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

Festen: Festen

by John Sharpe
November 12, 2016

Does the world really need another Scandinavian group from the Clean Feed stable? Well in the case of Festen, the answer is a resounding yes! Further confounding the by now tired Nordic tone stereotype, and even diverging from the outfits influenced by the 1960s avant-garde, this quartet comprising four young Swedes based in Stockholm, propounds a free jazz thoroughly of the moment, forgoing time and tune on a collectively navigated journey. All four live on their wits in ...

Album Review

Eli Yamin: Message From Saturn

Read "Message From Saturn" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
November 12, 2016

The Jazz Drama Program was founded in 2003, in New York City, by pianist and composer Eli Yamin, and educator Clifford Carlson, to stimulate youth by offering diverse and imaginative jazz, theater, and dance programs with active participation of those enrolled. Message From Saturn takes its title from a famous Sun Ra comment: “I just got a message from Saturn. We're not playing enough blues." With this statement as a launching point, the cosmological theme also draws inspiration from “The ...

Album Review

DYAD: Dyad Plays Jazz Arias

Read "Dyad Plays Jazz Arias" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
November 12, 2016

Classical-jazz hybrids, such as the Modern Jazz Quartet, traditionally keep the formal structure of classical music foremost in their work. Not so the duo of Lou Caimano and Eric Olsen collectively known as Dyad. Their version of “Jazz Meets The Classics" is a loose, freewheeling beast that occasionally breaks off from the classical side and follows its own wild improvisational logic.. On this particular CD, Dyad Plays Jazz Arias they have quite a time running merrily through seven ...

Album Review

Chuck Redd: Happy All the Time

Read "Happy All the Time" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 12, 2016

The complete title of this carefree and charming studio date is Chuck Redd Remembers Barney Kessel. The reasons why are many. Here are two: first, Redd worked with Kessel from 1980-91 as a drummer in the Great Guitars group and in Kessel's trio, during which time the two became close friends; even more than that, says Kessel's widow, Phyllis, Redd was “like another son" to her husband. As for the album's title, Redd writes, Kessel's watchword to the end of ...

Live Review

Belgrade Jazz Festival 2016

by Thomas Conrad
November 11, 2016

2016 Belgrade Jazz Festival Belgrade, Serbia October 26-October 30, 2016 Because of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the Belgrade Jazz Festival, like most good things in the Balkans, went dark for 15 years after 1990. When it started up again in 2005, it was small. By 2008, it was big enough to book names like The Bad Plus, Christian Scott and Patricia Barber. But even then, from the vantage point of the world jazz community, ...

Album Review

Tony Kadleck Big Band: Around The Horn

Read "Around The Horn" reviewed by Dr. Judith Schlesinger

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
November 11, 2016

One of the best and most unique things about All About Jazz is that discovering wonderful music is not limited to the narrow window around someone's release date. Whenever you stumble on something especially delicious, you can share your sentiments about it--and even if another reviewer has gotten there first. The route by which I got turned on to trumpeter Tony Kadleck's big band CD, Around the Horn, two years after its 2014 debut, was a tad more ...

Album Review

Marco Sanguinetti: Cómo Desaparecer Completamente (How to Disappear Completely)

Read "Cómo Desaparecer Completamente (How to Disappear Completely)" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
November 11, 2016

Argentinian pianist Marco Sanguinetti has brought his imaginative, genre-crossing sensibility to projects like “8" (2014), an album of original, Latin-inspired pieces filtered through thoroughly modern stylistic devices, and his work with Pibe-A, which has recorded tributes to Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon" and Radiohead's “Kid A." Given his track record of eclecticism and ambition, his decision to release a 90-minute double album of Radiohead material doesn't really seem that audacious. Sanguinetti's sound owes a lot to ...

Album Review

Sao Paulo Underground: Cantos Invisíveis

Read "Cantos Invisíveis" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
November 11, 2016

Cantos Invisíveis translates from Portuguese as “invisible corners/songs" or “disappearing corners/songs:" a fitting title for trans-national music that often seems to come from everywhere at once. The international trio's electro-acoustic sound blends music from North and South America, Africa and Asia, including stylistic references from traditional folk, modern jazz, rock and electronica. It's a dense, communal sound, full of joy and exploration. Band member Rob Mazurek says “The vocal quality of this particular music shouts and hollers for love and ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith: America's National Parks

Read "America's National Parks" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 11, 2016

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. In fact Smith's notion of a national park encompasses not only the iconic landscapes, but also literary and cultural features. In any case as he explains, he draws his inspiration from the spiritual and psychological dimensions of a specific event or a place, rather than taking a straightforward programmatic approach. The result is Smith's most ...

The Vinyl Post

Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years in Mono

by C. Andrew Hovan
November 10, 2016

Hot on the heels of their highly-touted vinyl project featuring the Atlantic sides of John Coltrane in mono, Rhino hits the vaults again for a comparable set that mines the work of Ray Charles in some of his earliest recorded works. A similar thread runs through both projects. A heavyweight box serves as a fashionable slipcover for the albums, which themselves sport glossy front covers. Mastering was done by John Webber and the albums were pressed in Germany, presumably at ...