By Tom Hull

Fitting the past into the present: the year (so far) in rara avis (reissues/archival)

Editor’s Note: This contains the poll results for the Rara Avis (Reissues/Archival) category. For New Jazz Albums, see Consensus in Retreat. For a more general overview, see Warming Up a Riff. For even more results, ballots, and notes, go to the poll archive website.

I’ve long philosophized that we’re only capable of apprehending the present through our understanding of the past. But something I’ve just realized is that our understanding of the past is always changing in the present, especially as we encounter old music, obscure at the time, breaking through for us now.

While consensus on new jazz albums fragmented quickly after Francis Davis founded his poll in 2006, it persisted longer in our look back at history. Francis recognized the need to separate reissues from previously unreleased recordings, but in insisting that previously unreleased recordings be evaluated as new jazz albums, he opened up several vats of confusion. For instance, why put a newly discovered Mingus live tape in with the new albums while consigning a newly legitimized Mingus bootleg to reissues? And why should musicians trying to break new ground have to compete with Sonny Rollins’ newly curated Road Shows? — which won twice, denying Rudresh Mahanthappa a win in 2008, and Ambrose Akinmusire in 2011. After that second rout, Francis merged the vault tapes in with the reissues and compilations, creating a new category he called Rara Avis, and, I’m pretty sure, precluding further “new jazz” landslides by Coltrane, Monk, and possibly Dolphy.

The winner’s share of votes for Rara Avis/Reissues has varied widely, topped by Coltrane (53.5% for 2018’s Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album*), with more Coltranes at 49.3%, 44.2%, and 41.5%; Monk’s at 48.1% and 45.6%; and Dolphy’s Musical Prophet at 50.0% (after combining two years’ votes): the album appeared digitally in 2018 (20 votes), then was released on CD in 2019 (+50 votes). Miles Davis and Charles Mingus are also repeat winners, but at much lower levels (Mingus won in 2025 with a record-low 16.6% of the votes, in a very competitive race).

While the Coltrane and Monk vault albums got a big push from major labels (as did the Davis box sets, which won in 2011, 2013, and 2015, and finished in the top eight six more times), the Dolphy and Mingus sets come from smaller but well-publicized labels (Elemental Music, Resonance, and their affiliates) that specialize in archival tapes. They’ve dominated the poll in recent years, including a sweep of the top four spots below, plus places 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 23*, 26, and 35* (*for ’25 releases that finished 6 and 8 then).

With the major labels relatively quiet so far this year — aside from reissuing pricey vinyl, which mostly falls under the chart cut-off below — the limited competition comes from small, mostly avant-garde labels reissuing obscurities (like Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D. at 5 and Charles Tyler’s Voyage From Jericho, tied for 6) or live shots (like Marion Brown at 9).

Cecil Taylor’s win over more mainstream favorites Joe Henderson, Roy Hargrove, and Kenny Barron may be because his appeal transcends the niche, but access has something to do with it as well, as is evident when you compare the 34 votes his 1969 tape got to the 7 of his 12th-place Words & Music: The Last Bandstand, which appeared on the estimable Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj (aka FSR). I liked both records, but the latter is the one I voted for. Labels, packaging, and (especially) distribution matter for new jazz albums as well, but in rara avis, they’re the whole game. Nobody is saying that Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives & Sevens is inferior to 26 higher-ranked albums, but most of us have other editions of the same music, and few of us were even aware of this new edition on an obscure Swiss label (actually related to Hat Hut). I’ll note some more examples below. But let’s get to the list.

We asked critics to list up to five Rara Avis (Reissues/Archival) albums, preferably released in 2026 (but 2025 releases were allowed), either in ranked order or unranked. If ranked, we added extra points, but we only use the points to break ties between albums that receive the same number of votes. So all voters are given the same importance. The points are only available as extra information. In the table that follows, the votes are in parentheses, after the points. A high points-to-votes ratio may indicate that voters who submitted ranked lists liked it better, but that tells you nothing about the critics (17 this year, or 17.3% of voters) who submitted unranked lists.

