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

Mark Fox Quartet +: Three Octaves Above The Sun

Read "Three Octaves Above The Sun" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
August 1, 2016

Making the decision to disconnect from music for over a decade has brought saxophonist Mark Fox an invigorating sense of motivation and inspiration, evident on Three Octaves Above The Sun. Committed to a personal spiritual quest, Fox's music is a hybrid of post-bop, progressive, African and transcendental, with intentional homage to those masters who determined the path of enlightenment through jazz. Now back in Denver where he was raised, Fox has made a triumphant return to his roots, ...

Album Review

Masahiko Togashi & Masayuki Takayanagi: Pulsation

Read "Pulsation" reviewed by Nicola Negri

by Nicola Negri
August 1, 2016

Virtually unnoticed in the West, the Japanese free jazz scene in the 1970s was bursting with creativity. The musicians shared a strong sense of adventure, as they welcomed the developments of creative music and free improvisation from USA and Europe while trying to find their own voice with a completely personal approach to improvised music. One of the main protagonists of that season was Masayuki Takayanagi, a strikingly original guitarist and musical thinker with a strong passion for both mainstream ...

Rediscovery

Sweet Billy Pilgrim: We Just Did What Happened and No One Came [2016 Kscope Remix/Remaster]

by John Kelman
July 31, 2016

Sweet Billy PilgrimWe Just Did What Happened and No One CameKscope Music2016 (2005) My how things have changed. Upon first encountering Britain's Sweet Billy Pilgrim at the 2007 Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway, funding was so diminutive that singer/songwriter/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/erstwhile leader Tim Elsenberg was unable to bring the full group; instead, he came with bassist/banjoist/background vocalist Anthony Bishop...and even had to use a borrowed Fender Stratocaster, which caused no shortage of tuning difficulties throughout the duo's ...

Album Review

Rick Parker/Li Daiguo: Free World Music

Read "Free World Music" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
July 31, 2016

Multi-instrumentalists Rick Parker, of Brooklyn, and China's Li Daiguo are practitioners of psychoacoustic science in an experimental duo format. Understanding the interaction of wave dissemination, physical experience and endless scientific studies is hardly necessary; as listeners we still hear, in music, what we want to hear. On Free World Music, the pair offer a dizzying array of themes, often sounding more like an ensemble than a twosome. Parker is the bona fide jazz presence here, a composer/trombonist ...

Album Review

Dan Blake: The Digging

Read "The Digging" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
July 31, 2016

Saxophonist Dan Blake is one of those musicians who are always on a quest to expand their musical horizons, to assimilate into his music any and all of his life experiences, musical or not. As both a player and a composer, Blake demonstrates an intensity coupled with a very fertile and searching mind. Aside from his latest album, Blake recently composed “The Dust Moves" for the The Mivos Quartet, which performed, with Blake, at the 2016 Winter Jazzfest. This stunning ...

Album Review

Birmingham Jazz Orchestra: Rough Boundaries

Read "Rough Boundaries" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
July 31, 2016

Rough Boundaries is the second album in the, to date, two-year history of the Birmingham Jazz Orchestra. A year on from debut album Burns--inspired by the poems of Scotland's own Robert Burns--the orchestra now looks away from the UK, to take inspiration from some of the great cities of Europe and North Africa. On Burns Orchestra founder Sean Gibbs took on the key roles of conductor and composer. This time he hands over those duties to Jacky Naylor, ...

Album Review

Jonas Cambien Trio: A Zoology of the Future

Read "A Zoology of the Future" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
July 31, 2016

Belgian-born pianist Jonas Cambien currently resides in Oslo and is supported by first-rate regional musicians on his debut outing as a leader. No doubt, this trio possesses a distinct personality as the artists seemingly concoct a horde of magic potions on a per-track basis. Here, free-form maneuvers evolve into tangible themes amid quirky advancements and spunky, off-kilter interplay. Each piece stands on its own. And from an avant-garde jazz perspective, the musicians often equalize the blustery improvisational segments with hummable ...

Live Review

The 2016 Laid Back Festival Featuring Gregg Allman, Jason Isbell, America, the Marshall Tucker Band, Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band, Orleans, Devon Allman and Levon

by Mike Perciaccante
July 30, 2016

Gregg Allman, Jason Isbell, America, the Marshall Tucker Band, Jaimoe's Jasssz Band, Orleans, Devon Allman and Levon The 2016 Laid Back Festival Nikon at Jones Beach Theater Wantagh, NY July 23, 2016 Starting out as the creative collaboration between Gregg Allman and Live Nation, the Laid Back Festival began as a one day celebration in August of 2015, at the picturesque Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on Long Island. Allman named the event ...

Album Review

Elisabeth Lohninger: Eleven Promises

Read "Eleven Promises" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
July 30, 2016

New York-based Elisabeth Lohninger and Walter Fischbacher have evolved into a solid power-center in the city's jazz community. They operated Lofish Recording Studios until 2015, when gentrification forced them to close door. The pair have been prolific with recordings, including: Beneath the Surface (Lofish, 2004); The Only Way Out is Up (Lofish, 2007); Songs of Love and Destruction (Lofish, 2010); Christmas in July (Lofish, 2011), Elisabeth Lohninger Quartet: Live (Lofish, 2012), and the most recent and intimate Elisabeth Lohninger & ...

Live Review

The 2016 Summerland Tour Featuring Sugar Ray, Everclear, Lit and Sponge

by Mike Perciaccante
July 30, 2016

Sugar Ray, Everclear, Lit and Sponge The Paramount The 2016 Summerland Tour Huntington, NY July 22, 2016 The Summerland Tour is a 1990s alternative rock 'n' roll tour that made its debut in 2012. The tour was created by Everclear's Art Alexakis and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath. The first edition of this package tour featured Everclear, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Lit and Marcy Playground. Over the years, LIVE, Filter, Soul Asylum, Fuel, American ...