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.

Extended Analysis

Various Artists: Yugoslavian Space Program

by Nenad Georgievski
October 29, 2016

Science Fiction has always been a captivating genre be it literature, visual arts or in films. It's the art of imagining a possible future or many of them, creating dystopian or utopian scenarios, mapping the unknown extraterrestrial terrain, reflecting fears of annihilation but always deploying technological and scientific motifs and subjects. All of this reflected not only in the previously mentioned areas but in music as well. During the second half of the 20th-century hundreds of musicians began exploring electronic ...

Album Review

Mark Dresser Seven: Sedimental You

Read "Sedimental You" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 29, 2016

In the early stages of his career, bassist/composer Mark Dresser was working with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, and Gerry Hemingway. His long track record of working in composition and improvisation has made him one of the most respected artists in creative music. On Sedimental You, Dresser surrounds himself with a top tier ensemble comprised of old and new colleagues, all with a sharp focus on the challenging, open-ended music that Dresser has composed for this album.

Album Review

The Blues Against Youth: Apprentice

Read "Apprentice" reviewed by Alex Franquelli

by Alex Franquelli
October 29, 2016

Somewhere, in a hushed place between Vicksburg and Yazoo City, an old riverboat must be chugging under the sun, clumsily pushing its cargo on the cloudy waters of that forgotten river, leading memories firmly astray. The old, Mighty Mississippi is just a few miles down, its stream running parallel to its tired cousin's lazy stroll, its gurgling refrain the longest theme ever heard by the old people chomping tobacco at this time of the day. “A river is a river," ...

Album Review

Dawg Yawp: Dawg Yawp

Read "Dawg Yawp" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
October 29, 2016

Drawing equally upon threads common to Mumford & Sons, late period Beatles, acid-blues pioneer Little Axe, world music-era Paul Simon, and the good Lord only knows what else, the Cincinnati duo of Dawg Yawp has produced one of those little gems of an album that not only defies easy categorization--but even so much as adequate description. It is, perhaps, music that could only find a niche in a post-retail world--because the staff at Tower or Peaches Records would ...

Album Review

Gilles Peterson: The BBC Sessions Vol. 1

Read "The BBC Sessions Vol. 1" reviewed by Rokas Kucinskas

by Rokas Kucinskas
October 29, 2016

To this day Gilles Peterson transcends more eclecticism than most music broadcasters on air, and perhaps the only genre continuously omitted from his shows is classical music. Peterson owns Brownswood Records, produces Worldwide Awards, and recently launched his radio station Worldwide FM, which was also featured in the latest Grand Theft Auto sequel, i.e. GTA V. He is a touring DJ and one of the biggest record collectors in the world. Not enough? Well, the man is also ...

Extended Analysis

Steve Reich: The ECM Recordings

by Nenad Georgievski
October 29, 2016

Celebrated as one of the most significant contemporary American composer-musicians of the late 20th century, Steve Reich successfully dismantled the cemented bedrock of Western Music and rebuilt it in surprisingly innovative ways. One of the founders of the Minimalism movement in classical music, he created music that drew on aspects of Balinese, Yemenite, African and Hebrew sounds. In doing so, over the course of 50 years, he continually fashioned new musical models that in return have pushed Western music forward. ...

New York @ Night

BRIC JazzFest 2016

by Peter Jurew
October 28, 2016

BRIC JazzFest BRIC House Brooklyn, NY October 8-15, 2016 After a successful debut in 2015, the BRIC JazzFest returned to the BRIC House in downtown Brooklyn, New York, this year with two nights of jazz-related films and a music “marathon" of twenty-seven acts spread evenly over three nights. The biggest names included David Murray and his Infinity Quartet; alto saxophonist Terrace Martin; eclectic guitarist Marc Ribot with the bassist Henry Grimes; Eddie ...

Album Review

Wolfgang Muthspiel: Rising Grace

Read "Rising Grace" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
October 28, 2016

Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel made a big splash early in his career, playing with vibraphonist Gary Burton and recording for PolyGram Records (including 1990's The Promise, produced by Burton). Since founding his own label Material Records in 2000 he has had a somewhat lower profile, although in addition to a number of his projects the label released From A Dream (2009), the stunning debut of the cooperative trio MGT (with fellow guitarists Slava Grigoryan and Ralph Towner). Muthspiel made his ...

Album Review

Stan Kenton Orchestra / BYU Synthesis Big Band: A Kenton Celebration

Read "A Kenton Celebration" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 28, 2016

Fasten your seat belts, Kenton fans. Just when you feared the once-overflowing wellspring of material from the Stan Kenton Orchestra's archives may have run dry, along comes Tantara Productions with this jet-propelled and emphatically pleasurable two-disc set, the first half of which reclaims a long-lost concert date recorded in February 1959 at Brigham Young University, a dozen years before another concert at the Provo, Utah, campus was safeguarded on the album Live at Brigham Young University. The second half of ...

Album Review

Tom Collier: Impulsive Illuminations

Read "Impulsive Illuminations" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 28, 2016

Vibraphonist Tom Collier offers up something quite different from his previous Origin Records CDs, where he covered the jazz standards like John Coltrane's “Giant Steps; Miles Davis' “So What," and some seemingly unlikely pop hits: The Rolling Stones “What a Shame" and Brian Wilson's “God Only Knows," alongside his own always engaging compositions. With Impulsive Illuminations, the thirty year University of Washington educator (now retired) explores the world of improvisation with pianist Richard Karpen, in the trio mode, with five ...