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

Tom Rizzo: Day and Night

Read "Day and Night" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 18, 2017

The names in guitarist Tom Rizzo's starting lineup on Day and Night indicate that this is a West Coast-based group, an observation that is borne out in Rizzo's bio, which says he is “active [on] the Los Angeles music scene" and served as guitarist for the Tonight Show band when Jay Leno was at the helm, reinforced by the song “Heart of L.A.," one of Rizzo's four original compositions. Rizzo's tentet, featuring some of the Los Angeles ...

Album Review

Fini Bearman: Burn The Boat

Read "Burn The Boat" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 18, 2017

Vocalist Fini Bearman made an impressive debut as a leader with Step Up (Feenz Beenz Records, 2011), a set of her original songs. In 2014 she effectively re-imagined classics on her second album, Porgy And Bess. Burn The Boat returns to the structure of her debut release, presenting another nine of Bearman's original compositions, with the singer alongside a completely new band. It's a beautiful recording. Bearman's talent as a vocalist is clear from Porgy And Bess, where ...

Album Review

Kareem Kandi Band: Hourglass

by Paul Rauch
May 18, 2017

The jazz organ trio, with saxophone and drums, is an efficient concept in terms of musical identity; it exposes the members to the core of their collective musical being, laying bare the total expressiveness of the players, and the strengths and weaknesses of the collective. It's like a mini-big band, with B3 sounds swirling and creating foundational remnants from which the rhythmic aspects and melodic input of both the drummer and saxophonist give rise to musical adventurism. The Kareem Kandi ...

Album Review

The Great Harry Hillman: Tilt

by Karl Ackermann
May 18, 2017

The Great Harry Hillman formed a little more than one hundred years after its American namesake won three gold medals in the 1904 Summer Olympics. Despite the naming convention, the group is Lucerne-based and not yet well-known on this side of the Atlantic. The quartet is a collective effort in composition and performance, and that democratic philosophy is reflected in the eclectic choice of music on Tilt. German born multi-reedist Nils Fischer plays saxophone and bass clarinet, favoring ...

Album Review

Charlie Haden / Liberation Music Orchestra: Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings

Read "Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
May 17, 2017

Formed by bassist Charlie Haden in 1969 to protest America's war in Vietnam/Indochina, the Liberation Music Orchestra has reconvened roughly every ten years to record musical protest in the face of major injustices. Time/Life: Song for the Whales and Other Beings was inspired by concern at global ecological destruction, and to that end the music has a pervasive melancholy colored by the LMO's signature lyricism, and broken up by stirring collective and individual passages. The LMO's personnel has ...

Album Review

Steve Khan: Backlog

Read "Backlog" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
May 17, 2017

Latin jazz has rarely featured the guitar, but that hasn't stopped Steve Khan. Backlog continues in the vein of previous albums including Parting Shot (Tone Center, 2011) and Subtext (Tone Center, 2014): creative Latin arrangements of Great American Songbook standards and modern jazz tunes that are rarely played in Latin style (or in any style, in the case of the more obscure choices). The two previous installments included a number of Khan originals, but Backlog is entirely devoted to covers. ...

Album Review

Quinsin Nachoff's Ethereal Trio: Quinsin Nachoff's Ethereal Trio

Read "Quinsin Nachoff's Ethereal Trio" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
May 17, 2017

Unlike Canada-raised/New York-based reedman Quinsin Nachoff's previous recordings--Flux, Magic Numbers, Horizons Ensemble, FoMo and 5 New Dreams--this is a trio album. “Clairvoyant Jest" benefits from a buoyant head which initially propels the number, as Nachoff's improvisatory talent manifests in his soloing, a marriage of Albert Ayler's meanderings with Sonny Rollins' fluid articulacy. “Imagination Reconstruction" employs its preceding track's methodology but evinces a touch of Ornette Coleman in the trio's fluid cohesion. “Gravitas" is just that: ...

Album Review

Filtron M: Astoria Roots Live

Read "Astoria Roots Live" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
May 17, 2017

In a genuine international collaborative effort, with sessions recorded in New York and Zurich, Astoria Roots Live showcases the eclectic sounds of Filtron M, performing in a live setting. Launched as a musicians' collective based out of New York under the direction of pianist/composer Manu Koch, this project has expanded into Europe and integrated musicians from around the world. Favorably compared to the work Joe Zawinul did with Weather Report and in his later recordings, Filtron M draws on that ...

Album Review

Florian Ross Trio: Pigs & Fairies

Read "Pigs & Fairies" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 16, 2017

As a composer, German-born pianist Florian Ross seldom strays from the musical basics: melody, harmony, rhythm. As a performer, however, he uses those same basics to fashion a broad palette of sound, coming at the listener from a variety of routes and angles cannily designed to deepen an over-all mood of singularity and anticipation. On Pigs & Fairies, his fourteenth recording since 1998 and third as leader of his trio, Ross uses every weapon at his disposal, ...

Album Review

Mat Maneri/Evan Parker/Lucian Ban: Sounding Tears

Read "Sounding Tears" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 16, 2017

Viola-ist Mat Maneri has spent a quarter century carving out an artistic niche that marries avant-garde jazz with microtonal music, crafting off-center masterworks like Blue Decco (Thirsty Ear, 2000), Sustain (Thirsty Ear, 2002), and teaming with pianist Lucian Ban on Transylvanian Concert (ECM Records, 2013) and sitting in on a compelling sideman slot on Ches Smith's The Bell (ECM Records, 2016). On Sounding Tears, Maneri's first recording as a leader in twelve years, the viola-ist brings in, again, ...