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

Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson at JazzNights

by David A. Orthmann
April 18, 2017

Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson Hockaday/Jones Barn JazzNights Hopewell, NJ April 9, 2017 Two tacit, entwined propositions animated a performance by Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson at JazzNights, a long running concert series in the Princeton, NJ area curated by Mary Wisnovsky and Maitland Jones. The first is that it's possible for the compositions of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Billy Strayhorn, and Denzil Best to coexist in a ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Ronnie Foster: Two Headed Freap – 1973

by Marc Davis
April 18, 2017

The critics hated Blue Note in the 1970s, and that might be an understatement. Me, I'm kind of intrigued. Fans of good old hard bop, or even soul jazz, were largely left out in the cold. Blue Note in the '70s was a label struggling for its very existence, desperate to find a niche and snag some sales. All of which drove the critics and jazz purists nuts. Richard Cook, in his 2001 book Blue Note ...

Album Review

Shawn Baltazor: Lionsong

Read "Lionsong" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
April 18, 2017

It's difficult to resist the temptation to praise Shawn Baltazor's startling, diverse, incisive, multifaceted drumming at the expense of his equally impressive abilities as a composer and bandleader. Baltazor is one of the legions of young, gifted New York City area artists whose catholic tastes in music are transformed into idiosyncratic, open-ended methodologies, which ultimately engender sounds that stand on their own and resist being shoved into conventional categories.Throughout the twelve tracks of Lionsong, his stunning debut as ...

Album Review

Yarn/Wire Ensemble: Currents 0

Read "Currents 0" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 18, 2017

From their roots at Stony Brook University in 2005, the dual percussion/dual piano quartet Yarn/Wire has taken an uncommon approach to experimental music. In the case of Currents 0 the jazz roots are strong even as the interpretations are wide open. A continuing sequence of projects under the umbrella of 'Currents' has generated more than one dozen collective works, typically from like-minded experimentalists. This “prequel" release, however, indicated an initial interest in work of more established, if not conventional, jazz artists. ...

Album Review

Jim Casey: Miles Goes Wes

Read "Miles Goes Wes" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 18, 2017

Here's a straightforward album with a rather intriguing title --Miles Goes Wes, Texas-bred guitarist Jim Casey's unassuming homage to a pair of jazz icons, Messrs Davis and Montgomery. While the session lays heavy emphasis from end to end on funky backbeats and assertive percussion, Casey strives to nurture interest by varying the group size and instrumentation, traversing the gamut from quartet (Marcus Miller's “Splatch") to nonet (Davis' “So What" and Montgomery's “Angel") and using organist Bobby Sparks to apply splashes ...

Album Review

Nypan: Stereotomic

Read "Stereotomic" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
April 18, 2017

You have to give people a chance to miss you sometimes. Øyvind Nypan certainly seems to understand the idea of spacing visits apart in order to have something to bring back to the table each time. His second Losen Records outing took four years to follow on from Republique (Losen, 2013), and the entire backing cast is different, but there's something to be said for the pleasure of catching up (possibly for the first time). They may not have the ...

Album Review

Pink Floyd: Obfusc/ation

Read "Obfusc/ation" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
April 18, 2017

Lavishly designed and annotated packages on the order of Pink Floyd's The Early Years (Sony-Legacy, 2016) would be meaningless if the enclosures didn't so warrant the concepts. But the fact of the matter is content on the high order of Obfusc/ation 1972 demands treatment comparable to a precious books in an extensive library. The set, one of six now available separately after being originally released as part of a set, stands on its own terms as a piece of history ...

Album Review

Jakob Sorensen: Nomad

by Nick Davies
April 18, 2017

Scandinavian jazz has always found its strength in its musicians like Jakob Bro, who is a guitarist and has worked with such names as Bill Frisell but is also band leader in his own right; as well as double bassist Jasper Hoiby, who leads the critically acclaimed band Phronesis while being an in demand sideman. Young trumpeter Jakob Sorensen is continuing that tradition, not only as strong player but also as a good composer. The album Nomad is his second ...

Multiple Reviews

Anat Cohen's Brazilian Bonanza: Outra Coisa and Rosa Dos Ventos

by Dan Bilawsky
April 17, 2017

It's not exactly a secret that Anat Cohen is smitten with the music of Brazil. Her clarinet is a key voice on the Choro Ensemble's albums, she's peppered her own dates with the work of Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque, Luiz Bonfa, and Hermeto Pascoal, and she made the rounds in New York clubs--and on a pair of tracks from Luminosa (Anzic Records, 2015)--with a feisty crew dubbed Choro Aventuroso. She's an Israeli by birth and a New Yorker by address, ...

Album Review

Izabella Effenberg Trio: IZA

by Ian Patterson
April 17, 2017

The vibraphone seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance of late, with any number of outstanding exponents of the instrument popping up in all corners of the world. Izabella Effenberg may be a new name for many, but the Polish vibraphonist has already collaborated with the likes of Tony Lakatos, Magnus Ostrom, Nippy Noya and Nicole Johanntgen. Based on Iza--her second outing as leader, it mightn't be long before Effenberg becomes better known internationally, for there's much to admire ...