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

Erik Friedlander: Rings

Read "Rings" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
July 3, 2016

Repetition is sometimes seen as a bad thing. The mundane cycle of everyday life involving the same actions. However, it is only through repetition that differences can occur. A weekend is only special because it stands out as a difference from the ordinary week. But repetition is not only useful as a way of appreciating difference, it also has it is own poetry, which has been explored by minimalistic pioneers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. ...

Album Review

New Standard Jazz Orchestra: Waltz About Nothing

Read "Waltz About Nothing" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 3, 2016

Any orchestra that professes to establish a new standard had better be able to back that up. Happily for the listener, on its debut recording, Waltz About Nothing, Chicago's New Standard Jazz Orchestra can--and does. In a little more than two years, the NSJO has arisen as a worthy successor to one of the more exemplary ensembles ever to grace the Windy City, trumpeter Rob Parton's JazzTech Big Band. The equivalence seems predestined when one notes that no less than ...

Album Review

Mike Dillon: Functioning Broke

Read "Functioning Broke" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 3, 2016

As idiosyncratic as Mike Dillon's work has been with Critters Buggin' and Garage a Trois, it's well-nigh impossible not to fall under the spell of the music he creates all by himself on Functioning Broke. A deep dream-like quality emanates from his musicianship, most resonant in the warm glow of vibes that open “Half Right" and continues virtually unabated for the course of this unfortunately abbreviated (thirty-five minutes plus), right down to the similarly insinuating sounds of Indian percussion on ...

Album Review

Eggs Over Easy: Good 'n' Cheap: The Eggs Over Easy Story

Read "Good 'n' Cheap: The Eggs Over Easy Story" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 3, 2016

Because the pub-rock moment of the Seventies was essentially relegated to the British Isles and had no corollary in America, it remains a one-line footnote in the chronicles of contemporary rock. Yet as with so many (self-)limited niches of style, its proponents are as fervently devoted as its practitioners like Ducks Deluxe, Brinsley Schwarz and Dr. Feelgood. Yet history as documented on this 2CD package, will show it was, in fact, United States natives Eggs Over Easy who (re)ignited devotion ...

Album Review

Will Bernard: Out & About

Read "Out & About" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 3, 2016

As if more proof was necessary Out & About confirms guitarist Will Bernard is as skilled a bandleader as he is an instrumentalist. And both roles require an artful approach as this album makes clear: it's one thing to find talented musicians--as Bernard most certainly does here--it's quite another to elicit that talent in such a way it complements the talent (and personality) of each of the other musicians involved. In this context then Out & About is ...

Bailey's Bundles

Van Morrison: …It's Too Late to Stop Now…, Volumes I-IV

by C. Michael Bailey
July 2, 2016

Genius, Innovation, that “Thing..." oh, and Live Recording... Early in this new century, All About Jazz published my list of the ten best live rock recordings with a second installment addressing “the best of the rest." Ten years of praise and ridicule have led me to accept how naive I was to believe that I could reduce such a list to so few recordings (even in the compressed period of 1969 to 1979). Certainly a worthy addition to ...

Album Review

Miles Davis Quintet: Miles Smiles

Read "Miles Smiles" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
July 2, 2016

Without a hint of a doubt, the trumpeter Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet which he led in the mid-'60s rekindled his fire for music resulting in exuberant and adventurous music. Davis was reenergized by his young band which vitality and enthusiasm has made a big difference. Not only did it stretch Miles' boundaries, as the band was taking chances and experimenting, but it also helped him get through a difficult period in his personal life (the deaths of his parents, ...

Album Review

Foghat: Under the Influence

Read "Under the Influence" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 2, 2016

At this point in its history, Foghat's family tree may be approaching the density of the very band from which they originally emerged, Savoy Brown. Although bassist/vocalist Craig MacGregor is a second generation Foghatter, drummer Roger Earl is the only original member of the group still in the lineup that recorded Under the Influence, but as the liner notes state, the spirit of the departed vocalist/guitarist/composer Lonesome Dave Peverett and lead and slide guitarist Rod Price permeates their 'new ' ...

Album Review

Gina Schwarz Unit featuring Jim Black: Woodclock

Read "Woodclock" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
July 2, 2016

Austrian, Vienna-based double bassist Gina Schwarz found a true, like-minded musical partner that helped her realize her irreverent vision for today's jazz. American drummer Jim Black joined Schwarz's quintet for her fifth album, solidifying her reputation as a “live-cell therapy to jazz," an opinionated musician who likes to play with opposites--wise and free, gentle and wild, contemplative and energetic, organic and eccentric, blending acoustic instruments with electronics. When you think more about it, these descriptions characterize Black's great ...

Live Review

2016 Taste of Chaos Tour: Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack, Saosin and the Early November

by Mike Perciaccante
July 2, 2016

Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack, Saosin and the Early November Nikon at Jones Beach Theater Taste of Chaos Wantagh, NY June 14, 2016 Emo is a style of rock music that resembles punk while having much more complex arrangements and erudite lyrics. One of the basic aspects of the subgenre is the fact that the lyrics deal with more poignant and/or emotional subjects. Hence the name. After a ...