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

Mark Whitfield: Grace

by Troy Dostert
April 8, 2017

Since his first album as a leader in 1990, guitarist Mark Whitfield has been simultaneously pulled in two directions. Early on, many dubbed him the heir-apparent to George Benson, and on his first several records he offered plenty of evidence to support this assessment with his smooth, laid-back sound and the pop/R&B influences that he readily embraced. Yet at the same time, it was also abundantly clear that Whitfield possessed some terrific jazz chops, and the personnel on some of ...

Album Review

The Greg Kihn Band: Rekihndled

Read "Rekihndled" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
April 8, 2017

With just a glance at the cover of The Greg Kihn Band's first album in twenty years, Rekihndled, the band leader and namesake hardly looks like he's a day older in his de rigeur outfit of the eighties, white shirt with a vest and a carefully-loosened necktie. But as evidenced with the gleeful stomp of “The Life I Got," it's much more important that Kihn's aged cheerfully (as well as gracefully) over the years. In part, because he ...

Genius Guide to Jazz

Cloudland Re-Revisited: Think of One

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
April 7, 2017

In the nearly sixteen years I've been at my post as resident Genius here at AAJ, the question has often come up as to how I came to be the Dean of American Jazz Humorists®. As most of you know, I was born in Kentucky to West Virginia hillbillies and raised in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Clifton Forge, my hometown, was not known as a hotbed for Our Music; nor was the nearest “city" of Roanoke, where the ...

Album Review

Marilyn Scott: Standard Blue

Read "Standard Blue" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 7, 2017

With an album title like this, some may be expecting boilerplate jazz that hews closely to some sort of straight-and-narrow musical orthodoxy. That, however, isn't what you get from vocalist Marilyn Scott. While it's true that Standard Blue is filled with familiar titles, these performances never sound platitudinous. Scott paints standards with a cool-headed attitude, exhibiting a strong appreciation for dialed- down fusion, straight ahead sounds, semi-smooth aesthetics, blues feeling, and, most importantly, hybridization. From the first ...

Album Review

Georgia Mancio and Alan Broadbent: Songbook

Read "Songbook" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
April 7, 2017

Twenty years ago Georgia Mancio, the London-based singer and songwriter, began listening to pianist Alan Broadbent's recordings with Irene Kral. In 2013 the pair began working together as a duo after Mancio sent Broadbent a message “on a whim." In 2015 and 2016 they recorded together and Songbook is the result: a dozen original compositions--music by Broadbent, lyrics by Mancio--that signal an exciting and sophisticated new partnership.The album's charms are apparent from the opening bars of the delicate ...

Album Review

Matt Holman: The Tenth Muse

Read "The Tenth Muse" reviewed by Matthew Aquiline

by Matthew Aquiline
April 7, 2017

New York City-based trumpeter and composer Matt Holman cut his teeth performing and recording with distinguished musicians such as Fred Hersch, John Hollenbeck, and Darcy James Argue's Secret Society before displaying his personal aesthetic of atmospheric chamber jazz with his debut album When Flooded in 2013. More recently, Holman found inspiration scouring the annals of history, extracting celebrated relics potent and stimulating enough to constitute the groundwork of his sophomore follow-up--2,500- year-old-plus relics to be precise. “What kind ...

Album Review

Chieko Honda: Aquarelle

Read "Aquarelle" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
April 7, 2017

Japanese born Chieko Honda a jazz singer who now lives in New York City, is devoted to, and passionate about samba and Bossa nova music. Honda's voice is full, with many tangible qualities. She sings in a way that is charming and elegant in style. Aquarelle marks the first full-length album for Honda as a leader, composer, and lyricist. A Brazilian Samba vocal album that highlights her voice as a vehicle to convey beautiful melodies and authentic Latin rhythms. Containing ...

Album Review

Colin Trusedell Trio: Without All the Chatter

Read "Without All the Chatter" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 7, 2017

The members of the Colin Trusedell Trio are not strangers. Quite to the contrary, they are well known to one another and have been. They all served in the United States Air Force together. Pianist Shawn Hanlon appears on every Trusedell project, including, Quartet of Jazz Death (Self Produced, 2014), It's All About the Hustle, and the uniformly excellent Some of my Best Friends are... Divas (Self Produced, 2013). This latter release features vocalist Krista Joyce (along with Julie Bradley ...

Interview

Lew Tabackin: A Life in Jazz

by Rob Rosenblum
April 6, 2017

Tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin is known as a forceful and dynamic soloist, both in small group and big band settings. His views of the jazz music scene, both past and present, are equally compelling. Recently, I had the opportunity to spend several hours with Mr. Tabackin for this interview. Rather than insert myself into the conversation, I just let the tape roll, threw in a few topics and let the master jazz man expound on them ...

Album Review

Patrice Williamson + Jon Wheatley: Comes Love - A Tribute To Ella Fitzgerald And Joe Pass

Read "Comes Love - A Tribute To Ella Fitzgerald And Joe Pass" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 6, 2017

Centennial celebrations abound in 2017. In this year of years we fête many jazz greats delivered unto us one century ago--Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, Mongo Santamaria, Thelonious Monk, and Tadd Dameron, to cite just a handful. That list of giants forever changed the face of this music, but it's a list that's noticeably incomplete without the inclusion of one Ella Fitzgerald. “The First Lady of Song," as she came to be known, raised the bar considerably and redefined the very ...