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.

Bailey's Bundles

Blue Beatles – Mick Kolassa / Mark Telesca And Organissimo

by C. Michael Bailey
May 25, 2017

The Beatles songbook has been coming into blues and jazz focus over the last decade as evidenced in the recordings The Blues White Album (Telarc, 2003) and Let It Be Jazz: Connie Evingson Sings The Beatles (Summit Records, 2003). Two recent records pop to the surface reprising this interest. Mick Kolassa & Mark Telesca You Can't Do That!--Acoustic Beatles Blues Swing Suit Records 2017 The Beatles songbook is a hard sell ...

Album Review

Gato Libre: Neko

by Dan McClenaghan
May 25, 2017

Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's Gato Libre could now be called Gato Diferente. The group's lineup changed five albums into its journey, after the release of Forever (Libra Records, 2011), with the death of bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu. And changed again with the addition--after Norikatsu's passing--of trombonist Yasuko Kaneko. Then, in 2015, the group's guitarist, Kazuhiko Tsumura passed, leaving Tamura and Satoko Fujii--who plays accordion in the group, rather than her more customary piano--and the leader, Tamura, as the sole original members of ...

Album Review

Shawn Thwaites Rebel Quartet: New Life

Read "New Life" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
May 25, 2017

If there's one impression about Shawn Thwaites that jumps out at first glance, it's a willingness to jokingly twist expectations. The Trinidadian-American's music is billed as “modern jazz intertwining hip-hop, funk and calypso"--a blending just as offbeat as his choice of steel drums for main instrument--and his Rebel Quartet actually turns out to have six members. The band shows the same defiant and carefree attitude throughout their debut New Life, making for a listen as zesty and colorful as its ...

Album Review

Fabian Almazan: Alcanza

by Troy Dostert
May 25, 2017

When his debut record, Personalities, was released in 2011, pianist Fabian Almazan put everyone on notice: this was a musician unafraid to take some big chances with his craft. That album began with a piece by Shostakovich (augmented with a string quartet and electronics, no less), and it effectively established the trajectory Almazan has continued ever since, in which classical, Latin, and post-bop jazz-based musical languages fuse together in ways that are consistently startling and path-breaking. Although he's proven himself ...

Live Review

The Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet at the Library of Congress

by Joseph Boselovic
May 24, 2017

The Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet The Library of Congress Washington, D.C. May 20, 2017 Although he only has two major label releases to his name, Ambrose Akinmusire has established himself as one of the most exciting trumpet players in recent years. The last appearance he made on a recording was Wolfgang Muthspiel's 2016 album Rising Grace (ECM Records). The fact that the Oakland-born trumpet player appeared on that thoroughly enjoyable album alongside no less than Brad ...

History of Jazz

Philadelphia Jazz: A Brief History

by Jack McCarthy
May 24, 2017

This article was first published at the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia website. Jazz began to emerge as a distinct musical style around the turn of the twentieth century, a merging of two vernacular African American musical styles—ragtime and blues—with elements of popular music. New Orleans, the “cradle of jazz," was the most important city in this process, with Chicago and New York playing particularly significant roles in the 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-twentieth century Philadelphia had become ...

Album Review

Andreas Schaerer/Hildegard Lernt Fliegen meets the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy: The Big Wig

Read "The Big Wig" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
May 24, 2017

The Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy and the sextet Hildegard Lernt Fliegen come below Andreas Schaerer on the billing on this CD/DVD offering, suggesting the star quality of this unique contemporary composer/vocalist. The Big Wig suite-- composed and orchestrated by Schaerer--comprises newly composed material and reworkings of several tunes from Hildegard Lernt Fliegen's The Fundamental Rhythms of Unpolished Brains (2014). Schearer's wildly colorful, idiosyncratic narratives and his operatic vocals lend themselves well to the orchestral setting, while the sextet ...

Album Review

Chris Potter: The Dreamer Is the Dream

Read "The Dreamer Is the Dream" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
May 24, 2017

Saxophonist/composer Chris Potter's two previous ECM albums as leader both had a “special project" air about them. The Sirens (2013) was inspired by the epic poem The Odyssey, and featured an unusual quintet with two keyboardists. Imaginary Cities (2015) featured the Underground Orchestra, an expansive lineup of his Underground quartet plus two bassists, percussion, and string quartet. For this third release Potter presents a new acoustic quartet. It's not a studio band: the recording sessions were preceded by a long ...

Album Review

Bill Evans: Another Time: The Hilversum Concert

Read "Another Time: The Hilversum Concert" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
May 24, 2017

Musical performance archeologist Zev Feldman again provides the Bill Evans discography with important, previously unreleased material. Another Time documents pianist Evans, in the company of bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette, in concert at the Netherlands Radio Union VARA Studio 8 in Hilversum on June 22, 1968. The release complements the previously released Some Other Time: the Lost Session From the Black Forest (Resonance, 2016), by featuring the same trio performing live two days after the sides for Some ...

Album Review

Yang: The Failure of Words

Read "The Failure of Words" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 24, 2017

World class German touch guitarist Markus Reuter (Stick Men, Europa String Choir) and Benjamin Schäfer enhance this soundscape with sterling audio processes to extract the inherent power and resiliency of this French / German quartet on its 3rd release. Abetted by a detailed soundstage that highlight's the band's commanding presence, the packaging references late artist Bruno Medonca's work that keenly merges a sense of antiquity with an ultra-modern stance. Yang is an explosive yet disciplined band amid all ...