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

Jan Sturiale: Two Roads

by Jim Olin
May 12, 2017

Guitarist Jan Sturiale's silky smooth playing is a king's feast for the ears on his latest effort, Two Roads. Backed by trumpeter Audun Waage, pianist Marko Churnchetz, bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Ziv Ravitz, Sturiale and his fellow musicians generate heat while playing with moods from one captivating track after another. The improvisational format of his group creates a series of indelible, emotionally charged moments beginning with the opening cut, “Three." Blissfully energetic, “Three" opens with Waage's spirited ...

Album Review

Alex Sipiagin: Moments Captured

Read "Moments Captured" reviewed by Andrew Luhn

by Andrew Luhn
May 12, 2017

Trumpeter Alex Sipiagin's 12th outing as a leader for the esteemed Criss Cross label finds him returning to the three-horn front line format that he previously explored on the masterful “Destinations Unknown" (Criss Cross, 2011). Returning from that date are tenor giant Chris Potter and the unrelentingly groovy Eric Harland on drums. David Binney is Sipiagin's usual choice of alto players, (having appeared on three of his previous releases,) however this time around Will Vinson completes the horn section on ...

Guilty Pleasures

Rock Swings

by Duncan Heining
May 12, 2017

A while ago, me and Mrs. O'Groove were at the Diamante Dance Academy, Chelmsford --I kid you not--for our regular lesson, when our teacher, Natasha Fellowes, put on this big band version of Van Halen's “Jump." Turned out it was off Paul Anka's Rock Swings album (2005). No particular reason but I've always had a soft spot for the number but this was a hoot. More than that, the arrangement takes what was a quick jive and turns it into ...

Live Review

Wadada Leo Smith At Firehouse 12

by Franz A. Matzner
May 11, 2017

Wadada Leo Smith Firehouse 12 Create Festival New Haven, Connecticut April 8-9, 2017 It is rare to experience the arc of a prolific artist's work while they are still active, and in the case of Wadada Leo Smith, to witness it at the simultaneous height of creative power and reflective composure. That privilege was offered by a two-day series presented at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut. The event combined seminars and ...

Live Review

Jazzahead! 2017

by Henning Bolte
May 11, 2017

Jazzahead! Trade Fair/Festival Bremen April 27-29, 2017 Jazzahead!, the annual market place of/for jazz in Hanseatic city of Bremen in North-Western Germany, with a total of 40 showcases and a concluding club night with more than 110 concerts, is impossible to cover adequately in one report. In this article you'll find a review mainly of the showcases of musicians/groups from Germany and some comments on the musicians/groups from this year's partner country Finland. It is not only the ...

Album Review

Jamie Saft - Steve Swallow - Bobby Previte: Loneliness Road

Read "Loneliness Road" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 11, 2017

So, the front man for the rock/pop group called The Stooges gets an invite to pitch in with a classic jazz piano trio. The Stooge would be Iggy Pop; the piano trio, Jamie Saft's, with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bobby Previte. That's quite an experiment, like something Frank Zappa might have tried. Pianist Jamie Saft has hitched a big part of his star to John Zorn, appearing, as a sideman or leader, on a score of Zorn's ...

Album Review

Nick Mazzarella and Tomeka Reid: Signaling

Read "Signaling" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
May 11, 2017

On this captivating, fully-improvised duo recording by alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and cellist Tomeka Reid, we find a superlative example of two leading-edge musicians who continue to draw vital inspiration from their forbears. Reid, a contributing member of the hugely influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), has previously paid tribute to some of the titans of that organization--figures such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Leroy Jenkins, Roscoe Mitchell, and Fred Anderson--with Artifacts, her superb 2015 trio release with ...

Album Review

Möbius Strip: Möbius Strip

Read "Möbius Strip" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
May 11, 2017

The progressive-meets-jazz nexus has traversed many incarnations since its inception in the heady mid-late 1960s with Soft Machine and Caravan being two classic exemplars of the Canterbury wing of Prog. All were characterised by their adherence to the rock element of prog, whilst embellishing it with jazzy overtones. This tack is at odds with bands populated by seasoned jazz musicians who migrated to a jazz rock idiom, including the likes of Nucleus and If. There were obviously variations in the ...

Album Review

Miles Okazaki: Trickster

Read "Trickster" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
May 11, 2017

There is nothing deceptive about guitarist Miles Okazaki's Trickster. It is simply an elegantly crafted work that engages with its narrative quality and its darkly hued, intriguing texture. On his fourth release as a leader the New York based Okazaki leads a quartet that consists of two of his bandmates from altoist Steve Coleman's Five Elements, bassist Anthony Tidd and drummer Sean Rickman. Dynamic pianist Craig Taborn rounds up the group. Okazaki and Taborn open the album on ...

New York @ Night

Charles Mingus 95th Birthday Celebration

by Peter Jurew
May 10, 2017

Mingus Big BandJazz StandardNew York, NY April 24, 2017 Saturday, April 22, was an unusually good day. It started, blessedly, when the president did not tweet out a series of early morning fabrications/accusations to befuddle the free world. And it could only get better from there: It was Earth Day! Scientists marked the 27th edition with a global March For Science, and tens of thousands of people made a full-throated defense of fact-based (as opposed ...