Top 41 Rara Avis Albums

Here are the top 41 Rara Avis Albums, including all the albums that got 3 or more votes:

1. Cecil Taylor Unit, Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts (Elemental Music) 47.8 (34)
2. Joe Henderson, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1978, Resonance) 34.6 (24)
3. Roy Hargrove, Bern (2000, Time Traveler) 21 (15)
4. Kenny Barron – Ray Drummond – Ben Riley, So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon (1995, Elemental Music) 22.4 (14)
5. Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D. (1972, New World) 18.8 (12)
6. Marty Ehrlich & Julius Hemphill, Circle the Heart (1982, Relative Pitch) 16.6 (12)
7. Charles Tyler Ensemble, Voyage From Jericho (1974, Frederiksberg) 16.6 (12)
8. Yusef Lateef, Alight Upon the Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1975, Resonance) 14.8 (12)
9. Marion Brown, Live in Europe 1968 & 1972 (NoBusiness) 15.4 (11)
10. Art Pepper, Everything Happens to Me: 1959 Live at the Cellar (Omnivore) 14.2 (10)
11. Mal Waldron, Stardust & Starlight: At the Jazz Showcase (1979, Resonance) 11.4 (9)
12. Cecil Taylor New Unit, Words & Music: The Last Bandstand (2016, Fundacja Słuchaj) 11.2 (7)
13. Woody Shaw, Love Dance (1976, Time Traveler) 9.6 (7)
14. Ahmad Jamal, At the Jazz Showcase: Live in Chicago (1976, Resonance) 8.8 (7)
15. Duke Ellington, Copenhagen 1964 (Storyville) 8.6 (7)
16. Bill Evans, At the BBC (1965, Elemental Music) 7.8 (7)
17. Carla Bley, Joyful Noise (Live in Hamburg 1984) (Moosicus) 9.8 (6)
18. Miroslav Vitous, Mountain Call (2003-10, ECM) 8 (6)
19. Miles Davis, Miles ’56: The Prestige Recordings (Craft) 8.6 (5)
20. Pierre Favre Trio, Bird Food (1968, Songs) 7 (5)
21. Mick Goodrick & Fred Hersch, Feeble, Fables and Ferns (1988, ECM) 7 (5)
22. Art Ensemble of Chicago, People in Sorrow (1969, Play Loud!) 6.6 (5)
23. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Vibrations in the Village (1963, Resonance ’25) 5.8 (5)
24. The Oscar Peterson Trio, At Baker’s Keyboard Lounge (1960, Verve) 5.8 (4)
25. Buster Williams, Pinnacle (1975, Muse/Time Traveler) 5.4 (4)
26. Michel Petrucciani, Kuumbwa (1987, Elemental Music) 5.2 (4)
27. Louis Armstrong, Hot Five & Hot Seven at 100 (1925-28, AlAy/Thingamajig) 4.6 (4)
28. Thelonious Monk, Alone in San Francisco (1959, Craft) 4.6 (4)
29. Charles Tolliver All Stars, Right Now… and Then (1968, Strata-East) 4.4 (4)
30. The Bottle Tapes (1996-2005, Corbett vs. Dempsey ’25) 4.6 (3)
31. Classic V-Disc Big Band Jazz Sessions (1943-48, Mosaic) 4.6 (3)
32. Sun Ra, East Two + 7 (1972-73, Cosmic Myth) 4.6 (3)
33. Thelonious Monk, Live in Paris, 1967 (Rhythm-a-Ning) 4.4 (3)
34. Oscar Peterson, Classic Trio Sessions (1959-65, Mosaic) 4.4 (3)
35. Albert Ayler Quintet, Copenhagen/Bordeaux/Newport (AlAy/Thingamajig ’25) 4.2 (3)
36. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Seek & Listen (1967, Resonance ’25) 4.2 (3)
37. Jimmy Scott, Falling in Love Is Wonderful (1963, Tangerine) 4 (3)
38. Sunny Murray & Sabu Toyozumi, Sun’s Blessings (1999, NoBusiness) 3.8 (3)
39. Evan Parker – Paul Rogers – Louis Moholo, Tebugo (1992, Jazz in Britain ’25) 3.8 (3)
40. The Visitors, Motherland (1975, Craft) 3.6 (3)
41. Daunik Lazro – Joëlle Léandre – Paul Lovens, For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset (2013, Relative Pitch) 3.2 (3)

The full list is available here, including 21 albums that got 2 votes, and 74 that only got 1 vote.

For notes on various Rara Avis (Reissues/Historical), follow this link.

My Ballot

Here’s the Rara Avis portion of my ballot:

• Art Pepper, Everything Happens to Me (Omnivore) [10]
• Joe Henderson, Consonance (Resonance) [2]
• The Lawrence Marable Quartet, Tenorman (1956, Jazz West/Blue Note) [93]
• Sunny Murray & Sabu Toyozumi, Sun’s Blessings (1999, NoBusiness) [38]
• James Brandon Lewis & Lutosławski Quartet, These Are Soulful Days (2021, TAO Forms) [113]

Tom Hull studied sociology and worked in engineering, but also wrote rock criticism in the 1970s, and the Village Voice’s Jazz Consumer Guide from 2005 to 2011. He continues to blog, and has over 20,000 short reviews on his website