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.

Live From Philadelphia

Orion Tango at Kung Fu Necktie

by Geno Thackara
June 9, 2017

Orion TangoKung Fu NecktiePhiladelphia, PAJune 6, 2017 It's unclear what formal apparel has to do with the martial arts, or what either one has to do with live music for that matter, but nevermind. Adventurous musical acts are always welcome at Kung Fu Necktie as much as open-eared listeners are. The wood-paneled corner bar in northeast Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood is a cozy space with an inviting local-hangout atmosphere and plenty of character. On this occasion ...

Live Review

Beth Hart at the Historic Wuppertal Statehouse

by Phillip Woolever
June 9, 2017

Beth Hart Band Historic Statehouse Wuppertal, Germany May 24, 2017 It is interesting how sometimes, when performed properly, the most tragic, heartbroken blues can be thoroughly inspiring. Beth Hart verified the truth in that improbable contradiction many times during a superb show. Hart is known for soaring vocals and deeply personal, reflective songwriting. Each of those gifts was on display as the show began with “Close to My Fire" and Hart ...

Album Review

Billy Jenkins With The Voice of God Collective: Scratches Of Spain

Read "Scratches Of Spain" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
June 9, 2017

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of its original release on vinyl (it was later released on CD) this download-only version is a welcome reissue from the canon of Billy Jenkins recordings. It's a shame that it's only available as a download since it certainly merits a physical reissue. But a digital presence is certainly better than none for this long out of print album. Jenkins is not performing live these days but perhaps he will be persuaded to make a ...

Album Review

Brand X: But Wait… There’s More! / Live 2017

Read "But Wait… There’s More! / Live 2017" reviewed by Roger Weisman

by Roger Weisman
June 9, 2017

But Wait... There's More!, the new live album by Brand X captures a complete performance of the classic Anglo- American prog-jazz-fusion band (can we fit a few more hyphens in here?) from their recent, eagerly anticipated, recent tour. Recorded in January at the Sellersville Theater, it is a blistering, high energy set, reexploring material from their first two studio albums, 1976's Unorthodox Behaviour and 1977's Moroccan Roll, as well material from their 1977 live album, Livestock. Recorded at ...

Album Review

Kate Gentile: Mannequins

Read "Mannequins" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 9, 2017

With the stimulating Mannequins, the New York based drummer Kate Gentile has created a cohesive and engaging album. On this first release under her own name, Gentile superbly balances emotive passion and intellectual acumen. Her intricate compositions are simultaneously fully realized and vibrantly supple and pliant as to allow for independent spontaneous expressions. The band's angular and crisp refrains build and intensely expectant ambience on the haunting “Trapezoidal Nirvana." Pianist Matt Mitchell plays a crisp and resonant cascade ...

Album Review

Akua Dixon: Akua's Dance

Read "Akua's Dance" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 9, 2017

My ears are not accustomed to hearing cello as the lead instrument in an ensemble, and so Akua's Dance by cellist and baritone violinist Akua Dixon took some getting used to. Dixon took quite a circuitous route to her third release: After graduating from New York's Fame High School of the Performing Arts, then studying at the Manhattan School of Music, one of her first jobs was in the pit band at the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, ...

Album Review

Burt Bacharach and Tonio K.: Original Demos

Read "Original Demos" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 8, 2017

Many if not most artists will confess that the best start to a great recording or performance is a great song. Across more than five decades, composer and pianist Burt Bacharach, in tandem with Tonio K., Carol Bayer Sager, Hal David and other lyricists, has written more great songs than just about anybody else. Burt Bacharach and Tonio K. Original Demos compiles more than a decade's worth of highlights from their collaborations, and simultaneously presents two “one of ...

We Travel the Spaceways

Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, and the Buddha walk in to a bar...

by Mark Corroto
June 8, 2017

Ivo Perelman / Matthew Shipp The Art Of Perelman-Shipp Leo Records 2017 If you are looking for reviews of the seven new discs Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp released on Leo Records, you won't find them here. You probably won't find a proper review of the music elsewhere either, but we'll get back to that later. The São Paulo-born, now Brooklyn-based saxophonist has, like pianist Shipp, moved into the rarefied air of the master ...

Album Review

William Parker Quartets: Meditation / Resurrection

Read "Meditation / Resurrection" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 8, 2017

Bassist William Parker's Quartets (note the plural) presented here are, of course just a fraction of the ensembles he is currently organizing and working in. It is these 2 quartets that manifest the Yin and Yang that is Parker. The question might be, is his Quartet of trumpeter Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, alto saxophonist Rob Brown, and drummer Hamid Drake, the Yang, or positive/active/male principal in nature, and his In Order To Survive quartet with pianist Cooper-Moore switching with Nelson the Yin, ...

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 8, 2017

Few things are as infused with as much romance as are those thought lost. Take the entire myth of blues singer Robert Johnson. He produced 29 shellac sides in the late 1920s that had immeasurable influence on American folk music after and then he disappeared. He did exist, but exists now only as a phantom, a heat apparition rising from a dusty dirt road in some God-forsaken Third-World corner of these United States. Yet his visage beckons like Ahab from ...