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

Oliver Lake: Right Up On

Read "Right Up On" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
July 12, 2017

Although he will always be known first and foremost as an uncompromising saxophonist who helped catalyze the jazz avant- garde from the 1970s onward, it's also worth recognizing Oliver Lake's ambition as a composer. He has a particular fondness for strings in this regard, actually, as he has composed extensively for string quartets for over twenty years, starting with his String Project on Movements, Turns and Switches, from 1996 on his own Passin' Thru label. But most of his work ...

Album Review

Charles Rumback: Threes

Read "Threes" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 12, 2017

Versatile drummer Charles Rumback's third release under his name, Threes is a live session recorded at Constellation Chicago. It is also Rumback's first with a piano trio, and although the formation is conventional the music is nothing but that. Indeed, the four long pieces that make up the album are provocative in their inventiveness and passionate in their delivery.For instance, the leader's “Salt Lines" is darkly hued with an undercurrent of lyricism and a thrillingly organic and vibrant ...

Album Review

Mie Miki: Das Wohltemperierte Akkordeon

Read "Das Wohltemperierte Akkordeon" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
July 12, 2017

I wonder if Old Man Bach had much of a sense of humor. I wonder how he would feel about the myriad of ways his music, some of the most important composed in Western Civilization, has been treated and performed. It would be a safe conjecture to think of Bach's music as the supreme music organizing model to the time of his Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2. His music has been widely transcribed for other instruments and just as ...

In Pictures

Montreal International Jazz Festival 2017

by Dave Kaufman
July 12, 2017

The Montreal International Jazz Festival has just concluded its 38th year. I've been fortunate to have attended more than 30 of them and this year ranked among the best. I've covered the event as a photographer for All About Jazz since 2011. The festival is a total music immersion experience presenting some 600 concerts over the course of 11 days. It can be overwhelming and exhausting, but more often than not it is incredibly exhilarating. Some of the highlights of ...

Multiple Reviews

Queen Esther: Sings Jazz & Black Americana

by James Nadal
July 12, 2017

The multifarious talents which are the essence of extraordinary vocalist Queen Esther's identity, encompass the complete spectrum of music from rural southern blues and inner city jazz, to her innovative version of Black Americana. Born and raised in the Deep South, she was a prodigious child whose creativity was recognized early in life. After a successful artistic stint in Texas, where she perfected her unique take on folkloric roots music, Queen Esther relocated to New York City, embarking on a ...

Live Review

Alfa Jazz Fest 2017

by Thomas Conrad
July 11, 2017

Alfa Jazz Fest 2017 Lviv, Ukraine June 23-27, 2017 Jazz festivals are different in Europe. There are more of them, and they are crucial to the economic viability, social solidarity and creative evolution of the jazz art form. Many European towns that host their own annual jazz events seem like unlikely sites for festivals. They are small, and/or industrial, and/or off the beaten path. In the case of Alfa Jazz Fest, in Lviv, Ukraine, ...

Live Review

King Crimson at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier / Massey Hall

by John Kelman
July 11, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 An Evening with King Crimson Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier / Massey Hall Le Festival International de Jazz de Montréal / Non-Festival Event Montréal, Canada / Toronto, Canada July 3, 2017 / July 5, 2017 Having covered the reunited, refreshed and reinvigorated “seven-headed Beast of Crim" for two nights each in San Francisco in 2014 and, again, in Montréal in 2015, was there really a good reason to see ...

Album Review

Adam Rogers: DICE

by Dan Bilawsky
July 11, 2017

At some point in time, fusion lost its way. Some say it never really had a firm enough direction, existing only as a symbol of excess, power, and virtuosity to begin with. But those steeped in '70s and early '80s music of this sort know the truth: A perfect blend of rip-roaring lines, one-step-beyond melodicism, feats of daring, and mind-bending grooves took the music to great heights in its first decade, bringing it to a point that's never been equaled ...

Album Review

Hal Galper And the Youngbloods: Live At The Cota Jazz Festival

Read "Live At The Cota Jazz Festival" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 11, 2017

The trio recordings released by pianist Hal Galper between 2006 and 2014--six discs, all but one on Origin Records--plowed fresh ground. Each disc dug deeply into the “Rubato" form. Taken as a whole--from 2006's Agents Of Change (Fabola Records) through 2014's O's Time (Origin Records)--the full series represents a monumental, sharply focused project that, for those who listened, redefined the piano trio. Live At The Cota Jazz Festival features Galper still riding the wave of a fifty ...

Album Review

The Beat Freaks: Leon

by Glenn Astarita
July 11, 2017

Based in Poland, guitarist Michał Starkiewicz founded this band in 2014, followed by successful concert tours and of course, this album that presents a modicum of youthful vim and vigor, largely within the progressive jazz schema amid a few slight nods to jazz fusion. Moreover, the musicians dedicate the album to a mythical figure Leon Kokaiewicz, although the story behind these motivations briefly outlined in the album notes are not clear to me. The quartet's buoyant and spunky ...