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

Alessandro Fadini: A Dark and Stormy Day

Read "A Dark and Stormy Day" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
March 1, 2017

Amongst the firehose-like blast of CDs and downloads aimed at me last summer was A Dark and Stormy Day, the debut album by Italian-born pianist and composer Alessandro Fadini. A new name to me, Fadini was educated to be a mathematician and is apparently self-taught on piano. Don't let that fool you, though. A protégé of Marc Copland, Fadini's chops as a player and composer are formidable. Fierce, even. As a soloist, he has an impulsive nature and his improvisations ...

Album Review

Yuri Storione: Schönbrunn

Read "Schönbrunn" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
March 1, 2017

When the title track of Schönbrunn, Basel-based pianist Yuri Storione's leader debut, awakens the ears, it's clear that a forest of future talent has already sprouted a few robust trees. One of three originals peppered throughout the set, it opens the album in repose, treading softly yet surely, and with a depth of calculation rarely seen in one so young. Storione has a muscular yet fluid touch, at which the keyboard goes boneless. Bassist Zhu Haiming, in addition to adding ...

Jazz Raconteurs

Larry Coryell: Free Spirit and Pioneer

by Steve Khan
February 28, 2017

Not too long ago, I learned that sadly, one of my great inspirations, guitarist Larry Coryell had passed away here in New York on February 19th, 2017. Somewhere around 1968, I remember being in college at U.C.L.A. and going several times to see Larry play as part of the visionary Gary Burton Quartet. Usually they played at Shelly's Manne-Hole. Perhaps the second time that I saw the group, they were recording their second album, Lofty Fake Anagram in the afternoons ...

From the Inside Out

Sometimes Jazz Takes Guts

by Chris M. Slawecki
February 28, 2017

Brownout Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath II Ubiquity Records 2016 Brownout bandleader and guitarist Adrian Quesada listened to a lot of different music, including blood-curdling heavy metal monsters Black Sabbath, while growing up in South Texas. Even while creating original music more reflective of their Mexican and American funk, blues and rock roots, he and his bandmates never lost their taste for Britain's Sabbath. Their first album of Sabbath covers, Brownout Presents Brown ...

Album Review

Al Muirhead: Northern Adventures

Read "Northern Adventures" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 28, 2017

When you've been a musician as long as Al Muirhead has, you not only earn many friends in the business, you also recognize who among them can play. For Northern Adventures, Muirhead's second album as leader of his own group, the eighty-one-year-old Canadian trumpeter assembled a who's who of the finest musicians his country has to offer and let them have a go, jam-session style. The result is an album whose fun quotient almost eclipses its virtuosity. “Our only plan," ...

Album Review

DKV Trio / The Thing: Collider

by John Sharpe
February 28, 2017

Recorded live at Krakow Jazz Autumn in 2014, Collider unites two of the hardest hitting contemporary outfits in an off the wall summit. It's notable that all the members of the DKV Trio and The Thing, except bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, have a history of working with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, the large improvising collective par excellence of the last 10 years. That experience means that they effortlessly rise to the challenge of combining two self sufficient units to ...

Album Review

Patti Cudd: Eos

by Karl Ackermann
February 28, 2017

Percussionist Patti Cudd performs as a soloist and a chamber musician and is a member of the ensemble Zeitgeist. She teaches music at the University of Wisconsin and the College of St. Benedict & St. John's University. She holds a PhD. In Musical Arts and a Fulbright Scholarship at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music. As a performer she has appeared on more than a dozen albums and premiered over one-hundred and fifty works as part of her ongoing vow ...

Album Review

Carlos Bica & Azul featuring Frank Möbus and Jim Black: More Than This

Read "More Than This" reviewed by Henning Bolte

by Henning Bolte
February 28, 2017

Azul, comprising Portuguese bassist Carlos Bica, guitarist Frank Möbus from Germany and drummer Jim Black from New York, is one of those trios around with a highly notable profile and characteristic signature. No doubt many dedicated music lovers will have their own history with this group that has been active now for more than 20 years. Azul's self-titled debut album dates from 1996 (EmarCy), featuring eminent Portuguese vocalist Maria João, and trombonist Ray Anderson. It was followed by Twist (1999, ...

Album Review

Greg Abate with the Tim Ray Trio: Road to Forever

Read "Road to Forever" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 27, 2017

Greg Abate's name isn't often broached when debating the merits of contemporary jazz saxophonists. It should be. While perhaps best known for his work on alto, the Rhode Island-based swinger proves on Road to Forever, recorded with his regular working trio, not only that his talents on soprano, tenor sax and flute are exemplary, but that he is equally adept as a composer / arranger. Each of the ten songs on Road to Forever was written and ...

Album Review

Greg Diamond: Avenida Graham

Read "Avenida Graham" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
February 27, 2017

Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist Greg Diamond issues his most culturally diverse musical mosaic on Avenida Graham reflecting a blend of jazz and the Latin sound that has been an influential part of his life. Being half Eastern European Jewish and half Colombian, Diamond long ago learned to appreciate the Latin sounds listening to the music of Hector Lavoe and Willie Colon as he immersed himself in the jazz idiom later on. Living near Graham Avenue (aka Avenue of Puerto Rico) and ...