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

Luke Hendon: Silk & Steel

Read "Silk & Steel" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
October 24, 2016

It is the easiest thing in the world to laud guitarist Luke Hendon's album Silk & Steel as something to be treasured by anyone who is remotely interested in the style of Django Reinhardt. It is important to note, however, that Hendon has done much more than play arpeggios as fast as humanly possible, zip the one string chromatic scale and use a tight vibrato in front of a freight train rhythm guitar --all on an large- body ...

Album Review

Andy Adamson Quartet: A Cry For Peace

Read "A Cry For Peace" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
October 24, 2016

Fans of the Crusaders, Weather Report and other fusion acts of the 1970's and 1980's will certainly enjoy the sound of Andy Adamson and his quartet. His writing and keyboard work has heart and soul, and the group is a solid unit of excellent players. The quartet features Adamson's original compositions. The line-up on his latest album, A Cry for Peace, includes: Brennan Andes (acoustic and electric bass), drummer Jonathan Taylor, and tenor saxophonist Dan Bennett. The quartet is a ...

Album Review

Ellen Andersson Quartet: I'll Be Seeing You

Read "I'll Be Seeing You" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
October 24, 2016

Swedish vocalist Ellen Andersson sings in a strangely forced way, trying to imitate Billie Holiday but sounding more like someone in dire need of a laxative. This is most apparent on “You've Changed," which Holiday recorded on her 1958 Columbia album Lady In Satin when past her prime. In 2013 another Swedish singer, Isabella Lundgren refashioned history, singing the song as Lady Day might have done when young, on another Prophone album, Ela, by ...

Extended Analysis

Unreleased Art: Volume 9 - Art Pepper & Warne Marsh At Donte's, April 26, 1974

by C. Michael Bailey
October 24, 2016

When any previously unheard Art Pepper is released, the event bears a bit of context. Laurie Pepper's Volume 9 addition to her Unreleased Art series is the 3-CD box Art Pepper & Warne Marsh at Donte's April 26, 1974. It contains music from late in Pepper's fallow period between the releases of Intensity (Contemporary, 1960) and his comeback period inaugurated by the release of Art Pepper: Living Legend (Contemporary, 1975). I mark the period by Pepper's two studio recordings of ...

Album Review

Joshua Breakstone/The Cello Quartet: 88

by Mark Sullivan
October 24, 2016

Veteran guitarist Joshua Breakstone pays tribute to some of his favorite pianist/composers here. He tells a story about a fellow Berklee student (a saxophonist) who asked legendary saxophonist Sonny Stitt if he could sit in. Stitt shut him down with the question “how many keys on a saxophone?" The novice couldn't answer--there are 23--but everyone knows a standard piano has 88 keys. Breakstone sees the piano and the guitar as extended family, with a comparable chordal role in the rhythm ...

Album Review

Donder: Still

Read "Still" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 23, 2016

A tiny brick chapel in the gloom of dusk, double doors flung open revealing a bright interior of the edifice in the foreground of dark, dense foliage, on the cover of Still, the debut CD release of the Belgium-based piano trio, Donder. The imagery portrays to perfection the music of the group. Reflective and often minimalist, neat and lovely in its architecture, appealing in its apparent simplicity. It's impossible to avoid an ECM Records comparison with Still, specifically ...

Album Review

Taylor Ho Bynum: Enter the PlusTet

Read "Enter the PlusTet" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 23, 2016

Taylor Ho Bynum continues to delve into the endless possibilities of large ensemble writing on Enter the PlusTet, the debut of his newest band of the same name. Following in the footsteps of Navigation, his ambitious multi-format sextet and septet recording (Firehouse 12, 2012), this lean set finds the vanguard cornetist more than doubling the size of his working sextet on a trio of long-form compositions that circumvent the conventions of traditional song forms by way of non-linear episodic narratives. ...

Album Review

Dave Liebman Group: Expansions Live

Read "Expansions Live" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
October 23, 2016

For those that know soprano saxophonist David Liebman's latest group Expansions from their first two studio albums, Samsara and The Puzzle, the double CD Expansions Live will be the lodestone for this quintet (Liebman, reedman Matt Vashlishan, keyboardist Bobby Avey, bassist Tony Marino and drummer Alex Ritz). Playing a few of the tunes from the earlier albums ("Continues To Ignore," “Vendetta," “Good Bait" and “Dans de la Fureur" from The Puzzle and “Ugly Beauty" and “Liberian Hummingbird" from ...

Album Review

The Girshevich Trio: Algorithmic Society

Read "Algorithmic Society" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
October 23, 2016

While nearly all of the buzz in the music press about the Girshevich Trio has been about the young age of drummer Aleks Girshevich--who was roughly 12 when this album was recorded, the second of his young life--sooner or later his career will be judged solely by his playing. That's the thing about prodigies--they grow out of it.And so while Jonny Lang and Mike Welch managed to milk the “young blues phenomenon" for a couple albums, eventually they ...

Live Review

13th Annual Uppsala International Guitar Festival

by John Ephland
October 23, 2016

Uppsala Konsert & Kongress 13th Annual Uppsala International Guitar Festival Uppsala, Sweden October 6-9, 2016 It all takes place in one building. A huge one, centrally located in downtown Uppsala, Sweden. It's the Konsert & Kongress, and it's home to a seemingly endless array of cultural and social events. And, as has been the case for many years, the annual Uppsala International Guitar Festival was taking its turn, utilizing three floors for performance and all-things ...