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

Erroll Garner: Ready Take One

Read "Ready Take One" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 13, 2017

Erroll Garner (1923-1977) played the piano like all was well with the world, with a flashy and elegant panache. And sometimes that's just what we need. With a swinging style that bubbled up from the stride and ragtime traditions, and nudged into the bop arena, Garner's was an ebullient sound--virtuosic and embellished with ornamental phrasings and splashes of sparkling colors. So, discovery of new Garner music, of the highest quality, is reason to celebrate. Ready Take ...

Album Review

Duke Pearson: WAHOO!

by Greg Simmons
February 13, 2017

Duke Pearson occupied an unusual position within Blue Note Record's roster of artists. In addition to recording as both leader and sideman he also served as the label's A&R man, following in the footsteps of Ike Quebec. Pearson also served as the arranger on many albums, including sessions--Stanley Turrentine's Rough 'n' Tumble, comes to mind--where other pianists took over the keys. Pearson's own WAHOO! carries an exuberant title for what turns out to be a pretty laid back ...

Album Review

Andrew Vogt: For Free

Read "For Free" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
February 13, 2017

Bassist Andrew Vogt's engaging EP, the entirely improvised For Free, serves as a teaser for two of his upcoming 2017 recordings. The tracks on For Free are from the same sessions that resulted in the above mentioned The AV Club and Awakening, but they are not included on either of them. The spontaneously created music is not, like many other collective blowing sessions, filled with unbridled energy and dissonance. It is indeed quite accessible with overlapping hypnotic refrains ...

Album Review

Jungle Fire: Jambú

by Joe Gatto
February 13, 2017

Ever since they released their debut, Tropicoso, Jungle Fire has left me hungry for more of their sabroso Latin Funk. It was the Funkish best album of 2014, and now one of my go-to favorite records. Finally, they've released the follow up on Nacional Records...and it's just as good as the first one! Jambú continues with caliente Latin rhythms, and Jungle Fire also shows off scorching guitar playing, and blistering brass throughout--in addition to their incendiary percussion storm. ...

Live Review

Kronos Festival 2017

by Harry S. Pariser
February 12, 2017

Kronos Quartet SFJAZZ Kronos Festival 2017 San Francisco, CA February 4-6, 2017 “I'd started playing string quartets when I was 12, and one day when I was 14, I was gazing at a map of the world and suddenly realized that all the quartet music I'd ever heard--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert--came from a single city: Vienna. A simple question came to me: 'What did music from other cities and countries sound like?' A door ...

Album Review

Niculin Janett Quartet (feat. Rich Perry): No Parking Any Time

Read "No Parking Any Time" reviewed by Matthew Aquiline

by Matthew Aquiline
February 12, 2017

Zurich-based alto saxophonist and composer Niculin Janett, in the naming of his quartet's debut album, encapsulated the essence of his music with an otherwise vexatious phrase that regularly victimizes most city dwellers: No Parking Any Time. Although irritating for motorists, an ordinance prohibiting parking in terms of music, especially jazz, would seemingly stimulate perpetual movement and growth. Uniting under this theme of motion, Janett's quartet slices the brake lines and speeds ahead, depositing an inspired set of meandering music along ...

Album Review

Roger Garfitt, Nikki Iles, John Williams Octet: In All My Holy Mountain

Read "In All My Holy Mountain" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
February 12, 2017

The amalgamation of poetry with jazz is not a new concept. Jack Kerouac was reading his words accompanied by Steve Allen on piano on the album Poetry For The Beat Generation way back in 1959 and over the water in 1963 The Michael Garrick Trio with Joe Harriott and Shake Keane released the EP Blues For The Lonely which featured Jeremy Robson reciting his poems over Garrick's music. There were even Poetry and Jazz concerts in the UK during the ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii: Invisible Hand

Read "Invisible Hand" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 12, 2017

In Satoko Fujii's extensive discography--about eighty releases, including recordings by several big bands and a variety a small combo groups--solo piano outings are scarce. There was Sketches (NatSat Records, 2004); and Gen Himmel (Libra Records, 2013), and not much else. Until now, with a Invisible Hand, a double CD set, recorded live at the jazz club Cortez, in Mito, Japan. Set 1 (disc 1), features Fujii's explorations in free improvisation. In contrast to her ensemble music--often explosive and ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii: Invisible Hand

Read "Invisible Hand" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
February 12, 2017

Pianist and composer Satoko Fujii, otherwise known by the cognoscenti as “the Ellington of free jazz" and “musical citizen of the world," has produced an enormous body of work as a leader, co-leader or sideman that now numbers around 80 CDs in many configurations ranging from solo to big band. After spending even a short time listening to her oeuvre, her style, as varied as it is over the different formats and through the years, becomes immediately recognizable as “Fujii." ...

Extended Analysis

Chicago II (Steven Wilson Remix)

by John Kelman
February 12, 2017

It's rare that an opportunity presents itself to directly compare a high resolution remaster with a high resolution remix, but with last year's Quadio (Rhino) box set containing Blu Ray Audio versions (at 24-bit/192KHz) of its first nine studio recordings (including, curiously, a completely superfluous, early Greatest Hits package) and the recent, single-disc reissue of Chicago II, featuring a brand new stereo mix by remix go-to-guy, Porcupine Tree founder and now-successful solo artist Steven Wilson, there's a chance to do ...