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

Sugar Ray & The Bluetones: Seeing Is Believing

Read "Seeing Is Believing" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
December 27, 2016

Possessed of a rich timber on both vocals and harmonica, a keen ear for melody, and an unerring feel for the blues, New England's Sugar Ray Norcia had the grand career misfortune to begin breaking nationally just before the pop punk band Sugar Ray came on the scene and sowed confusion among music fans. But Norcia has persevered, carving out a niche for himself on the blues circuit--festivals and cruises and night after night in clubs.

Album Review

Claire Daly: 2468 West Grand Boulevard

Read "2468 West Grand Boulevard" reviewed by Rob Rosenblum

by Rob Rosenblum
December 27, 2016

Full disclosure--I am far from an expert on Motown music, having pretty much lived in a jazz bubble. And this album is a salute to some of Detroit's legends including The Jackson Five, The Four Tops, The Temptations and especially Smokey Robinson, who is identified with five of the eleven songs here. Claire Daly is a welcome addition to the very small coterie of baritone saxophone specialists. While she doubles occasionally on flute, it is with the big ...

Bailey's Bundles

Notable and Nearly Missed 2016

by C. Michael Bailey
December 26, 2016

It is impossible, even for John Kelman, Mark Corroto, and Dan Bilawsky, to cover all the music worthy of discussion in a given year. At least that is my line and I am sticking to it as I pen my “Notable and Nearly Missed 2016" column. Rick Gallagher--Christmas Tidings: A Collection of Jazz Christmas Carols (RiDGeTONE Records, 2016). Working backwards, Pittsburgh's Rick Gallagher's holiday trio presentation, Christmas Tidings offers many seasonal delights presented squarely in ...

Album Review

Van der Graaf Generator: Do Not Disturb

Read "Do Not Disturb" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 26, 2016

You can't have a serious conversation about the infancy of progressive rock without citing Van der Graff Generator (VdGG) as one of the genre's driving forces amid its influence back in the '70s and beyond. They may not have been as widely known or sold as many records as King Crimson, Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but VdGG's singular imprint stands tall amongst the upper echelon of bands that sparked a re-imagination of the tried and true, namely conventional ...

Album Review

Dewa Budjana: Zentuary

by John Kelman
December 25, 2016

In retrospect, all paths have truly led to this. Four increasingly impressive recordings for Moonjune Records have brought Dewa Budjana together with a variety of high profile, top-drawer jazz musicians from the American west and east coasts. Each successive album, from 2013's Dawai in Paradise through to 2015's Hasta Karma, have found the Indonesian guitarist raising an already high bar with challenging yet eminently accessible compositions that, once the initial tracks were recorded, Budjana subsequently expanded in post-production with contributions ...

Album Review

Nuova Camerata: Chant

by Nicola Negri
December 25, 2016

Free improvisation and contemporary music share many aspects, and the goal is the same--to avoid the beaten path of established musical idioms. Of course, sometimes they can both become actual styles, somewhat conforming to predictable strategies, but the most successful instances are those that keep the ambiguity intact, presenting the ideal of “new music" in its purest form. Nuova Camerata is a new group based in Lisbon that brilliantly merges these two worlds, as this recent release ...

Year in Review

John Sharpe's Best Releases Of 2016

by John Sharpe
December 25, 2016

Here are ten new releases, reviewed at All About Jazz, which stood out among those I heard this year. Wadada Leo Smith America's National Parks (Cuneiform Records) While the title might conjure up a string of luminous tone poems, the reality of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's magisterial collection goes far beyond that on his most outstanding release since the monumental Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012). Not coincidentally, it's also the product of his ...

Book Review

Paul Morley: The Age of Bowie

by Nenad Georgievski
December 25, 2016

The Age of Bowie Paul Morley 496 Pages ISBN: 978-1471148088 Simon & Schuster UK 2016 The enormous grief and sadness that outpoured at the unexpected death of singer David Bowie by fans and supporters worldwide were immediate and sincere. As soon as the shocking news broke on the 11th of January 2016, fans paid their homage to this artist who not only pushed boundaries but who also shaped and embodied the ...

Book Review

Peter Hook: Substance - Inside New Order

by Nenad Georgievski
December 25, 2016

Substance: Inside New Order Peter Hook 768 Pages ISBN: 1471132404 Simon & Schuster 2016 Evidently, this is the golden age of book memoirs by world renowned music artists as the bookstores are being literary showered by juicy memoirs full of soul-baring, band drama, drugs, debauchery and salacious gossip. The appeal of some of these books is evident and immediate. Most of these artists are fascinating already because of their music and lifestyle. ...

Book Review

Charles Lloyd: A Wild, Blatant Truth

by Ian Patterson
December 25, 2016

Charles Lloyd: A Wild, Blatant Truth Josef Woodard 229 Pages ISBN: 978-1-935247-13-5 Silman-James Press 2016 A book on Charles Lloyd--one of the most celebrated and enigmatic jazz musicians of the past fifty years--has been a long time coming. It's been a while in the making too, for author Josef Woodard spent twenty five years doing the groundwork, repeatedly interviewing Lloyd, following his career for Downbeat/JazzTimes and other publications and even traveling on ...