In the wake of the JJA Jazz Awards, both DownBeat and Jazz Inside magazine announced winners of their own polls of contributors, pointing to excellence in music-making.
The DownBeat Critics Poll winners, announced online and to be published in the magazine’s August issue, bear considerable consistency with the winners of the JJA Jazz Awards, although there are no categories for jazz journalism, and DB has a track specifically denoting “Rising Stars.” Fifteen of the Jazz Awards honorees also won in the bulk of DownBeat’s categories for instrumentalists. Vijay Iyer, winner of DB’s Album of the Year, Jazz Group and Pianist categories, also won as Pianist of the Year in the Jazz Awards, was named Musician of the Year by the JJA in 2010.
Jazz Inside magazine has no information about its poll in its June 2012 issue, but put out a press release on the Jazz News Wire about its first time Jazz Music Awards. As in the JJA Jazz Awards, Sonny Rollins won for “Tenor Sax” Gary Burton won for “Vibes,” Christian McBride as “Bass Player” and Gary Smulyan as “Bari Sax.” Unlike both the JJA Jazz Awards and Down Beat Poll, Jazz Inside has no category for either big band nor composer, but Maria Schneider is its number one “Arranger.”
