by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Where we are making our lists, checking them more than twice.

—It's Top 10 List Season: The Jazz Journalists Association is compiling its members' submissions this year at its blog. Check them out here: so far, there are lists from Howard Mandel, David Adler, Hank Shteamer and others. With the Village Voice poll deadline approaching, I presume we'll see a few more emerge soon. Elsewhere: Jacob Teichrow at About.com, and hey lookit it's NPR's Take Five's Top 10 Jazz Records Of 2009!

—Dave Brubeck At The Kennedy Center Honors: The headline from Sunday night — to steal from Felix's unofficial Jazz At The White House beat — is that President Obama credited a Dave Brubeck performance, seen at age 10, for a lifelong love of jazz. "I've been a jazz fan ever since," Obama said. "The world that he opened up for a 10-year-old boy was spectacular." JazzTimes has a writeup, as does the AP; the Washington Post has a nice profile that ran on the Sunday of the show.

—Orrin Evans' Big Band: The Philadelphia Inquirer Daily News has a write-up about the pianist's new Captain Black Big Band. I mention it because it fits this notion I've been toying around with for some time: that in these days where the big band is as antiquated and unsustainable as ever, it's back in vogue. It certainly runs counter to the Swing Era pattern of establishing yourself in a big band before branching out as a solo artist; now, it's often that musicians must establish themselves as solo artists before they can manage to put together a big band, or even that people make the decision to be big band leaders straight out of music school. (Many exceptions to these rules, of course, I will acknowledge.) That, and Orrin Evans could be a New York cat if he wanted, but instead stayed in in his hometown Philly, where he still gets to pool talent from up and down the East Coast for what must be a non-lucrative gig.

—New Point Of Departure: Is online. Best publication of its kind. (Also, the only, but it's still quite good.)