Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
In last year’s Readers Poll, pianist Chick Corea was voted the Jazz Artist of the Year. Will he repeat this year? Only our readers can decide.
(Photo: Courtesy of the artist)Votes are pouring in for the 81st Annual DownBeat Readers Poll, which opened on July 1. Readers will vote in 34 categories, and the results will be published in DownBeat’s December issue.
In last year’s Readers Poll, pianist Chick Corea was voted the Jazz Artist of the Year, and his trio album Trilogy (Stretch/Concord) took the honor for Jazz Album of the Year.
Who will win this year? That will be determined by tens of thousands of voters from around the world. (The 2015 Readers Poll had a total of 28,496 voters.)
In addition to voting in diverse categories such as Big Band, Historical Album, Baritone Saxophone, Drums, Composer and Blues Album, readers will cast ballots to induct musicians into the DownBeat Hall of Fame.
In recent years, DownBeat readers have voted to induct Tony Bennett (2015), B.B. King (2014), Pat Metheny (2013) and Ron Carter (2012).
Besides the world-famous Readers Poll, DownBeat also publishes an annual Critics Poll. The complete results of the DownBeat Critics Poll are published in the August issue, which arrives on the newsstand on July 19. To see the winners of this year’s Critics Poll, click here.
Now it’s time for the readers to weigh in with their opinions on the top musicians and albums of the year. To vote in this year’s Readers Poll, please click here.
“Cerebral and academic thought is a different way to approach music,” Flea says of his continuing dive into jazz. “I’ve always relied on emotion and intuition and physicality.”
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