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

Cory Weeds: Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News

Read "Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 8, 2026

In 2013, saxophonist Cory Weeds and organist Chris Hazelton used Hazelton's father's van to make a four-hour-long trip from Kansas City to a gig in St. Louis. There was one CD in the van's player: Huey Lewis & the News Greatest Hits. After several listens, an idea started to form in Weeds' head, namely that the music might work well in a classic jazz organ quartet setting. Weeds and Hazelton sat on the idea for more than a decade before ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News

Read "Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
October 23, 2026

There is something wonderfully mischievous about Cory Weeds taking on Huey Lewis And The News. At first glance, the pairing might seem unlikely, but spend a little time with Hip to Be Square - Plays Huey Lewis & The News (Boop Bop Bing Bash!) and the logic becomes clear. The band's songs were built on strong melodies, deep grooves, and a healthy dose of the blues, making them surprisingly natural material for a Hammond B3 organ quartet. Saxophonist Weeds, organist Chris ...

Album Review

Jalen Baker: RePaved

by Jack Bowers
October 13, 2026

RePaved, vibraphonist and composer Jalen Baker's third album as leader of his own ensemble, is an eight-part suite that depicts in musical terms the history of Houston, Texas' historic Black neighborhoods and his family's deep connection to the city's Third Ward, which spans four generations. As is usually true of thematic music, that becomes largely irrelevant once it begins. What is of more than passing interest is that Baker composed the suite's first half-dozen movements, while the seventh ...

Album Review

Ulysses Owens, Jr. and Generation Y: Kind of Grunge

Read "Kind of Grunge" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 26, 2026

New York-based master drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. is back, Generation Y in tow, with another generous helping of so-called “grunge jazz" deftly transformed to straight-ahead patterns in a style similar to that of the legendary Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. This is not, however, precisely the same Generation Y that recorded the well-received album, Around the World with U, for the Cellar Music Group earlier in 2026. The lone holdover besides Owens is the versatile pianist Tyler ...

Album Review

Jalen Baker: RePaved

Read "RePaved" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
September 5, 2026

Occasionally, an album comes along that shakes up your thinking about what jazz can do. Jalen Baker's RePaved might be that album. On the surface, it is an eight- part suite about Houston's historic Black neighbourhoods, particularly the 3rd Ward, where Baker's family has deep roots spanning four generations. But on closer listening, it becomes more personal. Baker is not simply documenting places disappearing under the pressure of gentrification; he is keeping their memory alive through music. Baker ...

Album Review

Jim Rotondi & Dena DeRose: Out of the Past

Read "Out of the Past" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 2, 2026

Although trumpeter Jim Rotondi and pianist-singer Dena DeRose had wanted to record together for years, life always seemed to get in the way. Finally, when they were both on faculty at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria, Rotondi decided to make it happen. He booked a studio in Vienna, enlisted the services of esteemed Austrian bassist Danny Ziemann (his studio) and drummer Mario Gonzi, and on June 23, 2024, the quartet recorded Out of the Past. ...

Album Review

Arvind Ramdas: Here We Go

Read "Here We Go" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 27, 2026

As an album title, Here We Go presages the sort of intense, no-holds-barred session wherein everyone digs in as hard and as often as he can to help carry out its purpose. And that is more or less the norm on East Indian-born, Canadian-based drummer Arvind Ramdas' debut album, which doesn't often eclipse the sound barrier but swings boldly regardless of catalyst or tempo. Ramdas has a lot to do with that, as does his section mate, bassist ...

Album Review

Bria Skonberg: Indigo

by Jack Bowers
August 26, 2026

Jazz triple-threat Bria Skonberg is back, singing, scatting and playing eloquent trumpet on Indigo, the Canadian-born artist's eighth recording as leader of her own group (one of which, Bria, earned Canada's JUNO Award in 2017 for best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year). In Skonberg's ongoing back-and-forth between voice and trumpet, voice seems to have gained the upper hand here, as she sings on every one of the album's nine numbers (including one of her own) and plays ...

Album Review

Mike DiRubbo: Way Out Northwest

Read "Way Out Northwest" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
August 24, 2026

Some recordings try to overwhelm the listener with grand statements. With Way Out Northwest, alto saxophonist Mike DiRubbo is not trying to reinvent modern jazz but to remind us how rewarding it can be when four musicians know one another, allowing the music to develop through relationships built over time. Pianist Tilden Webb, bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Jesse Cahill have shared enough club dates with DiRubbo to know each other's preferences. The track list of six original compositions, alongside pieces ...

Album Review

Mike DiRubbo: Way Out Northwest

Read "Way Out Northwest" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 12, 2026

Alto saxophonist and composer Mike DiRubbo, an acclaimed artist on the New York City jazz scene for more than three decades, traveled all the way to Vancouver, British Columbia, in October 2025 to record Way Out Northwest with a hand-picked all-Canadian rhythm section: pianist Tilden Webb, bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Jesse Cahill. The result of their collaboration is a sturdy, swinging slice of contemporary jazz embracing half a dozen of DiRubbo's eloquent original compositions and others by ...