The moments of the single inclusive momentum distribution of hadrons in QCD jets, are studied in the next-to-modified-leading-log approximation (NMLLA) including next-to-leading-order (NLO) corrections to the α s strong coupling. The evolution equations are solved using a distorted Gaussian parametrisation, which successfully reproduces the spectrum of charged hadrons of jets measured in e + e − collisions. The energy dependencies of the maximum peak, multiplicity, width, kurtosis and skewness of the jet hadron distribution are computed analytically. Comparisons of all the existing jet data measured in e + e − collisions in the range √ s ≈ 2-200 GeV to the NMLLA+NLO * predictions allow one to extract a value of the QCD parameter Λ QCD , and associated two-loop coupling constant at the Z resonance α s (m 2 Z ) = 0.1195 ± 0.0022, in excellent numerical agreement with the current world average obtained using other methods.