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

Nicole Saphos: Tiptoe

by Jerome Wilson
December 1, 2016

Nicole Saphos is a bassist, singer and composer based in Washington, DC who, like a lot of younger musicians, is willing to mix rock influences into her music as significantly as straight-ahead jazz. On her debut CD, Tiptoe, she fronts a bass-guitar-drums trio in a suite of love songs comprised of standards, originals and a wild card or two and comes up with insinuating and eclectic results.The set starts out with a fleet-footed, pure jazz take on “Just ...

Album Review

Keith Jarrett: A Multitude of Angels

Read "A Multitude of Angels" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
December 1, 2016

The phrase “triumph of the human spirit" may be commonly used, but rarely in musical contexts. There have, however, been relatively recent examples of such achievements, like when Michael Brecker managed to not just make it into the studio, six months before he died from a fatal blood disorder in early 2007, but delivered one of the (if not the) best performances of his career, on the saxophonist's studio swan song, Pilgrimage (Heads Up, 2007). But a little ...

Album Review

John Coltrane: Trane 90

Read "Trane 90" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
December 1, 2016

Along with Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, the late saxophonist John Coltrane is one of the most anthologized figures in the history of jazz. He is also one of the most studied, with at least four full biographies on Amazon, and dozens of other books looking at various aspects of his music. The number of magazine articles about Coltrane surely runs into the tens of thousands. And so the first question regarding a new, four-disc box ...

Interview

Ashley Kahn: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece

by Lazaro Vega
November 30, 2016

This interview was first published at All About Jazz in November 2000 and is part of our ongoing effort to archive pre-database material. Ashley Kahn, the author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 224 pgs.), is Music Editor at VH1, and was the primary editor of Rolling Stone: The Seventies as well as the primary contributor to Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide. He has contributed articles to ...

Album Review

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Triple Exposure

Read "Triple Exposure" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 30, 2016

For most, a triangle is the shape that readily springs to mind when analyzing, discussing, and/or conceptualizing a trio. There's no mistaking roles and positions, after all, when there are three clearly defined sides. A circle, on the other hand, offers no beginning, no middle, and no end. In many ways it's a better analog for a band, but only if the shape fits. Needless to say, when it comes to the musical marriage of bassist David Friesen, pianist Greg ...

Album Review

Borbetomagus: The Eastcote Studios Session

Read "The Eastcote Studios Session" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
November 30, 2016

Borbetomagus--Donald Miller on electric guitar, Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter on (tenor) saxophones--have been together since the late 70's. They soon established their own distinctive sound and working methods that suited the unconventional instrumentation and gave the trio a strong identity. With Dietrich and Sauter owing a debt to such free saxophonists as Albert Ayler, John Coltrane (Ascension more than Giant Steps) and Peter Brötzmann, and Miller to Jimi Hendrix as much as Derek Bailey, the three specialised in improvised ...

Album Review

Radio Bévort: Which Craft?

Read "Which Craft?" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
November 30, 2016

Music has a strange power to enchant us. In fact, it is unbelievable that vibrations and patterns of sound are able to move our emotions. Danish saxophonist and composer, Pernille Bévort, has captured the mystery of music in the poetically playful title of her latest album Which Craft? It can both be read as a reference to the strange witchcraft of music and a question that asks where music comes from. Bévort herself is firmly planted in ...

Album Review

Ivo Perelman: The Art of the Improv Trio Volume 1

Read "The Art of the Improv Trio Volume 1" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 30, 2016

Tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman's voluminous discography gets another boost with six concurrent trio releases, titled The Art of the Improv Trio Volumes 1 through 6. It's not surprising since the artist has become one of the more prolific jazz improvisers spanning the past several decades. Thus, Volume 1 launches the festivities with Karl Berger laying down his vibes mallets and performing solely on piano, along with Perelman mainstay, drummer Gerald Cleaver who is a contributor on five of the six ...

Album Review

Keith Jarrett: A Multitude of Angels

Read "A Multitude of Angels" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
November 30, 2016

In the last solo concert tour of the first half of Keith Jarrett's career, the preeminent pianist of our time had, himself, recorded the performances across four Italian locations, on his digital audio tape machine. These would be the final public performances Jarrett would give for a number of years as he worked through chronic fatigue syndrome. On a concert timeline, A Multitude of Angels follows the 1995 performances captured on La Scala (ECM, 1997) but with an unexplained twenty-year ...

Album Review

Fredrik Ljungkvist & Mattias Risberg: And Now the Queen - A Tribute to Carla Bley

Read "And Now the Queen - A Tribute to Carla Bley" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
November 30, 2016

Carla Bley's compositions have been recorded by a seemingly endless list of artists including Jaco Pastorius, Arturo O'Farrill, Eberhard Weber, Jan Garbarek, Jimmy Giuffre and extensively by her former husband, the late Paul Bley. She has been revolutionary in the scope of her work which has run from the jazz opera Escalator Over the Hill (JCOA Records, 1971) to the politically influenced Liberation Music Orchestra led by Charlie Haden. With the earlier release of Andando el Tiempo (ECM, 2016) with ...