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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Danny Widdicombe & Trichotomy: Iridescence
by Konstantin N. Rega
Insightful collaboration is at the heart of amazing jazz. Australian group Trichotomy joins with singer-songwriter Danny Widdicombe on Iridescence with conviction and conscientiousness. Jazz infused with roots and folk music makes this release something somewhat rare, featuring a variety of songs, from pure instrumentals to vocal tracks; these two artists achieve an amiable and inspired balance. There is a tender warmth, heartfelt devotion, and retro attitude that propels the ten originals. From the first track, it might seem ...
Continue ReadingMax Alduca: Monastery
by Barry O'Sullivan
Max Alduca is an Australian in-demand bassist who regularly tours nationally and internationally. On this debut album as a leader, he draws inspiration from a personal journey through music, reflecting themes of interconnectedness, trust and hope while paying homage to his teachers and collaborators. It is a culmination of his experiences touring Scandinavia with a Danish band and living in Stockholm for some time. After returning from intensive study in New York City in 2022, he began weaving elements of ...
Continue ReadingRoss McHenry: Waves
by Nenad Georgievski
One of the reasons jazz is so intriguing is its wide range of styles and unpredictability. It has always been tricky to define. It is a genre that is constantly evolving, picking up influences along the way, and adapting in ways that can blur the lines between styles. While the term jazz often suggests something hard to pin down, labels can provide a useful way to describe the key features of a particular release. Packed with unpredictable forms, formats, rhythms ...
Continue ReadingSam Anning: Earthen
by Jerome Wilson
Sam Anning spent three years as bassist for Archie Roach, an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter who championed the rights of that country's Aboriginal people. Roach passed away in 2022 and this album is Anning's tribute to him, a set of original works that carry forth the inner strength and understated force of Roach's music. Anning's compositions are unhurried and contemplative. They resemble classic ECM sounds but with a warmer, more intimate vibe. Throughout the album Andrea Keller's piano leads ...
Continue ReadingThe Vampires: Nightjar
by Pat Youngspiel
Australian saxophonist Jeremy Rose's admiration for minimalist trio The Necks is of great depth, to the extent that he published an essay on the group, entitled “Memory and Mindfulness in the Musical Rituals of the Necks," examining musical ritualistic practices “beyond the African American realm capable of scaffolding transcendent experience." And he is not the only Vampire to have previously collaborated with a Neck. Besides his own ethno-improvisational endeavor with the trio Vazesh, featuring The Necks bassist Lloyd Swanton and ...
Continue ReadingJeremy Rose and the Earshift Orchestra: Disruption! The Voice of Drums
by Hrayr Attarian
Australian saxophonist and composer Jeremy Rose has created a unique body of work since he arrived on the music scene in 2008 with his collaborative quartet, The Vampires. He has forged an innovative path over the course of several local and international projects and multiple recordings. His twentieth, Disruption! The Voice of Drums is a poignant, moving, and soulful set of eleven interlinked movements originally commissioned for the 2021 Sydney festival. It features Rose with his octet, the Earshift Orchestra, ...
Continue ReadingTrio Kleine Ahnung: Laniakea
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Berlin-based guitarist Carl Morgan gets together with his Australian compatriots Rajiv Jayaweera on drums and Sam Anning on bass for a date packed with Indie-rock infused compositions that live off of the trio's jazzy interplay and modern soundscapes. Between Morgan's modern guitar slurs and the rhythm section's minimalist approach to accompaniment, this record is imbued with a unique tone and finds the musicians in their own ethereal space. In sound and vocabulary, Morgan's guitar playing on “Datameta" brings ...
Continue ReadingSam Gill's Coursed Waters: Many Altered Returns
by Jerome Wilson
Sam Gill is an alto saxophonist from Sydney, Australia who on this release with his quartet, Coursed Waters, plows a similar musical furrow as Tim Berne. His group plays an interesting blend of involved written-music and free improvisation with an elastic sense of volume and tempo. The CD's opening track, “Nodap," starts with a climbing, angular melody that alternates between lively and mournful moods and turns into a cauldron of potent improvised rumbling that spotlights the cohesiveness between ...
Continue ReadingPhil Slater: The Dark Pattern
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Australian trumpeter and composer Phil Slater has performed with a variety of renowned artists across the globe and stands as one of the most influential jazz musicians his country has to offer. Next to recording and performing with big names such as Lou Reed, Nigel Kennedy or Missy Higgins among others, the award-winning trumpeter leads and co-leads several bands, including the Phil Slater Quartet and Band of Five Names. On The Dark Pattern he is joined by fellow countrymen Matt ...
Continue ReadingFranklin: Amen
by Friedrich Kunzmann
On Joseph Franklin's sophomore effort Amen, the Australian bassist and composer delivers an intricate web of patterns which he creates in interplay with fellow compatriot Marc Hannaford's ominous piano stabs and Satoshi Takeishi's experimental and highly dynamic drum work. Each composition goes through different stages--from dark and menacing to silver and dreamy-- from slowly pulsating, almost stagnant to driven and lively. Recorded at the Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, the trio lays out compositions that seamlessly glide between the composed and ...
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