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

Rik Wright's Fundamental Forces: Subtle Energy

Read "Subtle Energy" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
October 13, 2016

Guitarist Rik Wright returns with Subtle Energy, an album that continues his exploration of well-crafted originals and band chemistry, again in a quartet format, but with a slightly more relaxed approach to the music compared to his earlier quartet records. The Seattle-based guitarist's previous releases were based on a trilogy of primary colors, Blue (2013), Red (2014), and Green (2015). Make no mistake though, Wright is still bringing the heat and over the course of each composition the listener will ...

Album Review

Aaron Bennett / Darren Johnston / Lisa Mezzacappa / Frank Rosaly: Shipwreck 4

Read "Shipwreck 4" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 13, 2016

Chicago-based session ace and solo artist, drummer Frank Rosaly aligns with San Francisco Bay Area notables for a meeting of like-minded, highly skilled improvisers. After a gig in Frisco, the musicians' scheduled time to record this quartet date. Unfortunately, Shipwreck studios was destroyed in a fire a few months after this session and the musicians decided to pay a bit of homage via the album moniker. As improvisers amid the semi-structured song-forms, they do what they characteristically do ...

Hi-Res Jazz

John Coltrane: Coltrane And Crescent—Shadows And Light

by Mark Werlin
October 12, 2016

Visual art is a play of shadow and light, and contrast makes the forms visible. In the best jazz music, there is a kind of inner light that emanates from the musicians, the light of creative impulse, the light of spontaneous artistic expression. Some jazz musicians--too many--cast their own shadows of addiction and self-destructiveness. But often--too often--new directions and developments in jazz are shadowed not by the musicians themselves, but by their detractors. A series of Impulse albums ...

Getting Into Jazz

The Commodore Master Takes

by Mark Barnett
October 12, 2016

Getting Started If you're new to jazz, go to our Getting Into Jazz primer for some hints on how to listen. CD Capsule Take a generous scoop of traditional New Orleans jazz, with its intricate three-horn counterpoint, add a hard-driving, hell-for-leather beat, shake well, and you've got Chicago-style jazz. No one made Chicago-style more exciting than cornetist Wild Bill Davison, and these recordings catch him and his cohorts at the top of their game. ...

Album Review

ELEW (Eric Lewis): And to the Republic

Read "And to the Republic" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
October 12, 2016

Appearances on television (America's Got Talent) and information conferences (TED Talks) have labeled pianist Eric Lewis (aka ELEW) as the next crossover artist who boldly shunned the establishment combining pop and rock music with improvisation. Yet underneath that flamboyant stage persona is the heart of bona fide jazz musician who won the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition and has performed with jazz luminaries Elvin Jones, Wynton Marsalis, and Cassandra Wilson)). <br /><br /> At the age of 43, Lewis's status ...

Album Review

Jonathan Finlayson: Moving Still

Read "Moving Still" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 12, 2016

Trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson has been an in-demand sideman for a decade, laying a foundation of top-tier groundwork in recording with Steve Coleman on all of that uncompromising composer's Five Elements albums since 2002. Finlayson's performing credits include gigs with Ravi Coltrane, Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson, Vijay Iyer, and many other notable artists. Not until 2013 did the trumpeter/composer release Moment and the Message (Pi Recordings), his first--and highly acclaimed--outing as leader of the quintet, Sicilian Defense. He returns with six ...

Album Review

Sandra Borøy: Sus

by Geno Thackara
October 12, 2016

Falling somewhere between lush indie folk and chamber jazz with a lounge feel (the non-cheesy kind, that is), Sandra Borøy introduces herself as anything but predictable. She opens her debut Sus with a series of floating guitar chords and wordless singing that drifts out of the clouds. The ethereal quality never goes away throughout; the album seems to be about creating a pure dreamy atmosphere as much as anything else, especially if you don't understand the Norwegian lyrics. At the ...

Album Review

Young-Ae Jung: Because I Love You

Read "Because I Love You" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 12, 2016

South Korean singer/composer Young-Ae Jung made her recording debut with her 2013 The Man I Love (Self Produced). On that recording, the singer revealed herself as a more-than-capable composer, whose motifs and archetypes are of the same mature variety. The singer proved the universality of jazz by her incorporation of both English and Korean lyrics in her music. Jung also proved ready to take on the Great American Songbook, resulting in The Man I Love being a wholly enjoyable jazz ...

Album Review

Daniel Schlaeppi/Marc Copland: More Essentials

Read "More Essentials" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 12, 2016

The experience of this duo outing, More Essentials, begins with the packaging, the cover art, a gorgeous photo of two jelly fish immersed in the softened hues of shallow submersion in the sea. The disc spins, an introductory bass solo by Daniel Schlaeppi that leads into Miles Davis' “Blue In Green," with pianist Marc Copland's liquid, anti-gravitational, chord-to-chord glide as lovely as anything he's ever laid down, immersed in turquoise, tethered by the (planetary) Neptune-ian pull of bassist Daniel Schlaeppi's ...

Product Spotlight

Tonic Games To Cure What Ails You

by Dan Bilawsky
October 11, 2016

Any and every seasoned musician out there can tell you about the importance of getting into a practice routine or regimen. But what happens when you get your practicing on track and the track keeps taking you to the same places? And how do you make progress and move forward when you don't know what direction to move toward in the first place? While we live and shed in the information age, where eBooks, videos, on-line lessons, play-along material, and ...