Vijay Iyer Trio Tops Village Voice 2009 Jazz Poll

Acclaimed pianist Vijay Iyer's Historicity, a forward-thinking trio outing, has been named Album of the Year in the 4th annual Village Voice Critics poll.

I reviewed the CD earlier this year for Down Beat. Here's what I wrote: "A kind of dialogue -- ever in flux, constantly probing, frequently morphing, informed by disparate traditions but pushing toward new paradigms -- is at the heart of the performances on pianist Vijay Iyer's trio outing with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. In the liner notes, Iyer describes that dialogue, on the cover tunes, as 'a conversation between the original work and something else entirely.' But there are also conversations here between form and freedom, light and dark tonalities, and, as the title suggests, jazz history and future jazz."

Also among the winners in the poll, surveying the best jazz releases of the year, as chosen by 99 jazz critics from around the world (including me) are the following:

Vocal: Gretchen Parlato, In a Dream (ObliqSound)
Debut: Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam)
Latin: Miguel Zenon, Esta Plena (Marsalis Music)
Reissue: Louis Armstrong, The Complete Decca Recordings, 1935-1946 (Mosaic)

Full poll results will be published in the Voice's Dec. 30 issue, and will be available online as early as Tuesday night. I'll follow up with a subsequent post, and include links to the results along with a link to my list.