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

Skordatura PE: Empty The Headbin

Read "Empty The Headbin" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 15, 2016

The Belgian quarter has altered their name, actually shortened it from Skordatura Punkjazz Ensemble to Skordatura PE. They still are jazz artists playing punk jazz, not just punks playing jazz. There is an important distinction here. You see they can play, no really play. Their Punkjazz is that of Jaco Pastorious, Mike Stern, and Wayne Krantz-- gritty, rocked-out non-commercial jazz. Empty The Headbin follows their inaugural, self-produced release How To Chase A Minute In One Second (2014) ...

Catching Up With

Jane Monheit and her Muses...

by C. Michael Bailey
July 14, 2016

When vocalist Jane Monheit blew the music community's hair back with her debut recording Never Never Land (N-Coded Music) in 2000, she was 22-years old, beautiful, sensual, soon-to-be-married and talented with chops to spare. By 2016, Monheit had released nine additional studio recordings, including the well-received Come Dream With Me (N-Coded Music, 2001) and Surrender (Concord, 2007). Her most recent recording Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald (Emerald City Records, 2016) elevates her to a class by herself. All About ...

Live Review

Craig Handy Quartet at Sunset Jazz Club

by Patricia Myers
July 14, 2016

Craig Handy Quartet Hommage a Dexter Gordon Sunset Jazz Club Paris, France July 8, 2016 Tributes to noted jazz musicians are frequent throughout Europe, especially in Paris. Each “hommage" centers on the hits and compositions of a star, performed by a musician with a high skill-level for the instrument identified with the honored one. For this two-night booking, it was a salute by New York tenor saxophonist Craig Handy to Dexter ...

Album Review

Lefteris Kordis: Mediterrana

Read "Mediterrana" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
July 14, 2016

Jazz's ability to absorb new musical traditions and take advantage of novel instrumentation is one of its most notable features. Fans of this form of experimentation will appreciate pianist Lefteris Kordis' forays into merging jazz with traditional Greek and other Mediterranean lineages. Delivered as a series of piano trio plus guest artist compositions, Mediterrana's strength is the subtle blending of timbers Kordis deftly guides from behind the piano, and a consistently restrained approach which results in a refined ...

Album Review

Sri Hanuraga: To The Universe

Read "To The Universe" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
July 14, 2016

Pianist Sri Hanuraga is another amazing young talent from Indonesia. To The Universe is his debut album as a leader, though he's previously recorded with the young Polish vibraphonist Dominik Bukowski and Indonesian bassist Kevin Yosua. Recorded in Amsterdam with a European band, Hanuraga nevertheless draws quite heavily on the music of his native land for inspiration. The result is a consistently engaging synthesis of modern jazz and ethnic Indonesian music, with a little bit of progressive fusion thrown in. ...

Live Review

Keiji Haino in London with Charles Hayward and John Butcher

by Jack Gold-Molina
July 14, 2016

Keiji Haino Copeland Gallery with Charles Hayward July 8, 2016 Cafe Oto with John Butcher July 9, 2016 London, England Keiji Haino, guitarist and founder of Japanese experimental-psychedelic rock band Fushitsusha and reputed experimental musician who has recorded with the likes of Peter Brötzmann, Sabu Toyozumi, and Thurston Moore, performed in London for two nights on July 8th at the Copeland Gallery and July 9th at Cafe Oto. On Friday ...

Album Review

Kali. Z. Fasteau: Intuit

by Mark Corroto
July 14, 2016

To pigeonhole a musician is to ghettoize a music. But we all do it. Yes, Kali Z. Fasteau is a pianist, but also a drummer, a cellist and a flutist. From her twenty plus recordings she refuses to be fixed with a descriptor. She also performs on the nai, kaval and shakuhachi flutes, is a vocalist, plays viola, violin, mizmar, soprano sax, synthesizers, and sanza. Like a modern Rahsaan Roland Kirk, she just makes music. Her brand (another ...

Album Review

Kinga: Guess Who I Saw Today

Read "Guess Who I Saw Today" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
July 14, 2016

Born in Poland and eventually settling in Ottawa, Ontario, Canadian songstress Kinga reveals her debut recording Guess Who I Saw Today presenting a terrific selection of standards and reimagined classics produced and arranged by friend and pianist extraordinaire Bill King. Gifted with a dark crisp voice, Kinga's love for jazz was developed at an early age with the help of her father who performed in a jazz cabaret and her mom who played pop and jazz vocal recordings from the ...

Book Review

How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia

by C. Michael Bailey
July 13, 2016

“As you develop your listening skills, [answer this question]: Are the musicians playing the notes with precision, almost as if they are reading music from some Platonic ideal score, or are they handling them roughly, torturing them to make them speak the truth?" I see [Billie Holiday] more as a diagnostician of the soul, whose music reaches into those vulnerabilities and emotional risks that many of us avoid or actively repress. Ted Gioia, How To Listen ...

Multiple Reviews

Jan Lundgren: Swedish Ballads... & More... Quietly There

by Chris Mosey
July 13, 2016

Are Scott Hamilton and Harry Allen, two American saxophonists playing technically accomplished and downright enjoyable jazz, the Zoot Sims and Al Cohn of our day? The answer must be Very Likely, to judge from an excellent two-album reissue by Danish company Stunt Records. Hamilton and Allen are featured playing with quartets headed by Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren. Hamilton plays seven Swedish ballads; Allen nine songs by Johnny Mandel. The emphasis is on respectful interpretation as opposed to ...