains and informs in equal, gen­er­ous amounts. A gen­tle, thought­ful record, with great weight behind it. Spe­cial men­tion must be made for Elling, who is utterly mas­ter­ful in his phras­ing, his abil­ity to use dif­fer­ent col­ors and accents, his own com­fort and con­fi­dence in what he is doing. It’s rare to hear poetry read at this high a level, not to men­tion, with jazz!

5. 1910, Les doigts de l’homme: This disc has grown for me through­out the year. Jazz is obsessed about its his­tory but makes some odd value judge­ments about dif­fer­ent eras, so it’s impor­tant to point our — and hear — how the era of the QHCF was so musi­cally won­der­ful. In a music cur­rently dom­i­nated by rhythm, it’s great to be reminded of how much fierce swing can be put out by hit­ting the down­beat. Tunes of the era and new music with period fla­vor, mix­ing joy with a rich sense of extended har­mony. An absolute pleasure.

6. Steam­punk Ser­e­nade, Honey Ear Trio: Cre­ative, dynamic and totally kick-ass.

7. Blues and the Empir­i­cal Truth, Allen Lowe: This is a disc to either love or hate. Maybe both. It walks a delib­er­ate, fine bal­ance between prim­i­tivism and incom­pe­tence. I actu­ally think it’s impor­tant to lis­ten to the open­ing track on the first disc, “Blue Like Me Part One,” because it is both great and bad at once. With all-star sup­port, Lowe has put together a mas­sive project that is some­thing like what Cap­tain Beef­heart might have done if he was a jazz musi­cian, tak­ing the most basic ele­ments of the music and build­ing it back up as some sort of alter­na­tive his­tory, where Ornette Cole­man, Robert John­son, Otis Spann and Miles Davis formed a band, where there was no past or future, every­thing col­lapsed into the present. At times amaz­ing, at times appalling, impos­si­ble to lis­ten to straight through and com­pletely nec­es­sary. Mind-cleansing and ear-opening.

8.There Was …, Aram Shelton’s Arrive: Bril­liantly cool and sharp-edged take on the great lega­cies of Out To Lunch and Des­ti­na­tion: Out!

9. Rip­tide, Gerry Hem­ing­way Quin­tet: Hem­ing­way is one of the pre­miere drum­mers, a great ensem­ble player and leader who at times tends to empha­size the style over the phys­i­cal sub­stance. This new disc has all his strengths and none of his weak­nesses. A great band, great com­po­si­tions and the indul­gence in style is used as an excel­lent tran­si­tional device, lead­ing the music from one con­cept into another. In some ways, this could be a big band record from sixty years ago, that’s the qual­ity of Hemingway’s think­ing. A crack, very hip big band. The new ver­sion of his standby, “Holler Up,” is a gem.

10. Words Beyond, Alon Nechus­tan: Top-shelf con­tem­po­rary piano trio jazz, hit­ting all the notes from swing to free, with great tunes and great playing.

11. Chris Chris Par­rello + Things I Won­der: On here as my debut of the year pick. Plenty of great music, but even more excit­ing is the sense of a young musi­cian dis­cov­er­ing his aes­thetic val­ues in the moment. Look­ing for­ward to a lot more from him.

12. Synas­try, Jen Shyu and Mark Dresser: Under­ex­plored ter­ri­tory, finely done. I wish there were more records like this, more singers doing what Shyu is doing. After Betty Carter, the next log­i­cal step is to take the voice entirely into instru­men­tal ter­ri­tory, but there’s been so lit­tle of it (Lau­ren New­ton?). Shyu is an extra­or­di­nary singer with sophis­ti­cated musi­cal­ity, and the seem­ingly sparse set­ting of voice and bass is here col­or­ful and rich (you can also hear her as an essen­tial part of Steve Coleman’s band on The Mancy of Sound, a decent record but with­out the fire of last year’s release).

13. For hon­or­able men­tions: Akin­musire, Daniel Ben­net Group, Endan­gered Blood, Mostly Other Peo­ple Do the Killing, Nate Woo­ley Quin­tet, Rudresh Mahan­thappa times two, BANN, Asif Kehati, Brian Lan­drus, Dar­ren John­ston, Ben Kono