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

Eden Bareket Trio: Choice

by Dave Wayne
October 7, 2016

Baritone saxophone specialists, like their soprano-playing counterparts, seem a breed apart from their “normal" alto-and tenor- playing brethren. In a world where it's increasingly difficult to stand out from a gaggle of technically awesome young saxophonists, one can almost predict that more players will be specializing in these “second string" instruments. If Choice by Argentinian bari-specialist Eden Bareket is any indication, please bring the baritone saxophone revolution on post-haste. Eden Bareket is first-and-foremost a wonderfully-gifted technician with a beautiful sound ...

Album Review

Mike LeDonne Groover Quartet: That Feelin'

Read "That Feelin'" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 7, 2016

Mike LeDonne's splendid Groover Quartet has earned a cozy groove for itself, somewhere between fresh from the oven and the halcyon days of organ combos led by Jimmy Smith, Charles Earland, Jimmy McGriff, Groove Holmes, Shirley Scott, Don Patterson and others. While embracing their essential groundwork on the one hand, LeDonne moves steadily forward with the other, lending a more contemporary voice to what has been a popular staple of the jazz repertoire for well over half a century.

Jazz Near Me

Jason Marsalis Quartet at SOUTH

by Steve Bryant
October 7, 2016

Jason Marsalis Quartet SOUTH Philadelphia, PA October 5, 2015 It is difficult under normal circumstances for the youngest sibling in a family. When that family is named Marsalis then the dynamic changes and there exists a whole slew of standards and expectations. That is the environment that Jason Marsalis has had to deal with over the course of his life. Of course it doesn't help that his older brothers, trumpeter Wynton and ...

Live Review

European Jazz Conference 2016

by Ian Patterson
October 6, 2016

European Jazz Conference 2016 National Forum of Music Wroclaw, Poland September 22-25, 2016 We have two ears and only one mouth so perhaps we should listen more than we speak. This old maxim is often credited to Hellenistic philosopher Zeno of Citrium, though who's to say he didn't pinch it after being admonished by a fellow Stoic for not listening enough himself? We'll never know. What we do know, however, ...

Live Review

Kamasi Washington & The Next Step at Michigan Theater

by C. Andrew Hovan
October 6, 2016

Kamasi Washington & The Next Step Michigan Theater Ann Arbor, Michigan September 30, 2016 Much hoopla has surrounded the ascension of saxophonist Kamasi Washington most recently spurred on by his debut recording, The Epic. A motherlode of jazz sorcery, this audacious packaging of almost three hours of music seems to have spoken to a whole new generation of young people who have probably never even heard of Miles or Coltrane. Either smart marketing, bold musicianship, ...

New York @ Night

Allan Harris at SMOKE Jazz & Supper Club

by Peter Jurew
October 6, 2016

Allan Harris SMOKE Jazz & Supper Club New York, NY September 28, 2016 Allan Harris was born in Brooklyn to a tight-knit family that loved music. His mother was a classical piano prodigy who grew up in Harlem and graduated in the first class of the High School Of Performing Arts, along with her friend, Arthur Mitchell, the noted dancer, choreographer and co-founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Allan grew up hearing a wide ...

Album Review

Tom Harrison: Unfolding In Tempo

Read "Unfolding In Tempo" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 6, 2016

London-based alto saxophonist Tom Harrison leads a tight and imaginative band on Unfolding In Tempo, a live album of “reflections on the Ellington/Strayhorn Canon." After three years intense study of Ellington and Strayhorn, Harrison has selected a mix of tunes that display the breadth of that canon, from the famous to the lesser-known, recorded at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham and the Pizza Express club in London's Soho. The first track, recorded in Cheltenham, is the most famous--"Take ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith: America's National Parks

Read "America's National Parks" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 6, 2016

In the last half-decade of the inspirational forty-five year career of Wadada Leo Smith, he has generated one bona fide masterpiece after another, building and expanding on the qualities that consistently push his music to an apex with no apparent upper limit. With his four-and-a-half hours Pulitzer Prize finalist Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform Records, 2012) he unleashed a succession of projects, some of epic stature, such as Occupy The World (TUM Records, 2013), The Great Lakes Suite (TUM Records, 2015), ...

Album Review

WorldService Project: For King & Country

Read "For King & Country" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 6, 2016

This UK-based ensemble led by keyboardist, composer Dave Morecroft parallel what the rebellious Rock-In-Opposition (Henry Cow, Present, Art Zoyd) movement may stand for via a jazz-centric perspective; although, WorldService Project does not seem to be launching a tirade against conventional wisdom or record labels for that matter. But references to Punk-Jazz, or Nu-jazz may be somewhat in order on the band's debut release for the always enterprising Rare Noise record label. Thus, Morecroft and associates merge fire and ice with ...

Album Review

Terry Allen: Lubbock (on everything)

Read "Lubbock (on everything)" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
October 6, 2016

It was the poet William Blake who wrote about seeing “a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower." The idea that something common can reveal a complex world of beauty is also pursued in singer/songwriter and artist Terry Allen's masterpiece Lubbock (on everything) (1979). It is an album that is specifically local, revolving around Allen's hometown Lubbock, and yet it is universal and transcends time and place. The ...