Recent Jazz Articles

Mort Weiss Raising the Bar: The Definitive Mort Weiss SMS Jazz 2010

In late 2006, clarinetist Mort Weiss told his unusual story to R. J. Deluke in an exclusive interview for All About Jazz, appropriated titled “Mort Weiss: Sets Sail with Clarinet." His narrative is the timeless, archetypal journey of the hero's circular ...

It's a story often heard before: musically, these are the best and worst of times. Only this time, in 2010, it seems different. Even as the pool of fresh talent expands, jazz continues to witness a dearth of venues along with the slump in CD sales. Uncounted numbers of talented musicians, young and otherwise, are reduced ...

Artie Shaw Classic Bluebird and Victor Sessions Mosaic Records 2009

Shortly after its critically acclaimed box set comprising clarinetist Benny Goodman's essential recordings-- The Columbia and Okeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions (2009), which was released to coincide with the centenary of the “King of Swing"--Mosaic Records has done it again. The Classic Artie ...

Johnny Mercer Clint Eastwood Presents Johnny Mercer: The Dream's On Me TCM 2009

Film director Clint Eastwood's love of jazz and American popular song is far from a secret, especially following his feature-length biopic about alto saxophonist Charlie Parker (Bird, 1988), during which the ever restless Eastwood got the idea ...

Not long ago a veteran Chicago jazz disc jockey played a track from a female vocalist's new CD only after complaining on the air about the seemingly unending stream of new recordings by female singers sent to his notice each week. The exception to his policy not to play them was due, he explained, to the ...

Jack Reilly Trio Live At Dean Clough Dean Clough Unichrom 2007

After composing, performing and recording a work motivated by and patterned after a struggle with a life- threatening illness (Innocence: Green Spring Suite, Unichrom, 2007), Jack Reilly might be expected to lighten up on his sequel. Recorded ...

Toshiko Akiyoshi & Lew Tabackin Toshiko Akiyoshi - Lew Tabackin Big Band: Mosaic Select Mosaic Records 2008

Jazz was never more schizophrenic than in the 1970s. On the one hand, musicians equally savvy about mixing genres and running mixing boards were selling out arenas and producing lucrative, widely played albums, ...

In the mid-1950s, Victor Feldman was among the first British musicians successfully to relocate to the US, when he settled in Los Angeles. Becoming an outstanding “West Coast" pianist, Feldman was also a memorable vibraphonist. Reissues of three albums recorded in the US from 1957-61 showcase his abundant talent.

Victor Feldman The Arrival of ...

Six classic albums from the vocalist Peggy Lee catch her at the height of her powers. One or two of these discs may be hard to find in 2009, but the effort of tracking them down, if successful, will be amply repaid.

Peggy Lee Basin Street East Blue Note 1995

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An Italian vocalist with an elegant and insightful command of the Great American Songbook, Roberta Gambarini's You Are There (Emarcy, 2008) and Easy To Love (Kindred Rhythm, 2006) are treasures waiting for those who've learnt how to listen.

Roberta Gambarini You Are There Emarcy 2008

Start with a phenomenally gifted, rapidly ...

The singer and actress Eartha Kitt (1927-2008) was the ultimate femme fatale, “the most exciting woman in the world" according to film director Orson Welles. Purr-Fect: The Eartha Kitt Collection is an enjoyable if flawed greatest hits collection. In Person at the Plaza a representative and recommended live recording.

Eartha Kitt Purr-Fect: The Eartha ...

Mort Weiss All Too Soon: A Jazz Duet for Clarinet and Seven String Guitar SMS Jazz 2008

Not the least of this album's attractions is the title. To those few listeners familiar with the tune, “All Too Soon" might summon up one of Duke Ellington's more obscure compositions, were it ...

Oscar Peterson The Complete Clef/Mercury Studio Recordings of The Oscar Peterson Trio (1951-1953) Mosaic Records 2008

How do you criticize pianist Oscar Peterson? The two primary meanings of such a question expose the divide among those who must confront his talent--and, like it or not, no musician or supporter of ...

Music-making, from conception to realization, is contaminated by the rhetoric of personality. And even more than instrumental music, vocal performances are often poorly served by language focused on the desires and disappointments, frustrations and satisfactions of the artist's “self" rather than on the “art." But quite apart from the self-expression (since the Romantic era, a birthright ...