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.

Live Review

Anat Cohen at Davidson College

by Perry Tannenbaum
April 27, 2017

Anat Cohen/Davidson College Jazz Ensemble & Jazz Combo Davidson College / Duke Family Performance HallDavidson, NC April 21, 2017 We've known for a long time that Anat Cohen can electrify audiences whenever she picks up her clarinet and plays. After her recent residency at Davidson College, we can now proclaim that she has a similar effect on jazz students—and faculty. At the public concert that concluded the residency, Professor Bill Lawing, after leading the Davidson ...

Album Review

Buffalo Jazz Octet: PausaLive

Read "PausaLive" reviewed by Patrick Keyes

by Patrick Keyes
April 27, 2017

The Buffalo Jazz Octet, a group of veteran musicians culled from the strong jazz community in Buffalo, NY, offers a boldly realized collective voice that sings of a wide-open future on PausaLive. PausaLive both reinforces and obliterates notions of jazz as a convenient label. The writing is beguiling, the musicians contribute top-notch inside and outside playing amid an assertive group mindset, and the listener is pulled into an aural adventure of striking dynamic variances. This is an extremely ...

Catching Up With

Ernest Stuart: One Step Ahead

by Geno Thackara
April 26, 2017

It ain't exactly Rome, and it's not all roads, but many of them (especially in the jazz world) certainly seem to lead to Philadelphia. It's unavoidable for a city where the music has such deep roots (birthplace of Billie Holiday, home of John Coltrane, hangout of Dizzy Gillespie and Sun Ra among countless others), and it's certainly been the case for the omnivorously eclectic trombonist Ernest Stuart. The Temple graduate has also shuffled between New York and Indiana during his ...

Inside AAJ

All About Jazz Website Tips: 2017

by Michael Ricci
April 26, 2017

I think it's safe to say that All About Jazz (which includes Jazz Near You) far exceeds any reader's expectations when they first visit the website. We regularly introduce new sections, new features, and we keep our design fresh with the goal of constantly raising the bar we set 22 years ago. As a result, we have much to offer our fund drive supporters, our members, our advertisers, and our readers. As we scale our platform to offer more features ...

Album Review

Wayne Shorter: Adam's Apple

Read "Adam's Apple" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
April 26, 2017

In all the perpetual hubbub surrounding Blue Note records from the 1950s--the aggressive opinions and stratospheric prices--it's sometime easy to forget that the label released really high quality music all the way through the 1960s, and some of the recordings from the later years of the decade are every bit as worthy of attention as the legendary 1500 series dates. Case in point: Wayne Shorter's Adam's Apple, a quartet date recorded in 1966 when Shorter was a mainstay ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds & the Jeff Hamilton Trio: Dreamsville

Read "Dreamsville" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 26, 2017

Even though the substance and framework of jazz are constantly changing and evolving, the music's bedrock--marked by spontaneity and free-wheeling swing--remains essentially unimpaired and secure. And when it comes to swinging, it's hard to eclipse the irrepressible pulse of the tenor saxophone, an instrument whose long and enduring ties to jazz and swing have been epitomized by such masters as Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: April

by Jerome Wilson
April 26, 2017

On April 16, 2014, the ferry Sewol capsized and sank in South Korea killing more than 300 passengers. In Boston that tragedy inspired Berklee College of Music student and Korean native Jihye Lee to put together the powerful music heard on this CD. Lee has assembled a 20-piece ensemble of Boston area musicians to play music from the branch of orchestral jazz that comes out of Gil Evans, Bob Brookmeyer and Maria Schneider, music that ranges from somber to emotional ...

Album Review

Monica Chapman: Small World

Read "Small World" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 26, 2017

Romanian-born, Toronto-based vocalist Monica Chapman delivers Small World, her third album since 2013, in a concept recording of songs from some of her favorite movies such as Gypsy, Band Wagon, Goldfinger, and Sweet Charity just to name a few. A classically-trained singer who performed musical theatre, Chapman had always had a passion for movies but was encouraged late in life to apply her vocal talents in the jazz realm which she has since done remarkable well. Making the transition from ...

Album Review

Low Society: High Time

Read "High Time" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 26, 2017

When one listens to a whole lot of music, it becomes easy to be lulled into the friendly confines of being satisfied with good without ever hearing great. That is, until something exceptional comes along and then it is experienced as an epiphany. So were my feelings hearing Low Society's 2014 release You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (Ice House Records). That was my introduction to brand of American blues, country and soul, that, while contemporary, is completely authentic ...

Live Review

Kneebody at Johnny Brenda's

by Mike Jacobs
April 25, 2017

Kneebody Johnny Brenda's Philadelphia PA April 7, 2017 Generally when a band announces that a group member is waylaid and can't make the gig, those in the audience start to resign themselves to an evening of subconscious apologetics--("It's not the same but pretty good for a guy subbing on short notice." or “They're doing pretty well for being a man down.") But this is Kneebody... So when saxophonist Ben Wendel told ...