Francis Davis is running his annual jazz critics poll at the Village Voice this year. I've been invited to vote, and to write up a sidebar article explaining or expanding on my ballot, and to do some website work. The bold stuff that follows is quoted from the ballot request, followed by my submissions, followed by some extraneous comments I didn't submit.

Your choices for 2010's ten best new releases (albums released between Thanksgiving 2009 and Thanksgiving 2010, give or take), listed in descending order one-through-ten.

1. Billy Bang: Prayer for Peace (TUM)
2. Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman: Dual Identity (Clean Feed)
3. Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra: Ashcan Rantings (Clean Feed, 2CD)
4. William Parker: I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield (AUM Fidelity, 2CD)
5. The Mark Lomax Trio: The State of Black America (Inarhyme)
6. Angles: Epileptical West: Live in Coimbra (Clean Feed)
7. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Forty Fort (Hot Cup)
8. First Meeting: Cut the Rope (Libra)
9. Wadada Leo Smith and Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer (1986, Kabell)
10. Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra: India & Africa: A Tribute to John Coltrane (Water Baby)

Six of those were Jazz CG Pick Hits, including the pending column. Two missed out on the new column, so they are prospective Pick Hits until something better comes along. Six (down through Angles) are full A rateds; the others very high A-, leading a long list that follows. The mix of black and white is typical of my lists, but an lot of Asian blood has seeped in, some born here (Brown), some there (Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura), some just hard to explain (Mahanthappa, born in Italy although his Indian parents had previously emigrated to the US). Not that any of that makes much difference, but there is a lot of boundary crossing in the list. Only one European group, but four of the records are on European labels -- three on Clean Feed, which is clearly the label of the year. Most would be classified as avant or free, but the Parker album, to take one example, is full of popular songs with vocals. Several artists show rock roots, but none of the records could be called fusion.

The rest of the jazz subset of my 2010 A-list, as it currently stands:

11. The Nels Cline Singers: Initiate (Cryptogramophone, 2CD)
12. Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch: What Is Known (Clean Feed)
13. Lean Left: The Ex Guitars Meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo, Volume 1 (Smalltown Superjazz)
14. David S. Ware: Onecept (AUM Fidelity)
15. Henry Threadgill Zooid: This Brings Us To: Volume II (Pi)
16. Myra Melford's Be Bread: The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12)
17. Tin Hat: Foreign Legion (BAG)
18. The Microscopic Septet: Friday the Thirteenth: The Micros Play Monk (Cuneiform)
19. Fred Hersch Trio: Whirl (Palmetto)
20. Steve Swell's Slammin' the Infinite: 5000 Poems (Not Two)
21. Bill Frisell: Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy Jazz)
22. Stephan Crump with Rosetta Trio: Reclamation (Sunnyside)
23. New York Art Quartet: Old Stuff (1965, Cuneiform)
24. Allison Miller: Boom Tic Boom (Foxhaven)
25. Tommy Babin's Benzene: Your Body Is Your Prison (Drip Audio)
26. Tomasz Stanko Quintet: Dark Eyes (ECM)
27. Jon Irabagon: Foxy (Hot Cup)
28. Ben Syversen: Cracked Vessel (Ben Syversen)
29. Oleg Kireyev/Keith Javors: Rhyme & Reason (Inarhyme)
30. Ivo Perelman/Gerry Hemingway: The Apple in the Dark (Leo)
31. Freddy Cole: Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B (High Note)
32. Nasheet Waits: Equality: Live at MPI (Fresh Sound New Talent -09)
33. Marilyn Crispell/David Rothenberg: One Night I Left My Silent House (ECM)
34. Henry Grimes/Rashied Ali: Spirits Aloft (Porter)
35. Humanization 4tet: Electricity (Ayler)
36. Anat Cohen: Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard (Anzic)
37. 3ology: With Ron Miles (Tapestry)
38. John Hicks & Frank Morgan: Twogether (High Note)
39. Rodrigo Amado: Searching for Adam (Not Two)
40. Alexander McCabe: Quiz (CAP)
41. Ismael Dueñas Trio: Jazz Ateu (Quadrant)
42. James Blood Ulmer: In and Out (In+Out)
43. Anthony Braxton: 19 Standards (Quartet) 2003 (2003, Leo, 4CD)
44. Paal Nilssen-Love/Ken Vandermark: Milwaukee Volume (Smalltown Superjazz)
45. Ivo Perelman/Daniel Levin/Torbjörn Zetterberg: Soulstorm (Clean Feed, 2CD)
46. Marcin & Bartlomiej Brat Oles: Duo (Fenomedia -0
47. The Stryker/Slagle Band: Keeper (Panorama)
48. Ivo Perelman/Dominic Duval/Brian Willson: Mind Games (Leo -09)
49. Paquito D'Rivera: Tango Jazz: Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center (Sunnyside)
50. Conference Call: What About . . . . ? (Not Two, 2CD)
51. Ellery Eskelin/Gerry Hemingway: Inbetween Spaces (Auricle)
52. RED Trio (Clean Feed)
53. Art Pepper: Unreleased Art, Vol. V: Stuttgart May 25, 1981 (Widow's Taste)
54. Juhani Aaltonen Quartet: Conclusions (Tum)

