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

Nathan Hanson / Steve Hirsh: Memory Is Subjective

Read "Memory Is Subjective" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 16, 2026

It goes without saying that memory is subjective. Saxophonist Nathan Hanson and drummer Steve Hirsh might tell you that, apart from the experience of attending their October 2025 live performance at the 210 Gallery & Art Center in Sandstone, Minnesota, encountering the resulting recording is an entirely different affair. They would be right. Yet Memory Is Subjective is so sincere, and so expertly recorded and mixed, that the listener is placed almost directly within the audience's sound space, experiencing something ...

Album Review

Chad Fowler / Eri Yamamoto: Polkadots & Moonbeams

Read "Polkadots & Moonbeams" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
September 29, 2026

Some of the finest duo recordings give the listener the sensation of eavesdropping on an intimate encounter. The recordings of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans come to mind, as does the music of Billie Holiday and Lester Young. Polkadots & Moonbeams, by pianist Eri Yamamoto and saxophonist Chad Fowler, creates that same feeling. Although recorded in a studio, the performance sounds as though it might have been captured for the musicians themselves, an unguarded conversation between two artists listening closely ...

Album Review

Perelman / Ribot / Sharp / Morris: Trifecta

Read "Trifecta" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 19, 2026

With a discography approaching 200 releases, it might be tempting to imagine saxophonist Ivo Perelman as a kind of jazz gunfighter, in the lineage of Charlie Parker or Coleman Hawkins, stepping into one cutting contest after another. But that image misses the mark. Perelman's recordings are rarely about competition. Instead, they are grounded in creation, collaboration and deep musical partnership. The closest he comes to that rough-and-tumble spirit is in his long-running exchanges with pianist Matthew Shipp, where the intensity ...

Album Review

Things Of This Nature: Things Of This Nature

Read "Things Of This Nature" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 18, 2026

Caylie Davis grew up in Eugene, Oregon, playing trumpet in a town not exactly known for avant-garde-leaning jazz before making her way to New York to enroll at the Manhattan School of Music. There, she studied under Ingrid Jensen, Nadje Noordhuis and Jon Faddis--three players who, between them, cover a wide stylistic range. Davis casts an even broader net. Booker Little and Maurice Ravel both factor into how she thinks about sound, while the human voice remains just as central to ...

Album Review

Art Edmaiston & Chad Fowler: Memphis Mandala

Read "Memphis Mandala" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 7, 2026

Recorded live in Memphis, Memphis Mandala is led by Art Edmaiston on tenor and soprano saxophones, alongside Chad Fowler's work on stritch and flute. They are backed by a rhythm section that intuitively knows when to push the accelerator and when to let the engine idle in neutral. The result is collective improvisation--with two drummers--that feels less like a performance and more like five people arguing passionately about the meaning of life, only they are using horns and drums instead ...

Album Review

Art Edmaiston / Chad Fowler: Memphis Mandala

Read "Memphis Mandala" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 18, 2026

We often approach recordings as if they were live performances: fully present in the moment, deeply engaged, and then rarely revisited. Like a concert, the sounds drift into the ether, lingering in memory and, perhaps, subtly reshaping the listener's internal landscape. Yet Memphis Mandala, the 2024 live collaboration between saxophonists Art Edmaiston and Chad Fowler, resists that pattern. Though comfortably situated under the free jazz rubric, this is a recording that rewards, and arguably demands, repeated listening. Each ...

Album Review

Steve Hirsh: Root Causes

Read "Root Causes" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 28, 2025

Although Steve Hirsh's name appears on the masthead of Root Causes, you might not immediately recognize it as a drummer-led recording. Unlike the unmistakable leadership of Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Tony Williams, Hirsh leads with subtlety, functioning more as a selfless, responsive collaborator than a dominant force. The album features a classic piano trio format, with pianist Eri Yamamoto and bassist William Parker rounding out the ensemble. This trio forms three-quarters of the Sparks Quartet, led by ...

Album Review

Rob Brown: Walkabout

Read "Walkabout" reviewed by Fran Kursztejn

by Fran Kursztejn
April 4, 2025

Despite spending the majority of his career as a side man for William Parker and Matthew Shipp, Rob Brown is perhaps the most recognizable alto saxophonist on the East Coast. Recognizable not because he is famous (far from it), but simply because he is rather difficult to mistake. His sound is abrasive, bellowing and free, oozing with a crooning full-force poignancy reminiscent of his late mentor Lee Konitz. Perhaps it is the singular presence of Charlie Parker in his oscillating ...

Album Review

Mahakala Music: Murmuration

Read "Murmuration" reviewed by Fran Kursztejn

by Fran Kursztejn
March 28, 2025

"Birds from the east coast meet birds from the midwest," reads Mahakala Music's description for saxophonist Dave Sewelson's newest release. Sewelson himself is a bicoastal phenomenon: born in Oakland, then traipsing into the New York scene circa 1977. Like his frequent bandleader collaborator William Parker, he acts as a magnetic center to attract a variety of local and international performers alike. Murmuration's line-up consists of another fellow New Yorker-violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul, and three Minneapolitans, bassist Anthony Cox, drummer Steve Hirsh ...

Album Review

Michael Bisio: NuMBq

by Mark Corroto
March 26, 2025

Michael Bisio borrows the phrase “and now for something completely different" from Monty Python's Flying Circus to describe his new quartet, NuMBq. Joining the bassist is longtime collaborator Jay Rosen on drums, along with two musicians traditionally rooted in classical music: violist Melanie Dyer and English horn player Marianne Osiel. With NuMBq, Bisio blurs the line between chamber music and jazz--but let's not confine this session to the Third Stream category. Early jazz-classical hybrids, such as Charlie Parker ...