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.

Live Review

Hilary Gardner and Ehud Asherie at Caffè Vivaldi

by Dan Bilawsky
October 4, 2016

Hilary Gardner and Ehud Asherie Caffè Vivaldi New York, NY October 1, 2016 Visitors, curious natives, and jazz neophytes will often ask the same question when they come looking for the music in New York: Where's the best place to see and hear jazz? The answer, of course, is not so simple. One line of responses might simply involve playing favorites or citing specific acts to check out; another might point toward soft and ...

Album Review

Cortex: Live In New York

Read "Live In New York" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 4, 2016

Live In New York constitutes the fourth outing by young Norwegian outfit Cortex. It's one of a stream of top notch dates emerging on the Portuguese Clean Feed label by a welter of interconnected bands from the burgeoning Scandinavian scene. All four members share a common background in jazz studies from Trondheim, but are now active in a variety of guises. Trumpeter Thomas Johansson appears on All Included's Satan in Plain Clothes (2015)and Friends & Neighbors' What's Wrong? (2016), while ...

Building a Jazz Library

Jazz From Around the World: Asia

by Hrayr Attarian
October 4, 2016

Asia is the most culturally and ethnically diverse continent. It is, therefore, hard to distill all its jazz influenced musical legacies into 10 albums. Some countries have robust jazz scenes that, nevertheless, are fundamentally derivative of European and American styles. In other musical cultures jazz has just recently made inroads. Below are 10 historic records that successfully melded regional folk traditions with jazz. One of the first Asian countries to embrace jazz music was China. Expats like trumpeter ...

Album Review

Daniela Schächter: Vanheusenism: A Tribute to Jimmy Van Heusen

Read "Vanheusenism: A Tribute to Jimmy Van Heusen" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
October 4, 2016

Italian pianist and singer Daniela Schachter goes into the “songbook" genre on this CD, doing lively spins on the work of songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, a man responsible for more hits than I realized. I knew he had written several songs for Frank Sinatra but until seeing them here, I hadn't realized he also had a hand in standards like “Darn That Dream" and “Here's That Rainy Day." Schachter's voice throughout the set is mature and melodic enough ...

Album Review

Haakon Graf/Erik Smith/ Per Mathisen: Sunrain

Read "Sunrain" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
October 3, 2016

"Sunrain" is a common Scandinavian weather phenomenon: after weeks of rain, there are often clouds with showers pouring down as the sun peers through the other side. Keyboardist/composer Haakon Graf considers it “a metaphor for the fabric of life, a place between a smile and a tear, like my music..." His trio with drummer Erik Smith and bassist Per Mathisen began performing live in 2011. The liners name them Norway's leading jazz-funk trio, and based on the music here that ...

Album Review

Richard Bona: Heritage

by James Nadal
October 3, 2016

The roots of Afro-Cuban music can be traced to its primordial source in the West African Mandika Empire (Mali) of the 15th century. Heritage is a collaboration of Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona with the Mandekan Cubano ensemble in a musical exploration of two cultures with the common bond of Africa as a point of origin and influence. This venture revolves around familiar Cuban dance oriented, melodic structure, accented with Bona's dominant African traits, for an engaging tour de force.

Album Review

The Rite Of Trio: Getting All The Evil Of The Piston Collar!

Read "Getting All The Evil Of The Piston Collar!" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
October 3, 2016

There is nothing to do but to dive in and experience the full force of The Rite of Trio head-on and fearlessly. With Getting All The Evil Of The Piston Collar!, guitarist Andre Bastos Silva, bassist Filipe Louro and drummer Pedro Melo Alves draw energy from the dark side and aim to conquer and subdue the world from their perch in Portugal. If you can imagine the merging of death metal with high jazz musicianship, and ...

Album Review

Kenny Washington: Moanin'

by Chris Mosey
October 3, 2016

Feed “Kenny Washington" into Google and up come “Kenny Washington (Football player)," “Kenny Washington (Basketball)" and “Kenny Washington (Drummer)." None of whom is the Kenny Washington who wowed Danish jazz audiences for three nights at Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen in October 2015. That Kenny Washington was born in New Orleans and presently inhabits the Bay Area. Christian Brorsen, music director of the Jazzhus, says, “A great affection developed between Kenny and the audience. The public simply wouldn't let ...

Out and About: The Super Fans

Meet Francesca "Cha Cha" Miano

by Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper
October 3, 2016

A Newport Jazz Festival-New York concert at Carnegie Hall in the early 1970s got Queens native Francesca “Cha Cha" Miano hooked on hearing live jazz--even though, she says, some of the music she heard on the mixed bill that night was way ahead of her at the time. Little did she know that her magnificent obsession would eventually lead to an unexpected close friendship with one of the most important and influential jazz vocalists of our time.

Multiple Reviews

In Jazz We Trust: On The Politically Inspired Work Of Delfeayo Marsalis and Ted Nash

by Dan Bilawsky
October 2, 2016

The current state of American politics--a veritable cesspool that makes reality television seem sane by comparison--leaves little to feel good about. Moral compasses are skewed, elected officials bicker like fractious toddlers, and candidates ranging from the lunatic sybarite variety to the bumptiously insincere seek the highest office in the land with strong approval from the loud and entrenched in opposing corners. It's enough to make you cry, sigh, and check out completely. But before you withdraw from any discussion of ...