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

Yoko Miwa Trio: Pathways

Read "Pathways" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 30, 2017

It sounds like Boston-based pianist Yoko Miwa gathered her trio mates--bassist Will Slater and drummer Scott Goulding--outside the studio door and said: “Let's have some fun!" The result is Pathways, her seventh release as a leader, in a discography that includes Fadeless Flower (Self Produced, 2004), Canopy Of Stars (Self Produced, 2007, and Live At Sculler's Jazz Club (Self Produced, 2011). If ever there was a studio recording with the freshness and vitality of a live set, this ...

Film Review

Fathom Events Presents "The Grateful Dead Movie"

by Doug Collette
April 30, 2017

Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead Movie Fathom Events 2017 2017's Grateful Dead “Meet-Up at the Movies" was comprised of a number of disparate elements, the amalgamation of which, in a fashion typical of this iconic band, carried a logic all its own. This multi-leveled presentation by Fathom Events may or may not have been lost on the nearly-capacity audience in South Burlington, Vermont's Palace 9 Theater--there was, after all, scant recognition of the significance of ...

Album Review

Niogi: Landing

Read "Landing" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
April 30, 2017

Israeli group Niogi describes themselves as an “instrumental band," leaving the question of musical genre open. But their sound is firmly placed in the ECM contemporary jazz world: “Jan's Balloon" opens with a sound like whistling from Omri Abramov's EWI (electronic wind instrument), playing a tuneful theme reminiscent of the Americana of the Pat Metheny Group. On the other hand, “Mercury Enters Virgo" strongly recalls the classic British progressive rock group Genesis to me, even though I can't place the ...

Album Review

Jeannie Tanner: Words And Music

Read "Words And Music" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
April 30, 2017

Chicago-based Composer, vocalist and trumpeter Jeannie Tanner has produced quite an album. Not just one but two CDs spanning nineteen songs all of which were entirely composed by Tanner, hence the title of the record. No fewer than twelve guest vocalists were enlisted for this project some of whom doubled on an instrument such as Elaine Dame, who plays exquisite flute and also sang on the breezy “Come Along For The Ride" and the wry-sounding “Red." Another instrumentalist who sings ...

Album Review

Tohpati Bertiga: Faces

by Glenn Astarita
April 30, 2017

Indonesian guitar virtuoso Tohpati (SimakDialog) and his fellow countrymen blaze a jazz rock power trio path of wonderment, following up the band's previous release, Riot (Moonjune, 2013) and the guitarist's studio date with American jazz fusion superstars, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Chad Wackerman on Tribal Dance (Moonjune, 2014). The program is jam-packed with scathing licks, super-tight grooves and memorably melodic primary themes amid a host of split-second detours and precision-oriented unison runs. The trio gels to a ...

Album Review

Roberto Bonati: Nor Sea, nor Land, nor Salty Waves

Read "Nor Sea, nor Land, nor Salty Waves" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
April 30, 2017

Italian composer and bassist is a master of the musical journey. Rêve de Jongleur (2000) with the ParmaFrontiere Orchestra took the listener along the pilgrim routes of medieval Europe that carried the song of the troubadour, as well as the faithful and goods to trade. A Silvery Silence--fragments from Moby Dick (2006) followed the whalers of 19th century Nantucket on their cruel hunt for the creature that would prove Ahab's nemesis. Now with the Bjergstad Jazz Ensemble, Bonati explores the ...

432

Live Review

Shirlee Temper At The Empress Theatre

by Walter Atkins
April 30, 2017

Shirlee Temper Empress Theatre Obtainium Works' Fifth Anniversary Party Vallejo CA April 14,2017 San Francisco Bay Area vocalist Shirlee Temper and her lethal band tore it up for Obtainium Works' Fifth Anniversary Party, held at the Empress Theatre Friday in Vallejo CA. The self proclaimed Queen of Rock & Flow and Steampunk fashionista, gave her loyal fans a high- intensity show of incredible music and energy. Her band of musical assassins included: background vocalist ...

Album Review

Rich Halley/Carson Halley: The Wild

Read "The Wild" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
April 29, 2017

Saxophonist Rich Halley has released twenty recordings as a leader, many of them with his son Carson Halley on drums. The two have been playing as a duo for almost twenty years, working on totally improvised music together. Halley's ensemble approach is characterized by a seamless blend of composition and improvisation, but here the pair spontaneously improvised the entire set, documenting the approach they have worked on for so long. From the start that lifetime of rapport is ...

Album Review

Van Morrison: The Authorized Bang Collection

Read "The Authorized Bang Collection" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
April 29, 2017

The casual listener who marvels at the apparent distance Van Morrison covered between “Brown Eyed Girl" and the moody mystical atmosphere of the next year's Astral Weeks (Warner Bros., 1968) will no doubt be astounded to hear The Authorized Bang Collection. As much guidance as the young 'Belfast Cowboy' was absorbing from mentorand label founder Bert Berns, he was nevertheless also plumbing the depths of his soul, not to mention the circumstances in which he found himself in this early ...

Book Review

Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium by John Corbett

by Mark Sullivan
April 29, 2017

Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium John Corbett 264 Pages ISBN: #0822363666 Duke University Press Books 2017 John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. For twelve years--from 2000 to 2012--he wrote a column titled “Vinyl Freak" for Downbeat magazine, and those collected columns form the backbone of this book. Corbett wrote about out of print LPs in his extensive collection: ranging from the extremely obscure (and in a ...