Your top-three reissues, again listed in descending order:

1. Commitment: The Complete Recordings 1981/1983 (1980-83, No Business, 2CD)
2. Sounds of Liberation (1972, Porter)
3. Eero Koivistoinen & Co.: 3rd Version (1973, Porter)

All three of these are remarkable but extremely obscure reissues, but they completely exhaust my stash. I did get some promo material on the Miles Davis Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition, but never figured out what to do with it. There are lots of reissues I could imagine adding to this list: Mosaic's big boxes of Duke Ellington and Henry Threadgill; Hip-O's boxes of Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington; Sunnyside's 4-CD expansion of Stan Getz's swansong, People Time. Steeplechase has a 5-CD box of Pierre Dørge's New Jungle Orchestra. Storyville has an 8-CD Teddy Wilson box, and 2-CD centennary editions of Lester Young and Stuff Smith. (Also a 4-CD box of Papa Bue's Viking Jazz Band, which I've never heard but long wanted to.) European labels, thanks to their 50-year copyright limit, are having a field day with reissuing 1950s jazz. And I'm sure there's a lot more, but I haven't gotten close to it. The records on the ballot, however, are pretty amazing.

Your choice for the year's best vocal album:

1. Freddy Cole: Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B (High Note)

William Parker's I Plan to Stay a Believer has so many vocals the rules suggest I should pick it instead. Cole's record is the best headlined by a vocalist. The only other one on my A-list is James Blood Ulmer's In and Out, which is more up for its guitar. I don't even see many jazz vocals in my HM list: Gia Notte's Shades (Gnote), Barb Jungr's The Men I Love (Naim), Billy Jenkins' blues records I Am a Man From Lewisham and Born Again (VOTP), that's about it. Seems like an especially poor year for jazz vocals, but since I separated vocal CDs into a separate inbox queue I've been avoiding them, so may have missed something. Still, whatever it is isn't clear from the early end-of-year lists I've seen.

Your choice for the year's best debut CD:

1. Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch: What Is Known (Clean Feed)

Beyond that, only Ben Syversen and RED Trio appear to be eligible. It's so easy to self-release something these days that it's very rare for artists to wait until they come up with something really solid.

Your choice for the year's best Latin jazz CD:

1. Paquito D'Rivera: Tango Jazz: Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center (Sunnyside)

Again, that's the only one on my A-list, except for Spanish and Portuguese artists who play mainstream or avant jazz -- Ismael Dueñas, Rodrigo Amado, Luis Lopes, any of which would have edged D'Rivera. On the HM list: Hilario Duran's Motion (Alma), Nilson Matta's Copacabana (Zoho), Rafi Malkiel's Water (Tzadik), and Pablo Aslan's Tango Grill (Zoho) -- Aslan, by the way, is the critical ingredient in D'Rivera's album above.