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

Fleet Foxes: Crack-Up

Read "Crack-Up" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
June 19, 2017

An impressive piece of work and all the more so given the prolonged interim since their last recorded work, Fleet Foxes' debut for Nonesuch Records, Crack-Up, bestows a cachet all its own, to the group as well as the work itself, suggesting both the band and the label are clearly poised to generate recognition equal to the anticipation. Comprised of eleven songs written by Robin Pecknold. the album was co-produced by the titular leader of Fleet Foxes and ...

Live Review

Burlington Discover Jazz Festival 2017

by Doug Collette
June 18, 2017

The Burlington Discover Jazz Festival Burlington, Vermont June 2-11, 2017 With multiple popup shows and one on the roof of a local parking garage, in addition to the usual plethora of musical offerings up down and around Church Street at the center of the city, The Burlington Discover Jazz Festival has never seemed more like a merry go round than in 2017.And that's meant as high compliment because each passing day of the ten ...

Album Review

Lili Añel: Another Place, Another Time

Read "Another Place, Another Time" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 18, 2017

Lili Añel, one of Philadelphia's premier singer-songwriters, plays and sings with a lifetime's worth of emotion through the six songs on her 2017 EP Another Place, Another Time. Coming twenty years after her recorded debut, and her first release since 2013, Another Place plays on many of Añel's own heartstrings but also resonates with the listener's. “I wanted to do something different and overall this CD is a lot more sparse than some of my other recordings," Añel explained in ...

Album Review

Scenes: Destinations

Read "Destinations" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 18, 2017

There are wondrous stories to be found in everything the eye can see, the ear can hear, and the imagination can dream up. Scenes--the trio of guitarist John Stowell, bassist Jeff Johnson, and drummer John Bishop--has been readily and steadily making that point for more than fifteen years, harnessing natural beauty and concocting chimerical designs that extol the virtues of elasticity, mutability, and high-level communication. The Pacific Northwest knows no greater champion of its beyond-words beauty than this outfit.

Album Review

Hudson - DeJohnette Grenadier Medeski Scofield: Hudson

by Roger Farbey
June 18, 2017

Rightly vaunted as a 'supergroup,' specifically in the Tony Williams Lifetime mold, this eponymously titled band really does qualify as a super quartet, so much so that any background information on these four protagonists would seem superfluous. However it should be noted that John Scofield and John Medeski have teamed-up on occasion with Medeski, Martin & Wood and Scofield and Jack DeJohnette first played together forty years ago and more recently in their Trio Beyond with organist Larry Goldings.

Album Review

Nadje Noordhuis: Nadje Noordhuis

Read "Nadje Noordhuis" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
June 18, 2017

On occasion, it is worthwhile to look back on an artist's earlier work--perhaps one that has not been encountered and experienced. In examining Nadje Noordhuis' debut CD, one originally recorded in 2010, there are marvelous new gems to discover and reflections upon which to dwell and meditate. Nadje Noordhuis is a superbly crafted and performed effort which has the Australian-born trumpet artist and her friends thoroughly immersed in a heavily textural, impeccably performed session. This is a ...

Live Review

Jean Luc Ponty Band at the Boulder Theater

by Geoff Anderson
June 17, 2017

Jean Luc Ponty Band Boulder Theater Boulder, Colorado June 13, 2017 One thing we learned Tuesday night: Enigmatic Ocean (Atlantic, 1977), Jean Luc Ponty's fourth album for Atlantic Records, is his favorite. And why not? It made it to number one on the jazz charts in 1977. Plus, it's pretty good. The Jean Luc Ponty Band brought their Atlantic Years tour through Boulder last Tuesday, recreating the music from what is most likely ...

Album Review

Aruán Ortiz: Cub(an)ism

Read "Cub(an)ism" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 17, 2017

The profile of Cuban-born pianist Aruan Ortiz climbed a few rungs on the ladder with the release of 2016's Hidden Voices (Intakt Records). The sound there was dark and brooding, as Ortiz constructed geometric musical shapes filled with sharp angles and unexpected tangents. His covers on the recordings--one tune by Thelonious Monk and another by Ornette Coleman--served as clues as to his own iconoclastic approach. Hidden Voices featured the pianist in the trio format with bassist Eric Revis ...

Album Review

Binker & Moses: Journey To The Mountain Of Forever

Read "Journey To The Mountain Of Forever" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 17, 2017

A double album with a title--Journey To The Mountain Of Forever--straight from the annals of Prog Rock (maybe with a short diversion via the Coltranes' spiritual jazz). A cover design that's a close relation to Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy--a link made more explicit by an inner sleeve illustration that features a character in a Led Zeppelin tour t-shirt. Track titles that Yes would be proud of. It's--rather surprisingly--the excellent second album from the exciting young UK duo of ...

Album Review

Craig Fraedrich with Trilogy and Friends: All Through the Night

Read "All Through the Night" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
June 17, 2017

It's no secret among professional musicians that the elite military jazz ensembles such as the “U.S. Army Blues," the Air Force's “Airmen of Note," and the Navy's “Commodores" consist of some of the finest musicians on the planet. Trumpeter Craig Fraedrich, recently-retired 30-year Army Bandsman, his Trilogy crew, and vocalist Christal Rheams are spit-shining examples. And, All Through the Night which features Fraedrich and his former military colleagues in this civilian recording session certainly confirms that. Fraedrich ...