by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Where we're swimming in top ten lists of all stripes ...

—The Top Tens Keep Coming: JazzTimes unveils the top 50 new jazz releases of 2009 on its critics' poll aggregation — and you can browse the individual ballots too. Elsewhere, there's:

Fred Kaplan for Slate
Will Layman and Andrew Zender for PopMatters
Karl Stark for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Chris Barton for the L.A. Times
The AllMusic Guide staff picks
Howard Reich on "innovative jazz" in the Chicago Tribune
Gene Seymour's blog
The eMusic editors mix some jazz among their top 60 picks
Greenleaf Music's Jim Tuerk talks the year in music

—The Jazz Appreciation Paradox: Michael J. West, writing in the Washington City Paper (our alt-weekly here in D.C.) does a good job of identifying one of jazz's most frustrating barriers to mainstream attention. "The circular logic here is devastating: Jazz isn't played because people don't listen to it, but people don't listen to it because it isn't played," he writes. And also: "It's once again death by circular logic: Jazz can't get wider circulation until it shakes its stodgy reputation, but how can it shake its stodgy reputation until it gets wider circulation?" Anyway, this is all couched in a discussion of this year's records from Stefon Harris, Robert Glasper, Darcy James Argue and Ben Allison, three of which I see made West's Top 13.

—Every Time We Say Goodbye: JazzTimes has been republishing its "Farewells" feature where top musicians remember their colleagues who died this decade — or at least many of the archives have recently cropped up on my RSS reader. By this, I mean Sonny Rollins on Jackie McLean, Randy Brecker on Michael Brecker, Tain Watts on Max Roach, Branford Marsalis on Alvin Batiste, Charlie Haden on Alice Coltrane, Joe Lovano on Dewey Redman, Dave Valentin to Hilton Ruiz, Oscar Peterson on NHOP ... there are many, many more on the JazzTimes Farewells page.

—Vijay Iyer On Thelonious Monk: The pianist's appreciation of the pianist, also via JazzTimes.

—Steve Lehman On Contemporary Classical Music: At Destination: Out.

—Christian McBride On Ray Brown: In two parts (one and two) at Jazz.com.

—Ethan Iverson On The AACM: At Do The Math.

—Show Me The Money: The Ottawa International Jazz Festival claims to have delivered $10.6 million (Canadian, I presume) in economic benefits to the city of Ottawa. This via Peter Hum. What was that about the arts being an economic engine in their communities?