We’re always a music rich household, but as with so many other things, Life During Quarantine Time has changed the daily soundtracks of our lives. In normal times, we have a variety of iPods and playlists that we experience at various times and various places. There’s generally a family mix that we play around the apartment, a more soothing bedtime mix that’s on the bedroom iPod, an upbeat gym mix on Marcia’s iPod, and two mixes of extreme music that I play on my own. Generally on headphones, since nobody else near me wants to hear them.

But here in lockdown time, we generally turn on the family iPod when we get up, and it stays on continually until we start watching TV late in the evening, or when we go for our daily walks, and that’s the only mix we’re hearing. So I’ve been programming that one differently, and more often, to keep things fresh. While we continue to cycle through and explore various new albums that have come out over the course of the year, plus some much loved classics, I’ve found that we’ve been enjoying a lot more jazz and gospel music in our daily mixes as the days and weeks (slowly) roll on. It seems that songs culled from those genres seem to effortlessly comfort the soul and raise the spirit in ways that most rock and pop music doesn’t or can’t. That helps.

I have a sizable and eclectic collection of jazz albums to choose from, ranging from the obvious to the obscure, and the accessible to the extreme. As of this moment, right here, right now, here are the dozen jazz tracks that have received the most ear-time around our home since the dawn of the virus. (I’ll do a separate gospel music post sometime soon). Maybe this collection will inspire your own personal jazz mix. Though in the spirit of the age, make sure that you don’t listen to it with a jazz crowd in your loft. That way you’ll stay safe, and you’ll also be able to eat all the dip and drink all the red wine yourself.