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.
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Dan Rosenboom: Coordinates
by Max Kutner
Coordinates is a fully realized mature statement from composer, arranger, and trumpet virtuoso, Dan Rosenboom. It is a massive effort in multiple senses. Through an immersive concept centered dually around sound as character and the abstract relationships between numerical structures as they apply to time and groove, Rosenboom has crafted a self portrait that bridges many unique aspects of his musical personality. The album features 28 of Los Angeles' finest musical artists, employed in a series of unorthodox combinations that ...
Continue ReadingJoe Santa Maria: Oblique Rhyme
by Jack Kenny
The perennial challenge of balancing individual expression with collective harmony is masterfully addressed by Joe Santa Maria (saxophones), David Tranchina (bass), Gary Fukushima (piano), and Colin Woodford (drums). Their collaboration weaves contemporary jazz with blues and avant-garde elements, crafting an eclectic sound that showcases the quartet's versatility and chemistry. Fukushima's style is strikingly individualistic, marked by an idiosyncratic flair. He fills every open space with stimulating, unpredictable phrases, sidestepping clichés with a nod to jazz's rich history. While ...
Continue ReadingJoe Santa Maria & David Tranchina: Oblique Rhyme
by Fran Kursztejn
The integral development of post-'70s jazz has nothing to do with instruments, playstyle or compositional ethos. After bop's heyday slowly petered out, its practitioners either holding strong to the tradition or scattering to other genres in the public's favor, the necessity of a studio-produced, hierarchical set seemed to disappear with it. Granted, the bandleader model maintains its popularity today, yet more and more, independent and revolutionary musicians turn toward a more anarchical understanding of the jazz group, prizing polyphony and ...
Continue ReadingMax Kutner: Partial Custody
by Glenn Astarita
Max Kutner's album Partial Custody is a captivating odyssey through intricately woven soundscapes. With this debut recording from his new trio, Kutner unveils a refreshing evolution in his artistic journey. Having previously dipped his toes into the avant-garde pool with the enigmatic Kutner's Evil Genius, known for their sonic experimentation, the artist now embarks on a new venture that defies easy categorization. He aptly intimates that Partial Custody is not just a title, but a phrase ingrained in ...
Continue ReadingJoe Santa Maria: Echo Deep
by Glenn Astarita
In the liner notes, L.A.-based multi-woodwind specialist Joe Santa Maria, known for his contributions to Vinnie Golia ensembles, Django Django, and Kim Richmond and others, reveals that this project took nearly a decade to complete, shaped by his extensive travels and dedicated studies. Notably, he emphasizes the cyclical, trance-like essence embedded within these compositions. The prolonged wait proves worthwhile as Santa Maria's fusion of worldly influences, rooted in his jazz expertise, culminates in an outstanding album poised to grace numerous ...
Continue ReadingDan Rosenboom: Polarity
by Jerome Wilson
On this album, trumpeter Dan Rosenboom and his quartet engage in a free-wheeling session which comes off as a modern update of Wayne Shorter releases such as The All-Seeing Eye (Blue Note, 1966). He engages in playful genre-crossing and experimentation here which incorporate the sensibilities of hip-hop and ambient music as well as modern jazz. The album's key track is the marathon opener, “The Age of Snakes" in which Rosenboom's trumpet and Gavin Templeton's alto saxophone lazily float ...
Continue ReadingDan Rosenboom: Polarity
by Pat Youngspiel
Recently, Los Angeles-based trumpeter Dan Rosenboom has been experimenting with somewhat freer and edgier realms of improvisation, giving doomy metal influences a go on Trio Subliminal 2 (Orenda Records, 2022), and indulging high-energy trio interplay with plenty of delay effects and other sonic manipulation on Refraction (Orenda Records, 2021). Not to mention the opulent The Complete Boom Sessions (Orenda Records, 2022), which captured over 400-minutes, live to tape, recorded over five gigs at one of Los Angeles' premiere hubs for ...
Continue ReadingDawn Clement, Elsa Nilsson, Emma Dayhuff, Tina Raymond: Esthesis Quartet
by Paul Rauch
The Covid-19 lockdown of 2020 and 2021 mandated that musicians find ways to connect without gathering in person. The pandemic produced a litany of recordings that along with photos of masked loved ones, will serve as tacit reminders of two years of solitude and isolation. For Esthesis Quartet this meant gathering on Zoom to keep the creative juices flowing, and to continue to write inspired music with the quartet in mind. While it is undeniable that this recording bears the ...
Continue ReadingZane Carney Quartet: Alter Ego
by Friedrich Kunzmann
While guitarist Zane Carney's work as a leader may have yet to experience the hype it arguably deserves, his session work is another thing. Among other projects, he has played on Thundercat's Drunk (Brainfeeder, 2012) as well as John Mayer's folk album Paradise Valley (Columbia, 2013), the Grammy award-winning Thundercat calling him “a massive guitarist." And, in the continued spirit of name-dropping, Carney formed the band Evan + Zane with actress (and incidentally good singer) Evan Rachel Wood, who might ...
Continue ReadingBelievers: Believers
by Friedrich Kunzmann
The three individuals making up Believers are each highly respected musical voices in their own right. Percussionist John Hadfield has performed and recorded with the likes of Nguyen Le and released an inspired duo EP with woodwind autodidact Lenny Pickett, called Heard by Others (Orenda Records, 2020). Sam Minaie, on the other hand, has played bass for household names such as piano virtuoso Tigran Hamasyan and the charming jazz-pop icon Melody Gardot. Which brings us to the last protagonist completing ...
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