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

Alister Spence Trio: Gather

Read "Gather" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
July 26, 2025

Alister Spence Trio's Gather arrives like a mischievous breeze, stirring the leaves of modern jazz with a blend of precision and playful abandon. This Australian ensemble--Alister Spence on piano, Lloyd Swanton on double bass, and Toby Hall on drums--delivers an album that feels like a conversation among old friends who happen to be virtuosos. The eight tracks weave a tapestry of intricate melodies, rhythmic surprises and moments of quiet introspection, each piece a small universe unto itself. Spence's ...

Album Review

Alister Spence Trio: Gather

Read "Gather" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 30, 2025

Australian pianist Alister Spence is a master collaborator. He teams up with fellow keyboardist Satoko Fujii for various recording and live show efforts, and also with pianist Myra Melford and saxophonist Raymond McDonald. In addition, he is a founding member of the group Wanderlust, and he collaborates with guitarist Ed Kuepper in the Asteroid Ekosystem ensemble. Gather, released under the Alister Spence Trio moniker, features eight of Spence's original compositions, along with his piano artistry, and with improvisations ...

Album Review

Kira Kira: Kira Kira Live

Read "Kira Kira Live" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 28, 2024

Kira Kira, a Japanese avant-garde ensemble has been at the forefront of improvisational music since 2017. Their name, translating to “glittering" or “shining" in Japanese, fittingly reflects the radiant quality of their sonic explorations. The ensemble includes an all-star lineup: trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, pianist Satoko Fujii, keyboardist Alister Spence and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Together, they blend semi-structured jazz with shades of other genres, creating a sound that is as frenzied and bustling as it is introspective and exhilarating. The album ...

Album Review

Alister Spence / Tony Buck: Mythographer

Read "Mythographer" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 20, 2023

Duo recordings, no matter what the particular instrumentation, are able to showcase musical mind-melds. Two artists conversing, trading and extrapolating on each other's ideas. Pianist Alister Spence and drummer Tony Buck try the format on for size with Mythographer. This spontaneous, one-day-session recording opens with “Dry Wood Talking." It sounds as if the talking is being done with sleigh bells in the beginning, in a tune that unfolds in a searching-for-the-center mode. “And Yet She Turns," ...

Album Review

Alister Spence Trio With Ed Kuepper: Asteroid Ekosystem

Read "Asteroid Ekosystem" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 26, 2021

Australian pianist/keyboardist Alister Spence—with his avant-garde credibility established via free-roaming work with his trio and collaborations with pianist/composer/bandleader Satoko Fujii—takes another let's-see-what-happens exploratory step in a collaboration with guitarist Ed Kuepper on the double CD outing, Asteroid Ekosystems, a sonic trek into the extraterrestrial area of space debris between Mars and Jupiter. Or not. Maybe the title was tagged on, after the two day recording sessions, after an “off-the-cuff" show in Sydney in March of 2018. Nevertheless, that ...

Album Review

Alister Spence: Imagine Meeting You Here

Read "Imagine Meeting You Here" reviewed by Doug Hall

by Doug Hall
January 30, 2019

Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music, 2019) is the release by Alister Spence, a recognized leader in Australia's new music directive and one of his country's most original and distinctive jazz pianists and composers of orchestral pieces. Certainly there is a reflection in the title of this release that is his biographical journey and meeting in musical imagination. A project that developed in 2015 when Spence was beginning a doctoral PhD in creative practice (music composition) which morphed into ...

Album Review

Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: Imagine Meeting You Here

Read "Imagine Meeting You Here" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 12, 2019

The year 2018 saw two “sounds-you've-never-heard-before" collaborations between Australian composer/pianist/electronics master Alister Spence and Japanese pianist/bandleader Satoko Fujii, the duo recording Intelstat (Alister Spence Music), and Kira Kira (Libra Records) by the Fujii quartet Bright Force. These recordings were part of Fujii's “one CD release per month" celebration of her sixtieth birthday year. The duo opened 2019 with the Spence-led Imagine Meeting You Here, featuring the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe, one of many (it's hard to keep count) ...

Album Review

Alister Spence / Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: Imagine Meeting You Here

Read "Imagine Meeting You Here" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
January 10, 2019

On the heels of a monthly release year, celebrating her sixtieth birthday, Satoko Fujii takes no break as she dives into a new year. Imagine Meeting You Here is a five-part suite for Fujii's improvising Orchestra Kobe. The compositions are by pianist Alister Spence, who acts as producer and conductor of the fifteen-member ensemble. The suite premiered with Fujii's orchestra in Kobe, Nagoya and Tokyo in 2016 and was performed by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra later that year. Orchestra Kobe ...

Album Review

Alister Spence / Satoko Fujii: Intelsat

Read "Intelsat" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 15, 2018

This is the ninth of twelve CDs celebrating leading-edge pianist, composer Satoko Fujii's 60th birthday. On this album Fujii and Australian keyboardist Alistir Spence (Barre Phillip, Myra Melford) perform a series of over-the-top duets in front of a live audience in 2017 at the Intelstat jazz venue in Kiracho, Nishio, Japan. The artists first met when Fuji and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura toured Australia in 2007, leading to subsequent collaborations. The duo's charismatic alliance is teeming with unbridled resourcefulness. ...

Album Review

Alister Spence / Satoko Fujii: Intelsat

Read "Intelsat" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 30, 2018

Three quarters of the way through Satoko Fujii's year-long celebration of her sixtieth birthday, she once again moves in an unpredictable direction, this time in the company keyboardist Alister Spence. Having met in Australia in 2007, the two went on to record with the Raymond MacDonald International Big Band the following year. Intelsat marks the second meeting of Spence and Fujii in the year-long fête; their previous release Bright Force (Libra, 2018) was in Fujii's Kira Kira quartet. The Intelsat ...