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

Popa Chubby: The Catfish

Read "The Catfish" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
February 15, 2017

Popa Chubby sees life like this: “Everything is breaking down. The lines are being redefined." With his shaven head and tattooed arms, Chubby--born Ted Horowitz in New York City--may seem an unlikely commentator on the way the world is going, still less someone warranting inclusion on a jazz website. But right away, as he struts his considerable stuff, you realize that appearances deceive, that this is someone way out of the ordinary. Although he very definitely came ...

Album Review

Weather Report: Heavy Weather

Read "Heavy Weather" reviewed by Sacha O'Grady

by Sacha O'Grady
February 15, 2017

Weather Report were one of the earliest jazz fusion groups to emerge at the beginning of the '70s. They were rare in that, like Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, they didn't have a guitarist to light the fire and excite the audience as was the case with Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever; instead, they relied, in addition to pure instrumental virtuosity, upon intelligent compositions. The band's founding members were none other than Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, two exceptional musicians who ...

Interview

Al Jarreau holds forth on the art of singing, the decline of radio and the glory of the great American songbook

by Jim Trageser
February 14, 2017

Note: This interview with Al Jarreau was originally published in 2004 on Turbula.net. Any doubts that Al Jarreau was born to sing are quickly dispensed with by a simple conversation with the man--he is incapable of holding forth on the topic of music without dipping into the subject at hand. Not ten minutes into a phone interview, Jarreau is scatting through a passage from a classic bop song of the 1960s, pointing out how the chord ...

New York @ Night

Monty Alexander: Looking Back

by Peter Jurew
February 14, 2017

Monty AlexanderJazz Standard New York, NYFebruary 1, 2017 A lot has changed since I started covering the New York beat for All About Jazz in mid-2016. In that time, we have witnessed epic changes in our city, our country, our world--changes that are already affecting our culture, including and perhaps especially jazz and, in the broader context, African-American life. How can music journalists remain unaffected? Since the presidential election in November, rather than experiencing ...

Album Review

Carol Morgan Quartet: Carol Morgan Quartet - Post Cool Vol. 1 The Night Shift

Read "Carol Morgan Quartet - Post Cool Vol. 1 The Night Shift" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 14, 2017

New York City-based trumpet player--composer Carol Morgan...wait a minute. This introduction would be all well and good...but, Carol Morgan did not originally come from New York City...She came from...Texas. Morgan might be considered the Godmother of “Houston Jazz Mafia," a group of young (and not so young) musicians that includes multi-instrumentalists Henry Darragh and Alisha Pattillo, pianists Bob Henschen, Joe LoCascio, and Paul English, singers Melissa Darragh, Tianna Hall, Jacqui Sutton, Raquel Cepeda, and Danielle Reich, guitarists Paul Chester, Mike ...

Album Review

Enoch Smith Jr.: The Quest: Live at the A.P.C.

Read "The Quest: Live at the A.P.C." reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
February 14, 2017

The Church has long been a cornerstone of African-American cultural identity, as well as musical inspiration. Gospel is the third leg of African-American music, coming of age alongside jazz and blues in the early part of the 20th Century. Pianist Enoch Smith Jr. has managed to keep feet in two of those worlds. As music director at Allentown Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania, Smith works with the house band for each week's praise selections. But he's also ...

Album Review

Dmitry Baevsky: The Day After

Read "The Day After" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
February 14, 2017

Imagine a group that, in large measure, references the bebop revolution of nearly seventy-five years ago, yet steers clear of the pitfalls of nostalgia, hero worship, and blatant imitation, and ultimately wins the day with an adroit blend of teamwork and compelling individual voices. For those who believe that nothing good can come from contemporary players choosing to work an all-too-familiar vein of the jazz tradition, I suggest a visit with Dmitry Baevsky's band. Over the past several years, the ...

Album Review

Francois Couturier / Tarkovsky Quartet: Nuit Blanche

Read "Nuit Blanche" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
February 14, 2017

Following their sublime duo outing, Moderato Cantabile (ECM, 2014), cellist Anja Lechner and François Couturier reunite in the pianist's quartet responsible for two-thirds of a recorded trilogy for ECM Records, all devoted to Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, whose name would ultimately become synonymous with the group: Tarkovsky Quartet. Bookending Couturier's second album of the trilogy, 2010's solo piano session Un jour si blanc, 2006's Nostalghia--Songs for Tarkovsky and 2011's Tarkovsky Quartet established Couturier's quartet--also featuring soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc ...

My Blue Note Obsession

The Best of Lou Donaldson, Volume 1 – 1957-1967

by Marc Davis
February 13, 2017

I'm not a huge fan of Best Of albums. Artists make albums of music--some with themes, some without--and you go with it. One album generally equals one mood, so why mix them up? But then... Lou Donaldson is an alto saxophonist who spent virtually his entire career at one label: Blue Note. Bigger names have recorded on Blue Note--Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins--but none so extensively, from the 1950s to '70s. Trouble is, ...

Bailey's Bundles

Female Vocals 2017 II – Cheryl Fisher, Natalia M. King, Beata Pater, Ellen Andersson, Cecilia Persson

by C. Michael Bailey
February 13, 2017

The ladies just keep on coming... Cheryl Fisher Quietly There OA2 Records 2016 Vocalist Cheryl Fisher was once called, “Canada's best-kept secret." After five well-received recordings, Fisher weighs in with her sixth release, Quietly There on the Origin Arts AO2 imprint, using what could be called “the Origin Arts House Band," including guitarist John Stowell, bassist Jeff Johnson, and drummer John Bishop. Now she may be the poorest ...