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

Curtis Brothers Quartet: Syzygy

by Paul Rauch
March 6, 2017

Jazz music is constantly in a state of flux. It feeds off of new ideas and innovation to keep the music vital, and growing. The mantle is passed from generation to generation, eschewing the infective glare of pop notoriety to maintain the artistic presence that moves the music forward, now seventeen years into a new century. In jazz today, there is a groundswell of young musicians who understand this perspective, forging new paths into the future, while grounded in the ...

Album Review

Marius Neset/London Sinfonietta: Snowmelt

Read "Snowmelt" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 6, 2017

That Marius Neset would eventually produce an extended orchestral-inspired work had been on the cards for some time. As early as his debut as leader, Suite for the Seven Mountains (Calibrated, 2008), the Norwegian saxophonist was incorporating strings into a contemporary jazz setting with a very personal stamp of authority. The extraordinary Birds (Edition Records, 2013) took the concept to exhilarating heights, with the addition of just a seven-piece chamber ensemble to his quintet producing complex, multi-layered sonic tapestries that ...

Bailey's Bundles

Organ Grinder Swing–Adrienne Fenemor, Little Charlie, Matthew Kaminski, Music Soup, King Louie & LaRhonda Steele

by C. Michael Bailey
March 5, 2017

There are certain things that evoke memory more than smells and sound. Unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes, just lit, make me think of my dad's office in the 1960s. Unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes, iced-cold Budweiser in the bottle, and organ jazz and blues, make me think of what dark, urban dives should smell, taste and sound like in the same period. Whether it is the southern chittlin' circuit or Mel's Colbalt Club in the upper 140s this is music for the ...

Album Review

The Mark Masters Ensemble: Blue Skylight

Read "Blue Skylight" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 5, 2017

Mark Masters has made his name in the banderleader/arranger arena fronting The Mark Master Ensemble, in various forms, with personal tributes to past masters: saxophonist Dewey Redman, Duke Ellington, trumpeter Clifford Brown, and present master, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, who played as the featured artist on One Day With Lee (Capri Records (2000). These are all top notch recordings, affording Masters the opportunity to craft his own beguiling interpretations of the artistries of recognized giants of jazz. With ...

Album Review

Gustavo Cortinas Snapshot: Esse

by Dan Bilawsky
March 5, 2017

Gustavo Cortinas' Esse is a place where two passions meet and merge. The drummer's fascination with philosophy served as grist for the compositional mill, inspiring and guiding his hands and mind to create this deep-thinking treatise. It's a fascinating musical realization, exploration, and distillation of the works of Hegel, Aristotle, Descartes, Plato, and other brilliant minds. Cortinas' quest for self-realization and self-actualization leads him down a variety of paths paved by various human dilemmas and universal truths. ...

Album Review

Dog Leg Dilemma: Not This Time

Read "Not This Time" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
March 5, 2017

A sonic cornucopia, Canadian electric jazz quartet Dog Leg Dilemma's debut Not This Timeunfolds like a deconstructed buffet. Bits and pieces of musical genres drop in and out of the album's seven compositions with John Woo freneticism, combining at seemingly random intervals as if someone swept the cutting room floor of a recording studio and then assembled the whole by pasting together the discards of everything from circus music, to German Om-pah bands, to reggae, to punk, to ambient soundscapes ...

Album Review

Josh Green & The Cyborg Orchestra: Telepathy & Bop

Read "Telepathy & Bop" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
March 5, 2017

Joshua Green is an award-winning composer who earns his living as Music Supervisor for ITV America, writing soundtracks for various reality television shows and commercials. On this CD he shows off his more creative side, putting together a set of large ensemble works that draws equally from jazz and contemporary classical music. Green mashes a grab bag of styles together in a quirky manner that recalls units like the Willem Breuker Kollektief. the ICP Orchestra and some of ...

Live Review

Jim Ridl Quartet Featuring Zach Brock at Collingswood Community Center

by Victor L. Schermer
March 4, 2017

Jim Ridl Quartet Featuring Zach Brock Collingswood Community Center Jazz Bridge Neighborhood Concert Collingswood, PA March 2, 2017 The Jazz Bridge is a meritorious organization that not only sponsors outstanding concerts in and around Philadelphia, but also offers support to musicians in distress. Their recently published Philadelphia Real Book contains sheet music for tunes composed by Philadelphia jazz legends as well as lesser known greats such as the memorable Father John D'Amico. Jazz Bridge ...

Album Review

Billy Childs: Rebirth

by Dan Bilawsky
March 4, 2017

It's been a while since we've heard pianist Billy Childs really dig in. While he certainly hasn't been dormant, reaching tremendous artistic heights in semi-recent times with a pair of highly refined chamber jazz explorations and a much-lauded tribute to Laura Nyro, the Childs of yore--the man that would throw down the gauntlet night after night while in the employ of legends like trumpet titan Freddie Hubbard or trombonist J.J. Johnson--hasn't been heard from in a while. Rebirth brings that ...

Album Review

Julia Hülsmann Trio: Sooner And Later

Read "Sooner And Later" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 4, 2017

After expanding to an instrumental quartet--a quintet, with the vocalist Theo Bleckmann included--pianist Julia Hülsmann returns to a trio formation on her fourth ECM release, Sooner And Later. Bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling have been part of that core through the previous three ECM outings, The End of a Summer (2008), Imprint (2011) and A Clear Midnight--Kurt Weill and America (2015) as well through Hülsmann's ACT Music years.Despite a long, productive career and considerable recognition in ...