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

Jens Jefsen: A Secret Sigh

Read "A Secret Sigh" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
November 21, 2016

Veteran Danish bassist Jens Jefsen could be a one-man band, but instead he accomplishes a rare feat here: a bass-centric recording that does not sound like a “bass album." Each track includes multiple bass parts--pizzicato and arco--along with percussive bass sounds and other percussion by Jefsen. While this description may sound like an endless bass solo, the music is carefully arranged instead, with the bass often taking a lyrical lead role. And all but one of the tunes includes at ...

Album Review

Susana Santos Silva, Lotte Anker, Sten Sandell, Torbjörn Zetterberg, Jon Fält: Life and Other Transient Storms

Read "Life and Other Transient Storms" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 21, 2016

Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva has become increasingly prominent on the European scene. When she was invited to put together a band for the 2015 Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland, she came up with the talented cast showcased here. Swedish bassist Torbjorn Zetterberg has worked with her before on Amost Tomorrow (Clean Feed, 2013) and If Nothing Else (Clean Feed, 2016), but the trio of Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker, and Swedish pairing of pianist Sten Sandell and drummer Jon Fält ...

Album Review

Louisiana Soul Revival: Louisiana Soul Revival Featuring Doug Duffey

Read "Louisiana Soul Revival Featuring Doug Duffey" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
November 21, 2016

Louisiana Soul Revival (LSR) frontman and primary composer Doug Duffey--already enshrined in the Louisiana Hall of Fame (in 2001) and the National Blues Hall of Fame (2009)--sure knows his musical roots. “North Louisiana, in the Mississippi Delta, has deep musical roots in the blues, Memphis soul, southern gospel, rock 'n' roll, folk, and hybrids that are uniquely its own," Duffey explains. This eponymous debut gives voice to Duffey's extensive repertoire of funky, soulful originals primarily written between the ...

Album Review

Joyce Moreno: Cool

by C. Andrew Hovan
November 21, 2016

Since the late '60s, Brazilian guitarist and singer Joyce Moreno has been one of the most iconic members of the MPB movement, pushing the envelope way past the traditional bossa novas of Jobim. In the early '80s, albums such as Feminina and brought Joyce an international following that she continues to enjoy to this day. Her sizeable catalog features a diverse collection of original material, not to mention key collaborations with such heavyweights as Jon Hendricks, Joao Donato, Kenny Werner, ...

Album Review

Beekman: Vol. 02

by Dave Wayne
November 21, 2016

Beekman is a super-tight collective quartet whose members hail from three (count 'em) different continents. Pianist Yago Vazquez is from Spain, reedman Kyle Nasser is an American, and the entire rhythm section--bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Rodrigo Recabarren--hails from Chile. Their prosaically-titled sophomore album, Vol. 02, is more-or-less in the same brainy-but-chill modern jazz style as James Farm, David Gilmore, or Brian Blade's Fellowship Band. Authorship of the album's all-original tunes is spread pretty evenly amongst Nasser, Vazquez, and Menares, ...

Bailey's Bundles

Christmas 2016

by C. Michael Bailey
November 20, 2016

A Cappella is the original format for choral singing. The five selections addressed here make 2016 one of the better years for this music. Kings College Cambridge -The King's Men Twelve Days of Christmas Choir of King's College, Cambridge 2016 The King's Men are a vocal ensemble made up of choral scholars attending King's College, Cambridge. They are considered a “close-harmony" group. Close harmony is an arrangement of the notes ...

Album Review

Lauren Bush: All My Treasures

Read "All My Treasures" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 20, 2016

Toronto-bred and now London-based Lauren Bush introduces herself --on her debut, All My Treasures--as a traditional, vivacious, and supremely confident vocalist, in the mode of Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O'Day. And the tunes she calls her treasures are mostly from the familiar end of the Great American Songbook spectrum. The voice is sassy/brassy, horn like, her diction as precise and sharp as knife blade, and her soul--that shines through, throughout--embraces these forays into twelve tunes with high-spirited panache, ...

Album Review

Zarabande: El Toro

by Roger Farbey
November 20, 2016

Alfred “El Toro" Flores has been on the San Antonio music scene for more than 30 years, playing in a number of different bands and genres. He's also something of a multi-instrumentalist, in addition to marimba, he plays vibraphone, xylophone and guitar. El Toro reflects Zarabande's proclivity for his own brand of electrifying Latin jazz. On the rumbustious opener “Ogun," Mark Little is first heard with some McCoy Tyner-esque broad piano flourishes, followed by Flores's malletKat which on ...

Album Review

Cameron Mizell: Negative Spaces

Read "Negative Spaces" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
November 20, 2016

A whole bunch of very accomplished guitarists out there have styles can be described cursorily as lying within a triangle that has John Scofield, Pat Metheny, and Bill Frisell at its vertices. There's nothing wrong with this. Scofield, Metheny, and Frisell are amazing, prolific, and highly influential. And even within these confines, there's a lot of music to explore. On Negative Spaces, guitarist Cameron Mizell (not to be confused with the record producer of the same name) really owns the ...

Album Review

BassDrumBone: The Long Road

Read "The Long Road" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
November 20, 2016

Trombonist Ray Anderson, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Gerry Hemingway have been performing together as BassDrumBone for almost four decades. The Long Road, the trio's tenth release, was recorded in celebration of the ensemble's forty-year anniversary, and is the group's most wide-ranging and definitive effort to date. In honor of this auspicious occasion, they invited esteemed tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and vanguard pianist Jason Moran to sit in on a handful of tunes, which reveals the unit's sterling rapport, as ...