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.

Album Review

Neves e Silva: Ladeiras de Santa Teresa

Read "Ladeiras de Santa Teresa" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
July 6, 2026

Ladeiras de Santa Teresa opens with a big polymetric beat and powerful brass and percussion up front. You might flash on the Afro-Bahian sound of Letieres Leite's Orkestra Rumpilezz. The groove shifts suddenly, releasing into a jazz feel; Brazilian jazz that is, not swing or bebop, though Charlie Parker's “Star Eyes" with intro serves as a rough analog (Verve, 1951). Luiz Otavio takes a ride on piano, followed by Eduardo Neves on tenor saxophone, then back to the head with ...

Album Review

Marcos Valle: Túnel Acústico

Read "Túnel Acústico" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
October 19, 2024

In Túnel Acústico (Acoustic Tunnel), Marcos Valle digs back into the late 1970s, when Brazil was under military rule and he was living in California, working with the likes of Sarah Vaughan and such fellow Brazilian expats as Eumir Deodato and Airto Moreira. Valle grew up in Rio de Janeiro, part of a second generation of bossa nova musicians who had to invent their way through a difficult political climate. He traveled to the US for a tour with Sergio ...

Album Review

Nicola Conte: Umoja

by Chris May
June 7, 2023

Nicola Conte continues on his journey from acid-jazz bohemian to spiritual-jazz sophisticate with this immaculately hip album, fronted on half of its tracks by London-based soul-jazz divas Zara McFarlane and Bridgette Amofah. Conte began his trajectory with the acid-jazz template Jet Sounds (Schema, 2000), boosted it with Jet Sounds Revisited (Schema, 2002) and, after a brief post-hard-bop detour with Other Directions (Blue Note, 2004), began the spiritual-jazz ascent which has in 2023 reached its new, lofty apogee with ...

Album Review

Hermeto Pascoal: Planetario Da Gavea

Read "Planetario Da Gavea" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 10, 2022

Planetario Da Gavea is an enormous, sprawling document from a February 1981 outdoor performance series by Brazilian jazz wizard Hermeto Pascoal recorded under the stars in the Gávea neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, within the dome of the city's outdoor planetário (planetarium). Ten pieces, most never recorded before and several never performed again, stretch across two hours of gloriously inspired, indulgent sound featuring the composer, instrumentalist, and sorcerer who Miles Davis once famously called “one of the most ...

Album Review

Marcos Resende & Index: Marcos Resende & Index

Read "Marcos Resende & Index" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
September 10, 2021

This debut, eponymous recording by Brazilian keyboard wizard Marcos Resende was recorded in Rio de Janeiro in late summer 1976. This was a truly glorious time for progressive instrumental music in Brazil, as you can hear in the discographies of Eumir Deodato, Marcos Valle, Airto Moreira and many other artists. Resende put together a new quartet, equally adept in jazz and Brazilian rhythms, for these sessions: Rhythm aces Rubão Sabino (bass) and Claudio Caribé (drums), plus legendary reedman ...

Album Review

Antonio Neves: A Pegada é Essa (The Sway Now)

Read "A Pegada é Essa (The Sway Now)" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 23, 2021

A Pegada Agora É Essa (The Sway Now) illustrates why multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger Antonio Neves creates such commotion in modern Brazilian music. His second release as a leader, The Sway Now weaves a thick tapestry of Brazil's 2021 musical landscape in bold and brash, overlapping and overflowing colors. It threads together generations of Brazilian musicians, from legendary saxophonist Leo Gandelman to younger lions such as singer Alice Caymmi (Danillo's daughter and Dorival's granddaughter) and double-bassist André Vasconcellos, ...

Album Review

Cry Babies: Cry Babies

Read "Cry Babies" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 8, 2020

History hasn't left behind many traces of Cry Babies--its 1969 debut has until now been extraordinarily difficult (and expensive) to find on vinyl--other than these sounds. Most musician credits only list first names except for organ player Sérgio Carvalho and producer Durval Ferreira, whose career also includes work with Eurmir Deodato and Sergio Mendes. Saxophonist Oberdan Magalhães gets credit for the arrangements and for playing on them. Cry Babies throws itself so quickly and passionately into “It's My ...

Album Review

Ivan Conti: Poison Fruit

Read "Poison Fruit" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 3, 2019

If the music on his fourth solo album Poison Fruit is a true indicator, Ivan “Mamão" Conti hasn't lost his uncanny producer's ear or instrumentalist's touch for clubbers or dancers in Brazil. A legendary bandleader, percussion and drum player, and composer, Mamão sweetens Poison Fruit by letting it ripen in the hands of two younger, next generation translators / ambassadors: Mamão's son Thiago Maranhão, who oversaw this set's five bonus remixes; and keyboardist Daniel Maunick, son of Jean-Paul “Bluey" Maunick ...

Album Review

Amaro Freitas: Rasif

Read "Rasif" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
January 21, 2019

In the small coastal city of Recife, in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, Amaro Freitas began playing piano in his local church at age 12. A few years later, the jazz gods intervened in the form of a Chick Corea concert DVD. “He completely blew my mind," Freitas once recalled. “I'd never seen anything like it but I knew that's what I wanted to do with a piano." The refocused Freitas became resident pianist at Brazil's legendary jazz bar Mingus ...

Album Review

Amaro Freitas: Rasif

by Mark Sullivan
November 26, 2018

Brazilian pianist/composer Amaro Freitas is from the coastal city of Recife in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. His geographic background is important, because he has been heavily influenced by the Afro-Brazilian maracatu (dating from slavery days) and the high intensity carnival rhythms of frevo and baião, as well as the jazz tradition. Most of this album is played by the Amaro Freitas Trio, his group with drummer Hugo Medeiros and double bassist Jean Elton. Opener “Dona Eni" immediately ...