Jazz Articles
Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our Coming Soon page. Read our daily album reviews.
Sign in to customize your My Articles page —or— Filter Article Results
Michael Eckroth Group: Human Geography
by Edward Blanco
Grammy-nominated pianist/composer Micael Eckroth follows up his highly acclaimed Plena (Truth Revolution Records, 2021) with the vibrant and robust Human Geography, melding the sounds of contemporary jazz with elements of Afro-Caribbean music while exploring his affinity for the Latin sound and “paying homage to the culture of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the vast amalgam that comprise jazz." An Assistant Professor of music, jazz piano at Florida International University, Eckroth's geographical location in the diverse Anglo and mixed Hispanic community of ...
Continue ReadingZaccai Curtis: Cubop Lives!
by Pierre Giroux
Pianist Zaccai Curtis's recent album Cubop Lives! is a vibrant acknowledgement of the rich legacy of bebop and Afro-Cuban jazz offering a compelling blend that respects tradition while infusing it with a contemporary flair. Backed by a scintillating ensemble of top-flight exponents of the style, including bassist Luques Curtis, drummer Willie Martinez III, conguero Camilo Molina and on bongos Reinaldo De Jesus, the group dives into an extended track list of seventeen compositions comprising Curtis originals, bebop classics, American Songbook ...
Continue ReadingVincent Hsu & The Jazz Supreme Orchestra: Music for the River Jazz Suite
by Jack Bowers
Taiwanese-born bassist Vincent Hsu's ambitious opus, Music for the Jazz River Suite, is subtitled “The Spirit of Love River and Mississippi River." Its purpose is to find common ground via jazz between the Love River in in Hsu's hometown of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and the Mississippi, which carried jazz from the cotton fields of the South to urban areas in the North and, eventually, throughout the United States and around the world. The suite, written and arranged by ...
Continue ReadingMichael Eckroth Group: Plena
by Dan Bilawsky
Michael Eckroth had clear goals in mind for this project--"to create music that was lyrical, modern, true to its Afro-Latin roots, but never purist in its approach"--and he's accomplished his mission with gusto. Through Plena, this Grammy-nominated pianist/composer delivers a program of original music that, while acknowledging folkloric traditions, doesn't buy into their formal strictures and structures. Instead, Eckroth deals in forward-thinking offshoots and branch realities that beautifully extend on--and past--those points. Essentially working with two different ...
Continue ReadingSanti Debriano: Flash of the Spirit
by Paul Rauch
Bassist/composer Santi Debriano has been prominently on the scene since the late seventies, when he worked for several years with saxophonist Archie Shepp. Born in Panama, and raised in Brooklyn from a very young age, his life was integrated with the many crosscurrents of jazz music in the Americas. He worked prominently with Sam Rivers in Paris for a few years, before heading back to New York to perform with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Fortune, Larry Coryell, Freddie ...
Continue ReadingThe Curtis Brothers: Algorithm
by Troy Dostert
It says something about Art Blakey's decades-long mentorship of younger musicians that many of them continue to pay it forward, bringing into maturity a new generation of hard-boppers who are maintaining Blakey's indomitable spirit. Enter the Curtis Brothers—pianist Zaccai and bassist Luques—who have benefited enormously from the Blakey disciples they're partnered with on their latest release, Algorithm. Saxophonist Donald Harrison, trumpeter Brian Lynch and drummer Ralph Peterson all had deep roots with Blakey, and they have brought their accumulated wisdom ...
Continue ReadingNick Biello: Vagabond Soul
by Paul Rauch
Alto and soprano saxophonist Nick Biello has been gaining momentum as an artist on the New York scene in the late 2010s, culminating in this recording for Truth Revolution Records, Vagabond Soul. His prodigious talent as an instrumentalist, composer and arranger is plainly on display on this significant offering, as it is on the myriad of recordings he has made as a side musician. His partnership for this recording with pianist Phil Markowitz is a true sign of the respect ...
Continue ReadingBrian McCarthy Nonet: The Better Angels of Our Nature
by Karl Ackermann
Brian McCarthy's The Better Angels of Our Nature shares some common ground with Ted Nash whose Big Band collection Presidential Suite (Eight Variations on Freedom) (Motema Music, 2016) explored musical interpretations of great historical speeches including those of John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson. McCarthy's focus is inspirited by American Civil War and the political and socio-economic issues that are not as far behind us as we would like to think.A well ...
Continue ReadingCurtis Brothers Quartet: Syzygy
by Paul Rauch
Jazz music is constantly in a state of flux. It feeds off of new ideas and innovation to keep the music vital, and growing. The mantle is passed from generation to generation, eschewing the infective glare of pop notoriety to maintain the artistic presence that moves the music forward, now seventeen years into a new century. In jazz today, there is a groundswell of young musicians who understand this perspective, forging new paths into the future, while grounded in the ...
Continue ReadingKris Allen: Beloved
by Mark Corroto
You have to love how a sommelier might describe a certain wine. It has “a jammy taste with a sweet attack, leather, tobacco, and very muscular with integrated wood." Listening to saxophonist Kris Allen's Beloved reminds us that jazz listeners use similar terms to describe the music they're hearing. Allen's alto saxophone is flavored with hints of Bobby Watson, the body feel of Paul Desmond, and the terrior of Hartford. In other words, it tastes great. The Hartford ...
Continue Reading
