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

Espen Eriksen Trio: Almost There

Read "Almost There" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
October 16, 2026

Almost There is the eighth album from the Espen Eriksen Trio and is highly likely to follow the success of their previous seven releases, two of which featured UK saxophonist Andy Sheppard. It is simply a triumph of gentle melodic composition. The sound quality is superb too: the album was recorded at Propeller Music Division in Oslo, Norway, a studio widely regarded as a center of excellence for HiFi testing. This Norwegian trio, consisting of pianist Eriksen with ...

Album Review

Elephant9: Mythical River

Read "Mythical River" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
May 7, 2024

Although Elephant9's plugged-in lineage includes the usual suspects--Miles Davis' electric bands and Soft Machine--the Norwegian organ trio's tap root is unmistakably planted in the work of the late British musician Keith Emerson, keyboards player with the Nice in the late 1960s and Emerson Lake & Palmer from 1970. For his own snarling jazz-rock oeuvre, Emerson's favoured keyboard was the Hammond L-100. He loved it so much that onstage he liked to plunge a hunting knife between its keys to produce ...

Album Review

Fire!: Testament

by Chris May
March 8, 2024

Recorded and then played back at reduced speed, even a seemingly simple two-note bird call reveals elaborate complexity and detail. It is worth hanging on to that thought when approaching the deceptively straightforward Testament. On a cursory listening, most of the album--an amalgam of Mats Gustafsson's slow-and-deliberate long-held low-end baritone notes and Johan Berthling and Andreas Werlin's matching bass ostinatos and drum patterns--sounds primordial. The recipe goes reductio ad absurdum on track two, “The Dark Inside Of A ...

Album Review

Espen Eriksen Trio with Andy Sheppard: As Good As It Gets

Read "As Good As It Gets" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
October 21, 2023

The Espen Eriksen Trio--Eriksen on piano, Lars Tormod Jenset on bass, and Andreas Bye on drums-- was formed in 2007 and their debut album, You Had Me at Goodbye, was released in 2010 on Rune Grammofon where they have remained ever since. In 2016 British saxophonist Andy Sheppard was invited to guest with the trio when they played in London. Sheppard has since commented, “I knew from the first time I heard the trio play that I would fit right ...

Album Review

Espen Eriksen Trio with Andy Sheppard: As Good As It Gets

Read "As Good As It Gets" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 17, 2023

Norway's Espen Eriksen Trio is the first Scandinavian piano trio to enjoy a measure of sustained international success since Sweden's Esbjörn Svensson Trio's high-profile run was cut short by Svensson's death in 2008. While some listeners thought that EST's style was becoming over-codifed during its final years, EET still sounds box fresh thirteen years and many thousands of road miles since its debut album, You Had Me At Goodbye (Rune Grammofon, 2010). What is also remarkable is ...

Liner Notes

Arve Henriksen: Solidification

by John Kelman
May 26, 2023

Constellations and the Something of Discovery Music as a chosen profession may suggest occupying the minds of its makers far beyond the 9-to-5 hours of your average job, but for some it goes further still. Transcending mere preoccupation, trumpeter Arve Henriksen seems to eat, drink, sleep and dream music, 24/7, 365 days a year. “I was sitting in my car recently, driving from Oslo to Gothenburg," Henriksen relates, “and I just started to sing and sing and sing. And I ...

Album Review

Fire! Orchestra: Echoes

by John Eyles
April 28, 2023

A decade on from the release of their first album, Exit (Rune Grammofon, 2013), Fire! Orchestra releases their first post-Covid album, Echoes, their seventh altogether. This double-CD or triple-LP album runs for just over an hour and fifty minutes. It was studio-recorded at the Atlantis studio in Stockholm, in March 2022. Compared to past line-ups which have never before exceeded thirty musicians, this edition of Fire! Orchestra has forty-three members. That number includes such perennial mainstays as vocalist Mariam Wallentin, ...

Album Review

Fire! Orchestra: Echoes

by Chris May
March 31, 2023

The story of supersized jazz orchestras is not pretty. The scene was set by the bleaching deracination of Paul Whiteman and the elephantine bombast of Stan Kenton, bandleaders whose craving for approval by the music establishment fatally compromised their art. Good taste came later with leaders such as Carla Bley and London's Keith Tippett, who proved that, in the right hands, swing and nuance could co-exist with size and power. Since around 2010, there have been some ...

Album Review

Hedvig Mollestad & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra: Maternity Beat

Read "Maternity Beat" reviewed by Gareth Thompson

by Gareth Thompson
November 2, 2022

Norwegian jazz-rock guitarist Hedvig Mollestad has never shied away from the big themes. Previous outings have seen her dabble with notions of Greek mythology and weather conditions, while channelling her love of guitar greats from Jimmy Page to John McLaughlin. Now with Maternity Beat, she offers a series of musings on the nature of family and social justice issues. Mollestad is backed here by the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, whose many credits include Chick Corea and Joshua Redman. It is Mollestad's ...

Album Review

Kjetil Mulelid Trio: Who Do You Love The Most?

Read "Who Do You Love The Most?" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
June 22, 2022

In an act which might have raised a few eyebrows, Rune Grammofon released Who Do You Love the Most? by the Kjetil Mulelid Trio on the very same day as In the Mountains by the Espen Eriksen Trio featuring Andy Sheppard. Surely these two piano trios on the same label must have been competing for the same audience? However, closer inspection reveals that such speculation is likely to be wide of the mark. Firstly, the two trios differ considerably in ...