Programming Notes

What are you doing Thursday night? If you're in the New York area and not already committed to the debut of Dave Douglas' Key Motion Quintet, I hope you'll consider this reading for the new Best Music Writing anthology, at 7 p.m. at Housing Works Bookstore Café. Alex Ross, esteeemed New Yorker critic and this year's guest editor, will be there, along with series editor Daphne Carr and eight of my fellow contributors.

Jazz folk will probably recognize David Hajdu, who'll read from his stirring profile of Fred Hersch; you should also know about Joe Hagan, whose piece is about Nina Simone, and Jessica Hopper, talking about M.I.A., and New York magazine's Justin Davidson, on some guy named Beethoven. I'll read from this essay about Miles Davis and Neil Young at the Fillmore East in 1970. Admission is free.

While we're in the realm of self-promotion, I'm happy to report that The Gig will be publishing its third year-end critics' roundtable next week. The first post should be up on Monday morning; stay tuned. For now I'll keep the lineup under wraps -- who doesn't like surprises? -- but I'm excited about who's on deck. And I'm guessing we'll have, oh, a few things to discuss. In the meantime, if you're so inclined, here are the last two editions in full:

• 2010: All of the Above (David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell)
• 2009: A Gate-Crashing Year (Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben Ratliff and Hank Shteamer)