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.

Book Review

The Blues: Why It Still Hurts So Good

by Doug Collette
February 20, 2017

The Blues: Why It Still Hurts So Good Marie Trout 360 Pages ISBN: #099799830X Yakkabiz Publishers 2017 Although the therapeutic value of music has not been wholly certified in scientific terms, it is nevertheless an accepted premise in our culture, one that Marie Trout explores with as much passion as scholarship in her book The Blues: Why It Still Hurts So Good. By homing in on a specific genre as her focal ...

Interview

Tim Bowness: Ghost Lights and Life Sentences

by John Kelman
February 19, 2017

As much as it's something most would prefer to avoid, when a pair of musicians share a lengthy musical history together it's difficult not to compare and contrast the work they do when apart. Beyond contributing added clarity to their individual work, it helps to articulate what each of them bring to the table when they're collaborating. Singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Tim Bowness may have yet to achieve the same degree of commercial success that his partner in the currently ...

Album Review

Trouble Kaze: June

by Karl Ackermann
February 19, 2017

Wherever pianist Satoko Fujii and her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura ply their trade, the unusual follows. Without fail, both--individually and together--have been the purveyors of a collective catalog that has never failed to astound. One of their many outlets has been the free-improvisational group Kaze with drummer Peter Orins and trumpeter Christian Pruvost. While Fujii and Tamura are the drawing card names, Orins--a fine composer in his own right--was the original initiator of the quartet. This variation--Trouble Kaze--was again ...

Album Review

The Nu Band: The Final Concert

Read "The Final Concert" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
February 19, 2017

The title refers to trumpeter Roy Campbell's last appearance with the outfit he founded with drummer Lou Grassi twelve years before. Campbell died in 2014 at the age of 61, 21 months after this March 2012 live date from Bad Hofgastein, Austria at the conclusion of a European tour. This limited edition LP constitutes the seventh entry in the band's discography and affirms their credentials at the pinnacle of the free-bop game. Both Campbell and reedman Mark ...

Album Review

Rodrigo Amado's Motion Trio: Desire & Freedom

Read "Desire & Freedom" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 19, 2017

Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's mark of distinction is generally centered on his assertive approaches to experimentation within numerous offshoots and slants of the jazz vernacular. He's become a major player on the Euro progressive jazz scene amid sessions with American free-thinking acolytes, trombonist Jeb Bishop, bassist John Hebert, trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez and many others of note. Here, Amado performs with his fellow countrymen for a blossoming asymmetrical affair, firmly rooted in a spirited free-form jaunt, teeming with buoyant flows and ...

Album Review

Billie Davies: On Hollywood Boulevard

Read "On Hollywood Boulevard" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
February 19, 2017

There could not be much more of a musical, emotional or just vibe difference than that between drummer Billie Davies' latest album On Hollywood Boulevard and her previous project, Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon. However, although they inhabit completely different worlds, both projects had a very long gestation and originate in Davies' reactions to specific events in her life, the latter to her interaction with painter Serge Vandercam, while the former to living in ...

Extended Analysis

Tim Bowness: Lost in the Ghostlight

by John Kelman
February 19, 2017

It's a somewhat hidden truth that a sizeable percentage of any musician's fan base believes that the music their favorite artists make is a direct reflection of their tastes. While an artist's music ought, indeed, be a reflection of what moves them, it's another truth that, more often than not, their listening habits run much farther afield. One way to develop a more thorough appreciation for an artist's tastes, touchstones and influences is to look at their entire ...

Live Review

Richie Buckley With The Scott Flanigan Trio @ The Sunflower, Belfast

by Ian Patterson
February 19, 2017

Richie Buckley With The Scott Flanigan Trio The Sunflower Belfast, N. Ireland February 8, 2017 “We have a bit of a surprise for you for you," The M.C. and promoter David Gould told the audience who had packed the upstairs bar of The Sunflower, in anticipation of Irish saxophone legend Richie Buckley's gig. It sounded promising. In a glittering career, Buckley has played/recorded with Freddie Hubbard, Louis Stewart, Van Morrison, Jon Hendricks, Mary Coughlan, Bob ...

Film Review

I Am Not Your Negro: History Revisited through a Personal Lens

by Victor L. Schermer
February 18, 2017

I Am Not Your Negro Narrator: Samuel L. Jackson Director: Raoul Peck Distributor: Velvet Films This electrifying docu-drama invoking the eloquent words and profound personal experience of the great writer James Baldwin brings to life the stormy and transformational period of the Civil Rights movement in a way that is far more vivid than the images many saw on their small TV screens in the 1960s. The images, sound track, Baldwin's ...

Album Review

Joel LaRue Smith: The Motorman's Son

Read "The Motorman's Son" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 18, 2017

The impact that parents can have on their children is absolutely incalculable. They're responsible for rearing and guiding, instilling and imprinting a series of attitudes and virtues on what essentially amounts to a human blank slate. Their acts inspire the actions and beliefs that come to largely define their progeny. That's an idea that pianist Joel LaRue Smith clearly understands and embraces with The Motorman's Son. Smith's parents left New Orleans in the '40s, joining The Great ...