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

Marcus King: The Marcus King Band

by Doug Collette
October 8, 2016

Praised, mentored and produced by none other than the titular leader of Gov't Mule, Warren Haynes, precocious twenty-year old songwriter/guitarist/vocalist/bandleader Marcus King faces some heady expectations with the release of he and his band's second full-length LP and first for Fantasy Records via the Evil Teen imprimatur. But The Marcus King Band addresses those expectations with confidence, panache and imagination right from the start of this eponymous record, firing on all cylinders from the beginning of “Ain't Nothing ...

Album Review

Taylor Ho Bynum: Enter the Plus Tet

Read "Enter the Plus Tet" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 8, 2016

Cornetist/composer Taylor Ho Bynum has proven to be a visionary composer, striking the difficult balance between free improvised and arranged music. While accomplished in any group setting, he has shown a particular gift for extended works in larger group situations as in two recent Firehouse 12 Records releases, his sextet Apparent Distance (2011) and sextet and 7-tet on the impressive box set Navigation (The Complete Firehouse 12 Recordings) (2012). On Bynum's new release Enter the Plus Tet he incorporates some ...

Album Review

Van Morrison: Keep Me Singing

Read "Keep Me Singing" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 8, 2016

Van Morrison remains a beautifully mercurial creative force. Thirty-six discreet recordings into a 52-year career, Morrison has only Ray Charles and Willie Nelson, as poly-genre conquering peers, each of whose reach has proven to be expansive and penetrating. This is a rarified trio, to be sure, a very selective club that needs be no larger. Morrison's last recording of new material, Born to Sing: No Plan B (Blue Note Records, 2012), was an upbeat effort that was, or course all ...

Album Review

Shabaka And The Ancestors: Wisdom Of Elders

Read "Wisdom Of Elders" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
October 8, 2016

This recording is the culmination of the triangular experiences of tenor man Shabaka Hutchings and his personal destiny. Born in London, his family relocated back to their native Barbados, where Hutchings was raised in a musical environment until his teen years. Returning to London, he became a fixture on the free jazz scene, and while on holiday to South Africa, was drawn back to the primordial source of inspiration. Recorded over one day with no rehearsal, Wisdom Of Elders explores ...

Album Review

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials: The Big Sound of Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials

Read "The Big Sound of Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
October 8, 2016

For more than 25 years, Lil' Ed Williams and his three-piece Blues Imperials have been as rock-steady in their roster makeup as they have musically. Since the late 1980s, singer-guitarist Williams has been backed by Michael Garrett (second guitar), James “Pookie" Young (bass) and Kelly Littleton (drums). That kind of longevity in a band can lead in two directions: heightened understanding and interplay, or stagnation. On their new Alligator release, The Big Sound of Lil' Ed ...

Live Review

Midge Ure at Revolution Music Hall

by Mike Perciaccante
October 8, 2016

Midge Ure Revolution Music Hall Amityville, NY September 30, 2016 Midge Ure is a Grammy-winning Scottish guitarist, singer, keyboard player, and songwriter. He has achieved success as a member of Slik, The Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy, Visage, Ultravox and as a solo artist. During his career, he has won numerous awards and accolades, has recorded a number of gold and platinum albums and singles and co-wrote “Do The Know Its Christmas?" with ...

Live Review

Lizz Wright and Danilo Perez Jazz 100 at the Merriam Theater

by Victor L. Schermer
October 7, 2016

Lizz Wright, Vocalist; Danilo Perez, Pianist and Music Director Jazz 100: The Music of Dizzy, Ella, Mongo & Monk Merriam Theater Kimmel Center Presents Philadelphia, PA September 30, 2016 This well conceived theme-based jazz show anticipated the 100th birthdays and celebrated the music of four jazz icons all coincidentally born in 1917: Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Mongo Santamaria and Thelonious Monk. Philadelphia welcomed back pianist Danilo Perez, who for several years curated ...

Under the Radar

An Evil Clown and a Leap of Faith

by Karl Ackermann
October 7, 2016

"I don't have a half-speed for music, if I do it, I'm all in..."--PEK If the Evil Clown record label is prolific on a per capita basis, then its founder is exponentially more inexhaustible. David Peck (aka PEK) founded the label--at first, unbranded--and its roots date back a little more than twenty years ago to Cambridge, MA. The musicians under the label could best be described as a “collaborative collective" and in various formations turn out twenty-five ...

Album Review

Michael Blanco: Spirit Forward

Read "Spirit Forward" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 7, 2016

Spirit Forward carries several connotations in its name and sound. First there's the overt reference to bartender terminology and the way it connects to the music presented by the feisty and flexible foursome of bassist Michael Blanco, saxophonist John Ellis, pianist Kevin Hays, and drummer Clarence Penn. A spirit-forward cocktail is one which focuses on enhancing rather than masking the core characteristics of a base liquor through the addition of other spirits and suggestions. It's an intoxicating parallel for what ...

Album Review

Joshua Redman & Brad Mehldau: Nearness

Read "Nearness" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
October 7, 2016

Brilliant musicians don't always make brilliant music when they collaborate and while that's sometimes been the case with pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Joshua Redman, on the duo concert recordings that make up the appropriately-titled Nearness, they live up to their elevated pedigree. And that's individual as well as shared cachet: Mehldau spent a fair amount of time, some eighteen months to be exact, as a member of Redman's groups in the early Nineties and they formally collaborated on Highway ...