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

Chat Noir: Nine Thoughts For One Word

Read "Nine Thoughts For One Word" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
October 1, 2016

There's something about RareNoise Records that keeps you on your toes. Listen to any title side by side, and you're likely to end up scratching your head, if not enjoying a gentle smile or subtle rhapsody. Okay, some of the music can be scabrous, perhaps unlistenable. But guess what? It all fits under the RN moniker, somehow, someway. Take the Italian trio Chat Noir's Nine Thoughts For One Word. It exhales on a theme of Harold Budd, himself ...

Album Review

Thollem McDonas: Your Letter Must Have Followed Me All Over The World

Read "Your Letter Must Have Followed Me All Over The World" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
October 1, 2016

Coming at improvisational music from the classical realm, pianist Thollem McDonas remains resolutely outside of the main stream of the jazz world. Primarily inspired by, as he puts it in his liner notes to Meeting at the Parting Place, ... “European concert music from the Renaissance to the 20th Century and jazz, particularly of the '60s and '70s" McDonas has consciously chosen a more difficult—but more artistically rewarding—path. He's one of those rare artists whose modus operandi is predicated upon ...

Interview

Fábio Torres: The Making of Modern Brazilian Jazz

by Samuel Quinto FRSA
September 30, 2016

When such a vast style as Latin Jazz is explored by musicians of various nationalities, when rhythmic elements are combined, when a portion of good taste and brilliance is added to this mixture, the result could not be different: The Making of Modern Brazilian Jazz. Fabio Torres is a great example of all this. With Trio Corrente he has sought nothing less than excellence in composition and interpretation. A result that led him to win the Grammy Award ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii / Joe Fonda with Natsuki Tamura: Duet

by Karl Ackermann
September 30, 2016

Two of creative music's most inventive forces come together on Duet. Musical restiveness is at the core of pianist/accordionist and composer Satoko Fujii. With a catalogue three-score deep, she has covered formations from large orchestra to solo where the common denominator is her wide and daring exploration of improvisational spaces. Her adroit aptitude for moving through--and sometimes combining--elements of her native Japanese folk music, classical and discordant free improvisation, have made her one of the more consistently interesting artists in ...

Album Review

Matt Piet: Of Sound Mind

Read "Of Sound Mind" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
September 30, 2016

Pianist Matt Piet is most definitely a thinking man's player, roughly on a par with Ron Stabinsky (see Free For One), but with less notoriety (at least for now). Appearing as a member of the cooperative group Four Letter Words on Blow, he seemed to drive the music with a strong, clear musical personality. Of Sound Mind is his recording debut as a leader, and is intended as a major statement of intent. The instrumentation is that of ...

Album Review

Masayuki Takayanagi: Angry Waves Vol.1&2

Read "Angry Waves Vol.1&2" reviewed by Nicola Negri

by Nicola Negri
September 30, 2016

Jinya Disc continues to explore the unissued recordings of Masayuki Takayanagi, one of the most original guitarists of the excellent Japanese free jazz scene, active from the 1950s until his untimely passing in 1991. This time we have a live recording (split in two CDs) of a 1984 show by the aptly named Angry Waves trio, with Nobuyoshi Ino on bass and Hiroshi Yamazaki on drums, both on the forefront of Tokyo's free music scene and habitual collaborators of Takayanagi. ...

Album Review

Ron Carter Quartet & Vitoria Maldonado: Brasil L.I.K.E

Read "Brasil L.I.K.E" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 30, 2016

The road that connects Brazilian music and jazz--the essential thematic nexus on this collaborative venture that brings bassist Ron Carter (and his quartet), vocalist Vitoria Maldonado, Ruria Duprat's Brasilian Orchestra, and a handful of guest soloists into the same line of thinking--has always been a two way street, as both forms benefit and borrow from one another. Those on the jazz side have often found new harmonic angles to explore, gently undulating rhythms to coast upon, and beautiful songs built ...

Live Review

Bibi Ferreira at Symphony Space

by Ernest Barteldes
September 30, 2016

Bibi Ferreira Symphony Space New York, NY September 23, 2016 On the second of her two-night residence at The Upper West Side's Symphony Space, Bibi Ferreira took to the stage with her “Four Times Bibi" show, which brings together four of her previous shows in which she paid tribute to Frank Sinatra, Argentinean tango legend Carlos Gardel, Portuguese fado singer Amalia Rodrigues and her larger than life interpretation of the music of ...

Live Review

Hot Autumn Nights featuring Peter Noone's Herman's Hermits, the Grass Roots, the Box Tops and Gary Lewis & The Playboys at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury

Read "Hot Autumn Nights featuring Peter Noone's Herman's Hermits, the Grass Roots, the Box Tops and Gary Lewis & The Playboys at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
September 30, 2016

Peter Noone's Herman's Hermits, the Grass Roots, the Box Tops and Gary Lewis & The Playboys NYCB Theatre at Westbury Hot Autumn Nights Westbury, NY September 17, 2016 It was a night of nostalgic hits at the cozy NYCB Theatre at Westbury. Though the four bands that compromised the Hot Autumn Nights tour achieved most of their acclaim in the '60s and '70s, each still had a few tricks up their sleeves. Each band ...

Album Review

Michael Moynihan Quartet: Chronicles

Read "Chronicles" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 29, 2016

Tucson, Arizona is not the first place most people associate with jazz. But it's where saxophonist Michael Moynihan grew up, and the setting for his debut album Chronicles. He says “I try to incorporate the settings as an integral part of the music on Chronicles, and have selected all musicians who are based in Tucson or from there. The album was also recorded and mixed in the Old Pueblo." Having never been to Tucson, I can't say how well this ...