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

Dion at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury

by Mike Perciaccante
August 6, 2016

Dion NYCB Theatre at Westbury Westbury, NY July 29, 2016 Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Famer, Dion has been in the music business for almost 60. That is a very long time. It's an even longer time when you consider that at 77-years-old, Dion is still vibrant, relevant and releasing music. In fact, earlier in 2016, Dion released his latest CD New York Is My Home on Blue Horizon Records. The album ...

Album Review

Sinikka Langeland: The Magical Forest

Read "The Magical Forest" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
August 6, 2016

Norwegian singer and kantele player Sinikka Langeland leads her Norwegian-Finnish-Swedish Starflowers quintet through a series of songs built upon myths and legends from Finnskogen, the forested area in eastern Norway bordering Sweden where Langeland has been based since 1992. The name means “forest of the Finns," reflecting the history of Finnish migration to the place during the 17th century. The quintet is augmented by the singers of the Trio Mediaeval, giving the folkloric element in Langeland's fusion of traditional and ...

Live Review

The 2016 Rock Hall Three for All: Heart, Cheap Trick and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

by Mike Perciaccante
August 6, 2016

Heart, Cheap Trick and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts Nikon at Jones Beach Theater The 2016 Rock Hall Three for All Wantagh, NY July 28, 2016 Cheap Trick was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame on April 8, 2016 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. Joan Jett was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, 2015 at Cleveland, OH's Public Hall. Heart was ...

Album Review

Steve Lehman: Sélébéyone

Read "Sélébéyone" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 6, 2016

The remastered edition of the Beastie Boys disc Check Your Head (Capitol, 2009) has a bonus disc with a live track from Budokan, Japan. A Japanese rapper, MC Poo, raps “Microphone Check" in broken English before continuing on in Japanese. Without the language, he knew what the Beasties were about and also without the Japanese language, we know what time it is. Same can be said for American saxophonist Steve Lehman's Sélébéyone. Sélébéyone or “intersection ," is a ...

Album Review

Carsten Dahl Trio: Simplicity

Read "Simplicity" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
August 6, 2016

Danish pianist Carsten Dahl has made many fine albums but none finer than his latest, Simplicity. He describes in a video posted on his record company Storyville's website, how it felt to create it: “I don't have any thoughts about what I play when I play. I focus a lot on not being the one playing, not having any thoughts, not having an expectation of a certain result or a certain sound." Looking a ...

Album Review

Krakauer's Ancestral Groove: Checkpoint

Read "Checkpoint" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 6, 2016

Clarinet master David Krakauer was born in raised in New York City. As he spread his considerable chops throughout NYC's classical, electronica and jazz scenes, he became known as a Klezmer specialist but just as often appeared as a soloist or member of various symphony orchestras, string quartets and chamber ensembles alongside a head-shaking variety of artists--Tzhak Perlman, Fred Wesley, John Zorn, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, the Klezmatics, and many others. “It's been just over 25 years ...

Album Review

Steve Turre: Colors for the Masters

Read "Colors for the Masters" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
August 6, 2016

When it comes to the contemporary trombone artists, there are two schools of exploration. Steve Turre is an advocate of the more melodic school of which elder champions include Curtis Fuller and J.J. Johnson. The more ebullient and bop-inflected side of things has its greatest proponent in Conrad Herwig. No one method should be considered the right path or wrong path to wander down, however Turre is quite outspoken when it comes to opinions on his contemporaries. He is also ...

Album Review

Chris Cheek: Saturday Songs

Read "Saturday Songs" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 5, 2016

The idea that jazz has to renew itself sometimes results in rather pretentious and purely intellectual experiments with form, but it is possible to play inventive and intellectually stimulating music without losing a sense of fun and inclusive curiosity. Saxophonist Chris Cheek is the proof. Cheek comes with a refreshingly unprejudiced approach to music and this is evident on his long-awaited follow- up to his previous album as a leader, Blues Cruise, (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2006). ...

Album Review

Nobuki Takamen: Live in Japan

Read "Live in Japan" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
August 5, 2016

When last heard from, guitarist/composer Nobuki Takamen had released his first solo album, Solo Guitar (2014). He is active on the New York scene, but has returned to his native Japan for an annual tour for many years. For his sixth album he has chosen to document live performances of his trio with bassist Toshiyuki Tanahashi and drummer Naoki Aikawa, long-time musical collaborators for more than a decade. Takamen is definitely a bebop-oriented player. Although this is an ...

Album Review

Cristián Alvear: Guitarist, Alone

Read "Guitarist, Alone" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
August 5, 2016

Leaving aside Jürg Frey's impressive contributions as a clarinetist, this two-CD set joins an already impressive list of Another Timbre releases featuring Frey as composer; these include Circles and Landscapes (2015), six solo piano pieces played by Philip Thomas, Grizzana and other pieces 2009-2014 (2015), a double CD of Frey compositions played by his own Ensemble Grizzana, and Wandelweiser Und So Weite ( 2012), the six-disc set featuring composers in and around the Wandelweiser collective that included three Frey pieces. ...