My Favorite Jazz of 2019

I'm not a jazz connoisseur. The lifeblood of my listening day is, without a doubt, rock and pop, with various acoustic troubadours thrown around the edges. Music with words. However, I've also always been a music-first / lyrics-second kind of guy. Meaning that the first thing to grab me about the music I hear is usually not the words but the sound of the music. Good lyrics are just icing on the cake for me, most of the time.

This means that I've always had a soft spot for genres like jazz and electronic music. I don't know if it's just because more of it was on my radar this year, but 2019 felt like a really great year for numerous cool new jazz releases. At the end of most recent years, I might have two or three jazz or electronic albums that have worked their way under my skin. This year there were more than a dozen that felt notable to me.

In an effort to both document a really great year for jazz (at least for me) as well as to share some of the cool stuff I've discovered, here is my Top 10 jazz albums list for 2019. A Spotify playlist of these albums is also included here. I hope you hear something you like and, if you've got jazz favorites from this year that aren't on this list, tell me about them in the comments! My doors are always open. 

My Top 10 Favorite Jazz Albums of 2019

10 - Ezra Collective - You Can't Steal My Joy
 9 - Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom - Glitter Wolf
 8 - Ralph Alessi, Ravi Coltrane, et al - Imaginary Friends
 7 - GoGo Penguin - Ocean In A Drop
 6 - Jeremy Pelt - The Artist
 5 - Kris Davis - Diatom Ribbons
 4 - Theon Cross - FYAH
 3 - Antoine Berjeaut & Makaya McCraven - Moving Cities
 2 - The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery 
 1 - Portico Quartet - Memory Streams 

Check these out! The playlist includes the full albums, but I'd like to suggest that you just shuffle play. I do that from a much larger playlist to see what will stick to my ribs, and it always seems to make for an interesting listening experience.