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

JC Hopkins Biggish Band: Meet Me At Minton's

Read "Meet Me At Minton's" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
June 17, 2017

In a direct shout out to the famous Harlem nightclub, and evoking the golden age of jazz orchestras, Meet Me At Minton's by the JC Hopkins Biggish Band is a polished throwback to the era when premier vocalists fronted illustrious big bands, while dancers flooded the floor. With a rotating lineup of eight singers, backed by fifteen musicians on the bandstand, pianist and leader JC Hopkins serves up a mixed bag of standards and original compositions, enhanced by stellar arrangements, ...

Interview

Miles Mosley Gets Down!

by Andrea Murgia
June 16, 2017

Bassist, singer and composer: Miles Mosley is all of this and much more. After studying with bass giants like John Clayton and Ray Brown, Mosley extensively toured with musicians of the caliber of Lauryn Hill, Jeff Beck, Gnarls Barkley and Mos Def and participated in the recording of albums by Korn's Jonathan Davis and Avenged Sevenfold, showing remarkable versatility and contempt for music barriers. Mosley is one of the pillars of the West Coast Get Down collective together with his ...

Building a Jazz Library

Derek Bailey

by John Eyles
June 16, 2017

Guitarist Derek Bailey was one of the more prominent and influential musicians from the “first generation of free improvisation" that developed in London in the mid-sixties and gradually promoted the music around the world. Although several members of that generation were leaders, Bailey often seemed the de facto leader of the group. Partly, this was a consequence of his being slightly older than others, Bailey having been born in 1930, compared to Tony Oxley (1938), Trevor Watts (1939), John Stevens ...

Album Review

Rubén González: Introducing...Rubén González

Read "Introducing...Rubén González" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
June 16, 2017

When Cuban piano master Rubén González was brought out of self-imposed retirement, at age seventy seven, in 1996, for a recording by the Afro Cuban All Stars, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, he had not played in over ten years, and did not even own a piano. After hearing González on those sessions, producer/guitarist Ry Cooder invited him to appear on the Buena Vista Social Club recordings that same year. The rest, is history. Seizing upon the creative ...

Album Review

Quantum Trio: Duality: Particles & Waves

Read "Duality: Particles & Waves" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
June 16, 2017

As anyone who's ever read or watched science fiction can tell you, there are any number of universes that occupy states different from our own. Limitless possibilities are created by the chances of things happening one way or another. There could be another Earth out there that's secretly run by penguins, one where Miles Davis actually got to make that planned album with Jimi Hendrix, or who knows, maybe even one where public opinions on Ornette Coleman and late-period John ...

Album Review

The Vampires: The Vampires Meet Lionel Loueke

Read "The Vampires Meet Lionel Loueke" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 16, 2017

As we mature as music listeners, the need to select a piece of music as your summer theme song, go-to party album, or road trip recording fades. Just like the childhood requirement to designate who is your best friend, we don't wear the grooves of records out these days. Let's, for old times sake, choose a recording to be our favorite companion to mark a season. The Vampires meet Lionel Loueke is just such a recording. Just as ...

Album Review

Nathan Zaporski: Live Recitation

Read "Live Recitation" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
June 16, 2017

Nathan Zaporski is a composer and alto saxophonist from the Detroit area with a hard, sharp edge to his playing in the tradition of Phil Woods and Jackie McLean. On this live recording, he shows his wares fronting a sympathetic quartet. Zaporski's sound is so speedy and relentless on the opening duo of Thelonious Monk's “Rhythm-a-ning" and his own composition “Wild Bill" he sounds like he's in an endurance contest. However, he maintains a consistent sense of melody and feeling ...

Live Review

ELBJAZZ 2017

by Ian Patterson
June 15, 2017

ELBJAZZ 2017 Blohm and Voss/various venues Hamburg, Germany June 2-3, 2017 Although Gregory Porter was the marquee name at the sixth edition of Elbjazz, with a strong supporting cast including Joshua Redman, Jan Garbarek, Hildegard Lernt Fliegen and Youn Sun Nah, the real star of the show was the spectacular festival setting. The Blohm and Voss shipyard, where most of the concerts were held in four different venues, provided a dramatic industrial backdrop to the ...

My Playlist

Mats Gustafsson

by Vincenzo Roggero
June 15, 2017

If Mats Gustafsson's approach to music were to be described with a single adjective, it would have to be “intense." This applies to him both as a musician, as illustrated by over three decades of playing with stalwarts of the free and creative jazz scenes on both sides of the Ocean (Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Derek Bailey etc.), and as a voracious crate-digger and record-trader with a two and a half ton vinyl cave in rural Austria. We ...

Album Review

Tom Haines & the Birmingham Jazz Orchestra: Tom Haines Live

Read "Tom Haines Live" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 15, 2017

Tom Haines, whose album with the Birmingham Jazz Orchestra (that's Birmingham as in England, not Alabama) was indeed recorded live at the 2016 Stratford Jazz Festival, is a composer / arranger of the first rank--and has the awards to prove it. Of the five selections on Tom Haines Live, three have won awards for composing and / or arranging while a fourth, “Strange Utopia," came close, earning runner-up honors at the 2016 European Big Band Composers Competition. ...