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

Gabriel Espinosa: Songs Of Bacharach And Manzanero

Read "Songs Of Bacharach And Manzanero" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 12, 2016

American pop sophisticate Burt Bacharach and Mexican bolero icon Armando Manzanero may not seem like a good fit for a binary tribute album, but that combination actually works. Why, you ask? The answer is fairly simple: When you boil down the music that each of those men created, you're left with indelible melodies, beautiful and colorful harmonies, and personalized forms of language that, nonetheless, remain approachable. Gabriel Espinosa, a bassist-vocalist with an affinity for the work of ...

Year in Review

Troy Dostert's Best Releases of 2016

by Troy Dostert
December 11, 2016

It has been an exciting year for artists perched on the precipice between jazz and other idioms. Each of these releases manages in its own way both to challenge and to inspire the listener, and the stylistic variety on display is an encouraging sign that creative music is truly in good hands! The Claudia Quintet Super Petite (Cuneiform) Another superb collection of songs from John Hollenbeck, brilliantly played by his veteran associates ...

Album Review

The NOLA Players: Christmastime in New Orleans

Read "Christmastime in New Orleans" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
December 11, 2016

As valuable as the Marsalis family is to the New Orleans jazz community, their creative presence is so dense that most music made in NOLA will be drawn into their sonic orbit. This is not a bad thing, but neither is a little heterogeneity. This is what makes The NOLA Players' Christmastime in New Orleans such a joy, because of its ability to stand up to such holiday musical pinnacles as A Crescent City Christmas Card (Columbia, 1989), Christmas Jazz ...

Album Review

John Butcher / Ståle Liavik Solberg: So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain

Read "So Beautiful, It Starts To Rain" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
December 11, 2016

British saxophonist John Butcher and Norwegian percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg come together in a striking first meeting recorded live at north London's Cafe Oto in August 2015. Butcher brings to bear all the experience one would expect from one of the so-called second generation of English improvisers. Solberg, who co-curates Oslo's Blow Out! Festival each January, has worked extensively with other members of the same cohort such as pianist Steve Beresford and guitarist John Russell, so it's no surprise he ...

Album Review

Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen: Poetry For The Beat Generation

Read "Poetry For The Beat Generation" reviewed by Sacha O'Grady

by Sacha O'Grady
December 11, 2016

Jack Kerouac is most famous for his iconic novel On the Road, a book which helped define an entire generation of drifters, hitchhikers, poets and musicians (although not exclusively in that order), all of whom Kerouac collectively coined as “The Beat Generation." Upon publication in 1957, On the Road was celebrated by The New York Times Gilbert Millstein as “a major novel," one which he considered as being just as important to the lost generation of the '50s as Hemingway ...

Album Review

The Rolling Stones: Blue And Lonesome

Read "Blue And Lonesome" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
December 11, 2016

We should be clear of one thing: were it not for the British Invasion, the United States would likely not have been introduced to its own folk music as early as she was. Gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, country, and rock and roll all, at least partly, depended on breaking into the lucrative lily-white commercial market (think Elvis Presley) and it took the forever-forward thinking Brits to take advantage of the musical vacuum created by American institutional racism ...

Album Review

Modus Factor: The Picasso Zone

Read "The Picasso Zone" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 11, 2016

Modus Factor, a trio based in Toronto, says it creates “Electro ambient improvisational bedlam." An accurate description of their sound except, perhaps, for the bedlam part (for the most part). Featuring a drums/bass/electric trumpet line-up, with effects, the comparisons that come to mind are Nils Petter Molvaer's spacey approach on sets like Switch (OKeh Record, 2014) and Buoyancy (OKeh Records, 2016). And speaking of bedlam, a line could be drawn to trumpeter Cuong Vu's steroidal ambience. But Picasso ...

Book Review

Man Of The Light: The Life And Work Of Zbigniew Seifert

by Ian Patterson
December 11, 2016

Man Of The Light: The Life And Work Of Zbigniew Seifert Aneta Norek-Skrycka 172 Pages ISBN: 978-83-938054-2-6 The Zbigniew Seifert Foundation 2016 A number of European jazz musicians stand out for having shaped the sound of the music in the past fifty years, for their virtuosity and for having influenced subsequent generations. A partial list would include Django Reinhardt, Joe Zawinul, Jan Garbarek, Jan Johansson, Norma Winstone, Henri Texier, Enrico Rava and Tomasz ...

Year in Review

Dan McClenaghan's Best Releases Of 2016

by Dan McClenaghan
December 10, 2016

The music keeps moving forward, evolving to higher levels. My search for the best jazz recordings of 2016 led me to these marvelous CDs. Wadada Leo SmithAmerica's National Parks Cuneiform Records Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has attempted in, the new millennium, to create his magnum opus. He may have succeeded with America's National Parks, a sprawling, dark-hued masterpiece celebrating the Mississippi River, New Orleans, Yellowstone, Yosemite and more. Adam PieronczykMonte Alban

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

Best of Mr. P.C. 2016

by Mr. P.C.
December 10, 2016

Dear Mr. P.C.: I'm just an audience member, but I have a question on behalf of a lot of us listeners: If I make a request and the band plays it, do I have to listen to the whole thing? After they play the melody and then go into all the other stuff, sometimes I'd rather talk to my friends or just leave. --Short Attention Span Suzie Dear SASS: Don't ...