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.

Out and About: The Super Fans

Meet Roberta DeNicola

by Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper
December 5, 2016

Roberta DeNicola, a favorite of musicians on New York City's downtown and experimental jazz scenes, has very broad taste in jazz--from straight-ahead to out--but the more out it is, the more she needs to experience it live. She saw her first jazz concert (jazz flutist Hubert Laws) on a date with her teenage boyfriend. However, it was seeing one particular singer that turned her into a Super Fan. “When I saw her, I just flipped!" We figure that Roberta's probably ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Javon Jackson: Pleasant Valley – 1999

by Marc Davis
December 5, 2016

If the iconic sound of Blue Note Records could be summed up in just one band, it would surely be Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. For 35 years--1955 to 1990--the Messengers were the heart and soul of hard bop, on Blue Note and other labels. But what happened when Blakey died in 1990? Where did the music and the musicians go after that? For decades, Blakey trained a Who's Who of young jazz royalty. Many became legends. ...

Album Review

Misha: Dreaming With Eyes Wide Awake

Read "Dreaming With Eyes Wide Awake" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
December 5, 2016

Michaela Steinhauer is a German-born, New York based singer and this self-produced album features eleven of her own compositions and arrangements. These dreamy, romantic numbers benefit from her choice of accomplished musicians, not least Hendrik Meurkens who contributes elegant harmonica featured on five of the songs and vibraphone on another five.Despite having spent much of her life in Germany and ten years in Moscow, she delivers the songs in perfect English with scarcely a trace of a Continental ...

Album Review

Spiro: Repeater

Read "Repeater" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
December 5, 2016

Repeater is an idiosyncratic vinyl only retrospective by the acclaimed quartet Spiro that collects highlights of the band's four albums that were recorded between 1997 and 2015.The British quartet's unrelenting passion for following its muse has served it well as the group's fearless explorations have yielded an ever-expanding audience and over the years Spiro has crisscrossed the universes of folk/world and classical music. Stretching the boundaries and crisscrossing universes is now a regular practice for a number of groups but ...

Album Review

David Wise: Till They Lay Me Down

Read "Till They Lay Me Down" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
December 5, 2016

Saxophonist David Wise studied under the venerable Gary Bartz but has seemingly been listening to the likes of the later oeuvre of George Benson and maybe some David Sanborn too. No bad thing and the result is this self-produced debut album comprising predominantly self-penned compositions. The album is fairly diverse inasmuch as not all the tracks are strictly jazz. For example the opener, “What More Could A Man Want?" is a supercharged soul number with a brass ensemble ...

Album Review

Olga Konkova & Jens Thoresen: December Songs

Read "December Songs" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
December 5, 2016

December Songs is a sly title for an album of mostly Christmas music, but it suits the subtle approach taken by the Norwegian duo of pianist Olga Konkova and guitarist Jens Thoresen. The arrangements consistently find fresh approaches to very familiar music, transforming the tunes into something elusive and beautiful. Add in the improvisational element, and the result is an openness rare in holiday music. This is music first: the holiday theme is an organizing principle, not the whole reason ...

Bailey's Bundles

Christmas 2016 II: Contemporary

by C. Michael Bailey
December 4, 2016

Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling says of the holidays, “In the Western world, whether you're Christian or not, Christmas has some kind of seasonal relevance to you...You really cannot escape the holiday--even if it is just coming at you on television...for me, the holiday comes enriched with a lot of beautiful personal memories. It also comes freighted with the knowledge that millions of other people would carry their own such memories; and not all those memories are of happy occasions."

Book Review

Stan Levey: Jazz Heavyweight

by Chuck Koton
December 4, 2016

Stan Levey: Jazz Heavyweight Frank R. Hayde 224Pages ISBN: #13978-1-59580-086-2 Santa Monica Press 2016 When one thinks of Bebop, the names Bird and Dizzy along with Monk, Max and Bud immediately pop up. In the mind's eye, one can see those classic Herman Leonard jazz photos of these Cats playin' in smoke-filled clubs like Minton's in Harlem and the 3 Deuces on 52nd Street. But someone else, virtually unknown, by comparison, deserves to ...

Album Review

Schlippenbach Trio: Warsaw Concert

Read "Warsaw Concert" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
December 4, 2016

There can't be too many outfits still going strong after 44 years, especially with an unchanged roster. But that's exactly the situation German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach faces with his trio of countryman Paul Lovens on the drum stool and the legendary Evan Parker on tenor saxophone, give or take an occasional bassist. As a consequence they travel in uncharted territory, tasked with finding their own solutions to the challenge of keeping the music fresh and meaningful. While there are ...

Album Review

Dave Stryker: Eight Track II

Read "Eight Track II" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
December 4, 2016

Guitarist Dave Stryker had such a good time covering classic '70s pop tunes on Eight Track (Strikezone Records, 2014) that he recorded a second installment. He is once again joined by his regular trio (organist Jared Gold and drummer McClenty Hunter), but with a different guest vibraphonist. That chair is taken by Steve Nelson, best known as a longtime member of bassist/composer Dave Holland's groups. The organ trio approach harks back to Stryker's gig with funky organist Jack McDuff early ...