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

Giovanni Guidi/Gianluca Petrella/Louis Sclavis/Gerald Cleaver: Ida Lupino

Read "Ida Lupino" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 15, 2016

This largely improvised quartet project is built upon the improvisational rapport of Italians pianist Giovanni Guidi and trombonist Gianluca Petrella. In addition to their work in trumpeter Enrico Rava's band--they appear together on Tribe (ECM, 2011)--they have worked as a duo which seeks encounters with fellow improvisers. Here they are brought together with American drummer Gerald Cleaver and French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, for a set of music that is extroverted and atmospheric by turns. There is no bass, ...

Album Review

Neil Cowley Trio: Spacebound Apes

Read "Spacebound Apes" reviewed by Phil Barnes

by Phil Barnes
September 14, 2016

The impact of ambition and competitiveness in a creative pursuit can be double edged. As a spur to action, an attempt to fulfil potential it is surely a positive--think of the mutual admiration and competition between say Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney in the mid-1960s for example. But there are times when a competitive nature can be destructive--a need always to be “right," to force your ill-considered views on others irrespective of the facts and, frankly, to be a bit ...

Album Review

Radio Intro: Sketches on the Radio

Read "Sketches on the Radio" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 14, 2016

Radio Intro is a duo project of Israeli pianist Yakir Arbib & Italian drummer Roberto Giaquinto. Arbib is an award-winning pianist (he won Second Prize at the Montreux International Piano Jazz Competition in July, 2015) equally skilled in classical music and jazz--he has a special interest in restoring the role of improvisation to classical music performance, as shown by his Kickstarter recording project Classical Improvisation. The duo was formed in Rome, Italy, in 2008 just after Arbib won ...

Album Review

Harold Lopez-Nussa: El Viaje

by James Nadal
September 14, 2016

Prodigious pianist Harold López-Nussa has come full circle. With numerous acclaimed recordings, and acknowledged as a seasoned performer on international stages, he returns home and records El Viaje in Havana, Cuba, offering musical insights on the world through his piano. Continuing with his established trio format, which includes his brother Ruy Adrián López-Nussa on drums and Senegalese bassist Alune Wade, he improvises upon vast classical influences while adhering to his Cuban roots, concocting an exceptional style of global jazz.

Album Review

Bent Knee: Say So

Read "Say So" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 14, 2016

Even though I haven't had an opportunity to check out this Boston-based ensemble's first two albums, I've heard the buzz within prog rock circles about the positive output of its multifaceted soundscapes, variable modes of execution and exhilarating live performances. Moreover, Say So, marks the band's debut outing for Cuneiform Records. Led by vocalist Courtney Swain who vaults though octaves with the greatest of ease, the program amounts to a seamless convergence through highly artistic rock sensibilities amid ...

Live Review

The Julian Lage Trio at SFJAZZ

by David Becker
September 13, 2016

The Julian Lage Trio SFJAZZ Center San Francisco Sept. 11, 2016 Guitar virtuosity was the theme for the opening week of San Francisco presenter SFJAZZ's 2016 season. In the intimate Joe Henderson Lab at the SFJAZZ Center, that meant four nights of modern guitar wunderkind Julian Lage working through a string of alternately reflective and bracingly visceral tunes from his new album, the impressive Arclight (Mack Avenue, 2016). In the much larger main ...

Live Review

Bojan Z at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

by Ian Patterson
September 13, 2016

Bojan Z Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin, Ireland September 4, 2016 It's been ten years since All About Jazz last encountered Bojan Z in a live solo context, in Cambodia, where the France-based, Serbian pianist gave a riveting performance that drew heavily from Solobsession (Label Bleu, 2000). Although often playing in a solo context, it took Z another dozen years to record another solo album, the exquisite Soul Shelter (Emarcy, 2012). This concert, an Improvised ...

Album Review

Nels Cline: Lovers

Read "Lovers" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
September 13, 2016

The power of Nels Cline's Lovers does not stem from his guitar mastery. It flows from the solidity of its finely orchestrated vision. Rendered over 18 pieces and marking the fulfillment of a 25-year endeavor, the album explores the contours of intimacy through a series of compositions ranging from ambient abstraction, to blues, to jazz ballads, to excruciatingly taut hybrids that fold this diversity together in layers of elegance. Never marred by the indulgences or lack of focus ...

Album Review

Magnus Ostrom: Parachute

Read "Parachute" reviewed by Mike Jacobs

by Mike Jacobs
September 13, 2016

Some things take time. Perhaps Magnus Ostrom's third offering Parachute, will signal the end of the need for comparisons to his former iconic enterprise--The Esbjorn Svensson Trio. Or perhaps not. Tall order, that. Even eight years and multiple solo albums after Svensson's tragic death, EST still casts a long shadow for both its surviving members. One that Ostrom may have indeed earned passage from with his group (likewise for EST bassist Dan Berglund with his group, ...

Album Review

Tomo Jacobson: When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end

Read "When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
September 13, 2016

Every record seeks its ideal listener, but this concept is very abstract and often remains a riddle, but to Polish-born bassist, Tomo Jacobson, his ideal listener is very real and responded in the best possible way to the music on his album When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end. The name of the listener is the iconic bassist and composer, William Parker, ...