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

Nduduzo Makhathini: The Myth We Choose

Read "The Myth We Choose" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
June 17, 2026

With the spirit winds and the sounds of Ladysmith Black Mambazo at his back, pianist/composer/shaman/philosopher Nduduzo Makhathini embarks, throughout the whole of The Myth We Choose, with an inspired, ancestral magic. Chanting, speaking, conjuring. Elegant but never stand-offish, it is the joyful music of a resilient, triumphant, spiritual people. It is the music of a people equidistant to Heaven and Earth. The Myth We Choose is certainly that and never, ever hard to listen to, absorb, and manifest. ...

Album Review

Julian Lage: Scenes From Above

Read "Scenes From Above" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
April 28, 2026

There are always expectations when Julian Lage plays: effortless, assured virtuosity and melodic finesse. Those qualities are present here, but they are deliberately understated, subsumed within a broader emphasis on collective interplay. Produced by Joe Henry, the album resists any attempt to remake Speak to Me. Instead, Lage sought to create an egalitarian session, explicitly avoiding a leader-centric approach. As he has suggested, this was not about “I'm the leader--let's build something around me," but rather about fostering ...

Album Review

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard

Read "Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 21, 2026

Firebrand alto-saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins takes over the Village Vanguard and keeps it loose, y'all. From the rogue bossa nova “Ring Shout" and its immediate successor, “Composition II," each scenario has its very own sweep and sway. Take, for instance, the hell-raising, elders-chant fever inherent in “Composition IX." Twenty-three raucous, raise-the-rafters minutes wherein each participant--pianist and fellow hell-raisers Micah Thomas, bassist and man-on-a-mission Ryoma Takenaga and Kweku Sumbry, a swift footed drummer deeply schooled in Elvin Jones and Max Roach--inflame Immanuel ...

Album Review

Walter Smith III: Twio Vol. 2

Read "Twio Vol. 2" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
March 5, 2026

Walter Smith III is a deceptive musician. His deep jazz roots and distinctive tenor saxophone tone mask a technique that is both complex and understated. Smith rewards attentive listeners; his mastery lies in refinement rather than display. One of the pleasures of following Smith's career is hearing him change. Though no longer a young newcomer, he continues to evolve. His tone and timbre have matured, his rhythmic command has become more supple, and his avoidance of theatrics has ...

Album Review

Bill Frisell: In My Dreams

Read "In My Dreams" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
February 18, 2026

At the opening of Beautiful Dreamer, Bill Frisell's biographer, Philip Watson, recounts a formative dream Bill Frisell once had--an experience the guitarist has said permanently altered the way he thinks about sound, color, and the nature of “real music." In the dream, Frisell enters a dark building, climbs into a vast library, and encounters hooded, monklike figures gathered around a table. “We want to show you what things really are," they tell him. First, they reveal “what colors really look ...

Album Review

Joel Ross: Gospel Music

Read "Gospel Music" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
February 2, 2026

Religion has long provided a stimulus for jazz. Figures as august as Duke Ellington and John Coltrane drew profound inspiration from their faith, though their reception varied. Ellington's religious compositions were often unfairly dismissed as the eccentric, late career works of an aging genius. Conversely, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965) perfectly captured the spiritual zeitgeist of the 1960s.However, Joel Ross operates with different antecedents. His approach to gospel music tracks the biblical narrative linearly: the Creation, ...

Album Review

Charles Lloyd: Figure In Blue

Read "Figure In Blue" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
November 4, 2025

Jazz listeners with long memories will remember that Charles Lloyd was not always as revered as he is today. In the 1960s, his association with the “Summer of Love" and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene led some to question his seriousness, seeing him as flirting with commercialism. Six decades on, that perception has aged away. Lloyd's work in 2025 is almost comparable to Beethoven's late quartets--music of depth, reflection, and spiritual weight. He has passed beyond being a national treasure; he ...

Album Review

Nels Cline: Consentrik Quartet

Read "Consentrik Quartet" reviewed by Don Ball

by Don Ball
September 2, 2025

While Nels Cline has been playing the guitar-hero rock star for the past two decades with Wilco, he continues to release his own solo recordings under various names (including the Nels Cline 4 and the Nels Cline Singers, which, amusingly, contain no vocalists) tailored toward the avant-garde side of jazz (with the notable exception of his lush, lovely jazz orchestra Blue Note release from 2016, Lovers). His 2025 release, Consentrik Quartet, brings together some of the finest jazz musicians working ...

Reassessing

Trio and Quintet

by C. Michael Bailey
August 23, 2025

Pianist and composer Elmo Hope has more in common with Tadd Dameron than most of his other jazz peers. Both men were primarily composers and arrangers who concentrated on their own music rather than standards. Both men spent their professional lives in New York City during the twilight of bebop and the flourishing of hard bop. Neither man boasted large discographies as leaders, but appeared on a significant number of recordings as sidemen. Their careers were both shortened dramatically by ...

Album Review

Joshua Redman: Words Fall Short

Read "Words Fall Short" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 6, 2025

After extended tenures on Warner Brothers and Nonesuch Records, saxophonist/composer/bandleader Joshua Redman debuted on the Blue Note jazz label in 2023 with Where We Are. And while its successor, Words Fall Short, is right in line with that record by featuring vocals, it initiates a new phase in the leader's career by showcasing his new quartet in its recorded debut. Formed as prelude to the world tour designed to support the previous effort, pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip ...