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

The Big Shake-Up: The Big Shake-Up

Read "The Big Shake-Up" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
October 21, 2016

On first hearing Rusell Bennett's opener, the boisterously funky “Don't Block The Box," it's seems tempting to compare this tight brass heavy British octet with the considerably larger Loose Tubes ensemble. But the comparison is inaccurate for several reasons. The compositions (three are by Bennett) are relatively straightforward and certainly make less demands on an audience than Django Bates's more cerebral and labyrinthine inventions. That's not to say this band offers purely simplistic music, which they most certainly do not. ...

Live Review

bigBANG Jazz Gang

by David A. Orthmann
October 21, 2016

bigBANG Jazz Gang The Falcon Underground Marlboro, NY October 13, 2016 Last night I drove to Marlboro, NY, a sixty-five mile trek, to check out a band and a venue. The band was the bigBANG Jazz Gang, one of the local groups (a term I loosely use for a distance of seventy-five miles or less from my home in Northern New Jersey) that have escaped my notice. They are an ongoing enterprise, playing in ...

Album Review

Mark Dresser Seven: Sedimental You

Read "Sedimental You" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
October 21, 2016

Bassist Mark Dresser has had a long, distinguished career in jazz and new music working with a long list of musicians that includes Anthony Braxton, Tim Berne, Anthony Davis and John Zorn but he hasn't recorded much lately as a leader. This project sees him leading and writing for a diverse group of familiar and relatively new players in an unusual front line combination of clarinet, flute, violin and trombone. The group has a unique sound, like some 1920's society ...

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Philosophisticated Lady

According To Adorno: A Portrait Of Jazz's Harshest Critic, Part 2

by Marithe Van der Aa
October 20, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 Though Adorno had many points of criticism regarding the technical aspects of jazz, his contempt for the music genre was fueled by something else. Given the fact that Adorno was best known for his critical theory of society, it is far from surprising that jazz would not escape a social deciphering in his essays."Jazz is not what it 'is,'" he claims in Über Jazz; jazz is defined by the role it plays in ...

New York @ Night

Bill Frisell's "Guitar in the Space Age" at the Blue Note

by Peter Jurew
October 20, 2016

Bill FrisellBlue Note New York, NY October 4, 2016 It's one month before what is shaping up to be an epochal presidential election; the national mood is tense, nerves are fraying, anxiety is high. And just in the nick of time, here comes guitarist Bill Frisell to save our sanity! He's presenting the Blue Note (NYC) audiences with a week of coolly poignant interpretations of some of his favorite vintage pop tunes, most of which ...

Album Review

The Core Trio featuring Matthew Shipp: The Core Trio Live, featuring Matthew Shipp

Read "The Core Trio Live, featuring Matthew Shipp" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 20, 2016

What we have here is no-nonsense free improvisation where the track titles are chronologically functional but the music has a mind of its own. This is the Core Trio, who in direct opposition to that kind of pragmatic naming convention, have consistently performed and recorded as a small combo with an additional guest. Robert Boston, Steve Swell, and Tim Hagans) have each joined the “core" trio being at the heart of a quartet. For the second time, on The Core ...

Album Review

Brian (Shankar) Adler: Binary & Mysteries of the Deep

Read "Binary & Mysteries of the Deep" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
October 20, 2016

For those seeking a bit of metaphysical speculation with their jazz, one could benefit from giving these two new EPs from drummer Brian (Shankar) Adler a careful listen. A thoughtful, creative percussionist, Adler is eager to explore the big questions in his music, and his use of complex rhythmic structures and instrumentation from other traditions (particularly Indian carnatic music) lends an additional layer of interest to his work. The first of the two releases, Binary, is a project ...

Album Review

Forebrace: Steeped

by John Eyles
October 20, 2016

Steeped is the second album release from Forebrace, the welcome follow-up to Bad Folds (Copecod, 2013). For those who delighted in that album, the good news is that the quartet's line-up remains unchanged, and the balance between composed and improvised music is as before--composed pieces credited to Forebrace's leader and clarinetist, Alex Ward, alternating with improvisations credited to the whole group. The big difference between Steeped and its predecessor is that this album was recorded live in concert (at Cafe ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith: America's National Parks

Read "America's National Parks" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 20, 2016

2016 marks the centennial anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service. In honor of this auspicious occasion, celebrated trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith composed a titular six-part suite for the Golden Quintet, an augmented version of his long-running flagship quartet. Rather than simply attempting to transpose scenic vistas and natural grandeur into pure sound, Smith explains in the liner notes that he is more interested in the parks as an idea--one with socio-political overtones--hence the inclusion of tributes to the city ...

Profile

Roland Kirk: Here Comes The Whistleman

by Duncan Heining
October 19, 2016

This December, it will be thirty-nine years since Rahsaan Roland Kirk split the scene for good. He was forty-one and about two-thirds of that short life span had been spent as a professional musician. He might not have been around long but he left behind a powerful legacy that may have no parallel in jazz or any other modern music. He might not have courted controversy but somehow it kept finding him. For some critics and musicians, he ...