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

Lena Circus with Itaru Oki: Zanshin

Read "Zanshin" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 3, 2016

Guitarist Antoine Letellier and guitarist/reed player Nicolas Moulin formed Lena Circus as a duo in 1999 and the pair produced nine recordings that were marketed primarily in France. Expanding to a trio formation with percussionist Guillaume Arbonville in 2003 they released a prolific ten albums by 2012. Mid-way through that decade, the group began to add one-off guests to the lineup, often in non-conventional roles such as “amplified voice," zither and ukulele. On Zanshin the trio is joined by Japanese ...

Live Review

Helsinki Festival 2016

by Anthony Shaw
September 3, 2016

Love Proge Helsinki Festival (Huvila Tent) Helsinki, Finland August 28, 2016 Richard Thompson couldn't have said it better than he wrote in Fairport Convention's first major single Meet on the Ledge: If you really mean it, it all comes round again. That was in 1968, two years after three central players in the Finnish music scene, including the jazz trumpeter and impresario Henrik Otto Donner, set up the label that was to ...

Album Review

Black Art Jazz Collective: Black Art Jazz Collective - Presented By The Side Door Jazz Club

Read "Black Art Jazz Collective - Presented By The Side Door Jazz Club" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
September 3, 2016

Formed by a cross-section of contemporary jazz's leading voices, the Black Art Jazz Collective has a simple goal as political as it is salutary: create a platform for artists of the same generation to collaborate musically and promote the recognition of African- American cultural and political figures.Comprised of Wayne Escoffery (tenor sax),Jeremy Pelt (trumpet), James Burton III (trombone), Xavier Davis (piano),Vicente Archer(bass), and Jonathan Blake(drums), the BAJC hearkens back to similar creative groups established at various points in ...

Album Review

Iro Haarla: Ante Lucem for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Quintet

Read "Ante Lucem for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Quintet" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 3, 2016

Finnish pianist/harpist/composer Iro Haarla devoted the early part of her career to the music of her then-husband, the late drummer/composer Edward Vesala. On her own she has released two quintet albums on ECM: Northbound (2005) and Vespers (2010). That quintet (with a couple of personnel substitutions) is integrated into an extended composition with symphony orchestra on Ante Lucem. Trumpeter Hayden Powell (in place of Mathias Eick) and saxophonist Trygve Seim are on the front line, joined by double bassist Ulf ...

Jazz Near Me

Paris Jazz Scene: Summer 2016

by Patricia Myers
September 2, 2016

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has only two things toward which we drift as we grow older--intelligence and good manners." And I would add great jazz! Although many think that much of Paris shuts down in mid-to late-summer, that's not true for most of the 30-some regular jazz clubs, although a few close for two weeks ...

Live Review

Abdullah Ibrahim in Stunning Recital at the 30th Annual Oslo Jazz Festival

by John Ephland
September 2, 2016

Abdullah Ibrahim Universitetets Aula 30th Annual Oslo Jazz Festival Oslo, Norway August 16, 2016 Alternately rhapsodic and episodic, pianist/composer Abdullah Ibrahim filled the airs of the 500- seat Universitetets Aula with melody upon melody, all of it improvised yet seemingly composed. The occasion was the 30th annual Oslo Jazz Festival, August 14-20, and Ibrahim was going it alone, a scheduled trio performance canceled due to rumors of a terrorist ...

Album Review

Dustin Laurenzi: Natural Language

Read "Natural Language" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
September 2, 2016

With his sonorous tone and his watershed style, tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi is one of the most promising emergent talents on the Chicago scene. With his various ensembles, in a few short years, he has recorded handful of uniformly exciting sessions. Their trademark is their foothold in the jazz tradition while simultaneously flirting with a freer more modern sound.On his Natural Language Laurenzi and his quartet interpret seven of his fluent and intriguing originals. The individual expressions of ...

Album Review

Tigran Hamasyan/Arve Henriksen/Eivind Aarset/Jan Bang: Atmosphères

Read "Atmosphères" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 2, 2016

Assembled at the invitation of ECM label-founder Manfred Eicher, pianist Tigran Hamasyan, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, guitarist Eivind Aarset and electronic sampling artist, Jan Bang came together for less than one half of a week in mid-2014 to create the double CD Atmosphères. There is a fair amount of inter-group history, Hamasyan being more the outsider but having worked with Bang at the 2013 Punkt Festival. There is, not surprisingly, a pristine quality to the music that one would expect from ...

Album Review

Sanjay Divecha and Secret: Sanjay Divecha and Secret

Read "Sanjay Divecha and Secret" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 2, 2016

Ravi Shankar has passed, but sounds from India continue to filter into the American jazz consciousness via the children of immigrants: pianist Vijay Iyer, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, violinist Trina Basu and cellist Amali Premawardhana of Karavika; violinist Arun Ramamurthy. But India-born Sanjay Divecha, who spent fifteen years in the United States, and studied at the Guitar Institute of Los Angeles, went home to Mumbai in 2003, where he has explored the deep Indian musician roots, Carnatic and Hindustani, ...

Album Review

Daniela Schächter: Vanheusenism: A Tribute to Jimmy Van Heusen

Read "Vanheusenism: A Tribute to Jimmy Van Heusen" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 2, 2016

For the first time, Italian-born vocalist and pianist Daniela Schächter devotes her fourth album to a single songwriter: Jimmy Van Heusen. Even a cursory glance at the song list will show that to be no limitation, as these are some of the most enduring classics in the Great American Songbook. Van Heusen had a long association with Frank Sinatra ("All the Way," “Come Fly With Me"), but his catalog has seen countless performances in pop and jazz: “Darn That Dream," ...