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

Heine Hansen Trio: Signature

Read "Signature" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
August 17, 2016

Heine Hansen is a moderately talented Danish jazz pianist who, to fit the age, is being billed as eco-friendly. The liner notes, for this, his first album, are titled “The Green Groove" and kick off with a quote from Van Morrison: “Rave on, Walt Whitman, nose down in wet grass." Next minute we lurch perilously from Van The Man to Beatrix Potter with “the birds almost bursting out of their little feathered suits." Jemima Puddle-Duck and Peter ...

Album Review

Rich Halley 5: The Outlier

Read "The Outlier" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 17, 2016

The Outlier feels like the third part of a triptych which started with Creating Structure, followed by Eleven. The former recording demonstrated how structure can be created during improvisation, while the latter how more- or-less composed music with structure can be the foundational basis for improvisation. The record at hand mixes the two concepts thoroughly, so much so that, with help from the liner, one would be hard pressed to tell which tracks are composed and which are ...

Album Review

Per Mathisen/Frode Alnæs/Giraldo Piloto: Sounds Of 3

Read "Sounds Of 3" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
August 17, 2016

Norwegian bassist Per Mathisen (aka “The Bass Viking") leads an exciting, empathetic, virtuosic fusion jazz trio on Sounds Of 3. This is a modern electric trio in the same vein as bassist Jonas Hellborg's trio with guitarist Shawn Lane and drummer Jeff Sipe, guitarist Alex Machacek's trio with 5-string electric bassist Matthew Garrison (and Sipe again), or the current Jeff Sipe Trio with Mike Seal & Taylor Lee. Mathisen composed all of the music, with the exception of an arrangement ...

Interview

Jim Ridl: Opening Doors in the Big Apple

by Victor L. Schermer
August 16, 2016

Something fresh and vital is in the air when a truly creative musician is about to release a new album. Jim Ridl's Door in a Field: Volume II: Songs of the Green River, an independent release, is full of surprises and rich in musical ideas. The album is set to be released in early Fall, and the music will be premiered live in a celebration at the 55 Bar in New York on September 18, 2016. In a ...

Live Review

Amethyst at McHughs, Belfast

by Ian Patterson
August 16, 2016

Amethyst McHughs Belfast, N. Ireland August 10, 2016 With an increasing number of talented Northern Irish jazz musicians recording and gigging both home and abroad, jazz is this corner of the world seems to be in fairly robust health. Add to that Belfast's own jazz festival of international standing, Brilliant Corners- -making waves since 2013--and there's plenty to be excited about. Amethyst, a straight-ahead quintet featuring local and foreign-based musicians, is the latest group ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Mercedes Nicole

by AAJ Staff
August 16, 2016

About Mercedes Nicole Soft-spoken Mercedes Nicole has an intimate and alluring stage presence that reaches out beyond the limits of time and space. Her voice is haunting and arresting, wrapping itself like a comforter around the human experience, encouraging uplift, seeking not only triumph but healing. She is that exquisite mix of a Mezzo-Soprano & Contralto blend that permeates and interrupts one's thoughts. Often with uncanny control...she lingers. Her own compositions acknowledge life's obscure and melancholy moments ...

Album Review

Afro Bop Alliance Big Band: Revelation

Read "Revelation" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 16, 2016

Revelation is the sixth recording by drummer Joe McCarthy's sixteen-year-old Afro Bop Alliance (the last three by the big band after three by smaller incarnations), the first that has come this way for review. As McCarthy's stalwart ensemble is based in the Washington, D.C. area, the supposition is that a number of topnotch armed services musicians may be onboard, an inference that proves correct with names such as Luis Hernandez, Vince Norman, Jim Roberts, Brian MacDonald, Matt Niess, Rich Sigler, ...

Album Review

Sébastien Paindestre Trio: Paris

by Mark Sullivan
August 16, 2016

French pianist Sébastien Paindestre--last heard on the French/American quartet Atlantico's En Rouge (La Fabrica'son, 2016)--leads his own trio in a mostly-original program. The liner notes credit a Fender Rhodes technician, and the opener “Scottish Folk Song" (by Walt Weiskopf) shows why. After introducing the tune on acoustic piano with double bassist Jean-Claude Oleksiak and drummer Antoine Paganotti (with the pastoral sound promised by the title) the Rhodes makes a dramatic entry with a distorted, highly electronic sound. It's very distinctive, ...

Album Review

Scott Tixier: Cosmic Adventure

Read "Cosmic Adventure" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
August 16, 2016

If there is a French connection in contemporary jazz, it might arguably be the violin. Though the instruments role was explored by American pioneering ensembles, the French players added an innovative approach to improvisation, incorporating more of the European influence. Heralded as a violin trendsetter for the current generation, French wunderkind Scott Tixier returns four years after his debut “Brooklyn Bazaar" (Sunnyside 2012), with Cosmic Adventure, a celebration into the mystical nature of life. Acknowledged as a prodigious ...

Album Review

Carol Duboc: Open The Curtains

Read "Open The Curtains" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
August 16, 2016

Jazz vocalist and pianist Carol Duboc delivers her eighth solo album presenting seven vibrant originals and three cover tunes on a set of jazz, R&B, funk and Smooth-styled music on the exciting Open The Curtains. Making this a special recording for Duboc, the singer illuminates the power of women by assembling an all-star, talented cast of female players including Patrice Rushen, Sheila E, and Mindi Abair among others. The result of course, is a collection of hard-driving soulful songs with ...