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.

Extended Analysis

Ella Fitzgerald: 100 Songs For A Centennial

by Nenad Georgievski
April 29, 2017

Blessed with an instantly recognizable voice full of youthful exuberance and a three-octave range, noted for its pristine and pure tone, the legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald is, along with singer Billie Holiday, the most important singer of the 20th century. She has been called “The Undisputed Queen of Jazz Singing" or “The First Lady of Song" and these nicknames simply reflect the remarkable and inimitable vocal abilities she possessed. While her incredible technical abilities were pretty much evident, when ...

Book Review

Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs by Martin Torgoff

by S.G Provizer
April 29, 2017

Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs Martin Torgoff 448 pages ISBN: 0306824752 Da Capo Press 2017 The vilification and suppression of marijuana and narcotics in the U.S. was fueled in the 20th century by a campaign that whipped up fear of “the other"—Mexicans, Caribbean islanders, South Americans and African-Americans. Bop Apocalypse limns the history of this campaign and uses it to frame the story of how our own American “others"—(black and ...

Album Review

Lohninger and Fischbacher: Soul Garden

Read "Soul Garden" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 29, 2017

Austrian-American musicians Elisabeth Lohninger and Walter Fischbacher have been an integral part of the New York City jazz community for closing in on 20 years. In that time, the creative pair have contributed to the urban musical terrain by running their Lofish Recording Studios until 2015 and releasing a series of well-received recordings. These include: Beneath the Surface (Lofish, 2004); The Only Way Out is Up (Lofish, 2007); Songs of Love and Destruction (Lofish, 2010); Christmas in July (Lofish, 2011), ...

Album Review

Somi: Petite Afrique

Read "Petite Afrique" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 29, 2017

Somi's debut on the Okeh imprint--The Lagos Music Salon (Okeh, 2014)--pulled no punches. It tackled tough topics within an African framework, bringing hard truths to bear in soulful fashion. This follow-up is equally impactful, but it shifts focus stateside, eyeing the titular Harlem neighborhood that Somi calls home now. In addressing life along 116th Street, Somi opens eyes to the cultural ideals and struggles associated with the working class immigrants that reside there while also touching on ...

Album Review

Gregory Lewis: Organ Monk, The Breathe Suite

Read "Organ Monk, The Breathe Suite" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
April 29, 2017

Gregory Lewis has been fairly obsessed with the music of Thelonius Monk from a young age when he first started out performing Monk's repertoire on piano. So the adopted moniker Organ Monk seems appropriate. His move to the Hammond B3 was significant because the style he evinced is remarkably close to that of the late Larry Young rather than say that of, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff or Jimmy McGriff. The longest track at nearly twenty minutes, “The Chronicles ...

Bailey's Bundles

Duos – Patrice Williamson/Jon Wheatley; Bill Brovold/Jamie Saft; Randy Ingram/Drew Gress; Eraldo Bernocchi/Prakash Sontakke; Cathy Segal-Garcia

Read "Duos – Patrice Williamson/Jon Wheatley; Bill Brovold/Jamie Saft; Randy Ingram/Drew Gress; Eraldo Bernocchi/Prakash Sontakke; Cathy Segal-Garcia" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 28, 2017

The duet performance format is pretty naked. There is little place to hide for the two instrumentalists taking part in the delicate discourse that is making music. The following are five approaches trying to make the cut of creativity. Patrice Williamson & Jon Wheatley Comes Love: A Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass Self Produced 2017 Ella Fitzgerald has been the object of recent homage attention in Jane Monheit's Songbook Sessions: Ella ...

Album Review

Diego Barber: One Minute Later

Read "One Minute Later" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 28, 2017

Diego Barber's One Minute Later is something of a dance between certainty and dubiety, grounded in the guitarist-composer's convictions that the truth behind an improviser's feelings and musical fate relate directly to that which Federico García Lorca described in Poeta en Nueva York as a minute of contrition that comes with--or follows-- complete liberation. It's a concept that cuts to the core of Barber's being and the emotional state connected to many if not most of those who operate without ...

Profile

Martin Speake: The Thinking Fan's Saxophonist

by Duncan Heining
April 28, 2017

British alto saxophonist, Martin Speake, is one of the most adventurous and articulate musicians in a music peppered with creative artists. That he is not a household name--even within the proscribed and marginalised world of jazz--says more about the times than it does about Speake or his single-minded approach to his art. Speake combines in his music a purposeful curiosity with a love of the jazz tradition. He is equally capable of flights into free improvisation and into ...

Live Review

SFJAZZ Collective at the Music Box Supper Club

by C. Andrew Hovan
April 28, 2017

SF Jazz Collective Music Box Supper Club Cleveland, Ohio April 21, 2017 Since 2004, the ensemble of first-call musicians known as the SF Jazz Collective has represented the Bay Area in local concerts and throughout the world in a unique collaborative effort that since inception has given new life to the term repertory band. Each year the oeuvre of an iconic jazz master is given the SF treatment. This does not mean simply pulling up ...

Album Review

Niels Van Heertum: JK's Kamer +50.92509° +03.84800°

Read "JK's Kamer +50.92509° +03.84800°" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
April 28, 2017

Belgian brass player Niels Van Heertum is in no hurry on this album, and you shouldn't be, either. For his entry in the solo performance series by Granvat he improvised on euphonium, tuba, trumpet and electronics. It's a predominantly low, droning sound, similar to the recent group recording Felt like old folk with the Linus duo and Hardanger fiddle player Nils Økland. The quote in the album liners says it well: “On the other hand, if I don't think about ...