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.

Book Review

Kickback City: Deluxe Edition

by Doug Collette
July 24, 2016

Kickback City Ian Rankin/Tim Truman/Rory Gallagher 40 Pages ISBN: B019GLERXO Eagle Rock 2016 Notwithstanding titles such as “Deluxe Edition" of Irish Tour '74 (Legacy Recordings, 2014)or the almost equally splendid archiving that is Notes From San Francisco (Eagle Rock, 2011), Kickback City Deluxe Edition is the most distinctive entry in Rory Gallagher's discography. Two collections of studio and concert tracks highlight the detective mystery theme running through Gallagher's later original material, all of ...

Album Review

Boy's Big Band: Return

by Jack Bowers
July 24, 2016

In the decade spanning 1960-70, composer / saxophonist Boy Edgar (1915-1980) led one of The Netherlands' most acclaimed and adventurous big bands, a contemporary of the massive Metropole Orchestra and precursor of the renowned Dutch Jazz Orchestra. Return consists of nine never-before-released concert performances recorded during the band's heyday in 1965-66 including the first recording of Theo Loevendie's forward-looking “Finch Eye." To augment the band's cadre of esteemed Dutch musicians (alto saxophonist Piet Noordijk, tenor Toon van Vliet, bass trombonist ...

Book Review

Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy by Richard Carlin

by C. Michael Bailey
July 24, 2016

Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy Richard Carlin 294 Pages ISBN: # 978-1496805706 University Press of Mississippi 2016 Well, I don't suppose it is an understatement to say that club owner and mid-20th Century music entrepreneur Morris Levi was a Son-of-a-bitch. That has been very well documented before Richard Carlin's in depth and informative biography, Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy. What Carlin has done is bring together ...

Album Review

Umlaut Big Band: Euro Swing Vol. 2

Read "Euro Swing Vol. 2" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 24, 2016

In Elvis Costello's autobiography, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (2015), he writes about his mother working in a music shop in the 1940s in Britain, and how she somehow became an expert in acquiring American jazz records from musicians and other international travelers. Certainly, she learned her craft from other music sellers and fans, maybe a better word would be fanatics. That American invention spread through Western Europe (and Eastern) like a virus. The music of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, ...

Album Review

Eric Revis Trio: Crowded Solitudes

Read "Crowded Solitudes" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
July 24, 2016

In following his own star, bassist Eric Revis continues to explore terrain further off the charts than erstwhile employers Branford Marsalis, Steve Coleman and Kurt Rosenwinkel. For the sequel to the acclaimed City of Asylum (Clean Feed, 2013), Revis retains Kris Davis on piano but replaces Andrew Cyrille with Gerald Cleaver in the drum chair. Revis mixes three group improvs with compositions from his own pen and that of others, but regardless of authorship, the execution remains an egalitarian affair ...

Album Review

Karavika: Of Earth And Sky

Read "Of Earth And Sky" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 23, 2016

Can't find a musical genre that fits the needs of your means of artistic expression? Then create your own. That's what Karavika did, with their gorgeous and provocative debut, Sunrise ( Self Produced, 2012). Call it raga/chamber/folk music if you will, a blend of multiple influences from multiple cultures, with a South Asian foundation in Sri Lanka and India. Violinist Trina Basu and cellist Amali Premawardhana co-lead Karavika, a trio that includes bassist Perry Wortman. With their sophomore ...

Album Review

Richie Cole: Pittsburgh

Read "Pittsburgh" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 23, 2016

After a lifetime of movin' on that has taken him from Trenton, NJ, to cities, towns and hamlets across the country and around the world, it seems that alto saxophonist Richie Cole, now fifty-eight, is at last ready to settle down and plant some roots. As he declares in his latest album's opening number, “I Have a Home in Pittsburgh"--and there's a palpable sense that this time he means it. If Cole's wandering days are indeed behind him, what remains ...

Album Review

New Focus: New Focus On Song

Read "New Focus On Song" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
July 23, 2016

The follow-up to Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson's 2012 eponymous debut album is an idiosyncratic amalgam of folk, jazz and classical music. The opening number “Air In D Minor," which subtly fades in at the start and fades out at the close, sounds like nothing so much as a cinematic theme tune, crucially embellished by the Glasgow String Quartet. “Green Park" is similarly soundtrack-ready with a relaxed tenor saxophone solo from Konrad Wiszniewski played over the string quartet.

Interview

Daniel Kramer: Bob Dylan, In Pictures

by Nenad Georgievski
July 23, 2016

Photography may not bring back what has long gone, but for many, it can provide a passage to explore important happenings or moments from people's personal histories. A simple photograph can encapsulate deep-rooted emotions and memories of people, events and times that have long gone. Photographer Daniel Kramer's photographs of singer and songwriter Bob Dylan taken over a period of one year in the mid-'60s immortalize the unique energy and the times of this greatest of poets. Kramer's inimitable lens ...

Album Review

Mammal Hands: Floa

by Phil Barnes
July 23, 2016

Mammal Hands debut album Animalia from autumn 2014 impressed with its emphasis on the overall collective effect over solo pyrotechnics, a choice that perfectly complemented the build and release of tension in the music. Of course in a trio set up the contributions of each member are always discernible and the twist of substituting Jordan Smart's saxophone for the bass position in the traditional piano trio gave the space that their sound needed. Floa, a Norse word for deluge or ...