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.

Multiple Reviews

New Sounds from the Danish Scene: Nina Baun, Henrik Pultz Melbye, Kenneth Dahl Knudsen & Jesper Thorn

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 30, 2016

For such a small country, there is an incredibly amount of diversity on the Danish jazz scene and new names and albums pop up all the time while experiments are made with forms and genres. The following four releases cover everything from diverse singer/songwriter vocal jazz to a modern saxophone trio, grand orchestral jazz and a meeting between jazz and electronica. Nina Baun Human Gateway Music 2016 There is a great ...

Album Review

Clarice & Sergio Assad: Reliquia

Read "Reliquia" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 30, 2016

Past and present are entwined in so many beautiful ways on Reliquia--the first collaboration between the father-daughter combination of guitarist Sergio Assad and vocalist Clarice Assad. Together these two trace a backwards course from today's vantage point, exploring their own musical bloodlines and those of their native Brazil. In doing so, they bring together a collection of originals that are timeless in their mode(s) of expression. While there's a certain degree of understatement in much of this ...

Album Review

Lou Caputo Not So Big Band: Uh Oh!

by Jack Bowers
June 30, 2016

Uh Oh! is the third recording by multi-instrumentalist Lou Caputo's Not So Big Band, which has been performing in New York City for more than a decade. The band's name epitomizes its relatively spare front line: two trumpets, three saxophones, trombone and tuba. There is, on the other hand, nothing spare about the band's ability to sound like a credibly larger ensemble, nor its propensity to swing through a dozen well-framed charts based for the most part on jazz compositions ...

Live Review

Bobby Zankel and Friends at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

by Victor L. Schermer
June 30, 2016

Bobby Zankel and Friends Philadelphia Museum of Art Art After 5 Philadelphia, PA June 24, 2016 Art After 5 is a long standing concert series held in the Great Hall of the Philadelphia Art Museum featuring local and international jazz and other musicians, often with the intention of breaking new ground. A diverse audience strolled the art exhibits and then settled into the music along with fine dining and beverages. It was like ...

Album Review

Zach Larmer Electric Band: Inner Circle

Read "Inner Circle" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
June 30, 2016

On Miami-based American composer/guitarist Zach Larmer's debut album entitled Inner Circle, he emphasizes his instrumental virtuosity and compositional finesse. Not only does he compose five of the seven tracks, Bassist Juan Pablo Diaz pens “Friedrichshain" and one standard completes the set. Larmer certainly establishes himself as a force to reckoned with in the modern jazz guitar community. Still, as much as Larmers' playing and ear is rooted in the deeper jazz tradition, there are equal chunks of more forward-looking sounds, ...

Album Review

Marcello Pellitteri: Acceptance

by Jim Olin
June 30, 2016

A heavy air of melancholy hangs over award-winning drummer/composer Marcello Pellitteri's new album Acceptance. There is a serious reason for this, a tragic one, in fact. The record is dedicated to Pellitteri's daughter Veronica, who died at a young age nearly two years ago. The pain of loss can be keenly felt on several tracks on this extremely personal and emotionally powerful release; however, there is a love of life as well that ultimately sees better days ahead.

Album Review

Mark Solborg / Herb Robertson: Tuesday Prayers

Read "Tuesday Prayers" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 29, 2016

Nothing will come out of nothing, but maybe, if two musical friends meet in a sacred place, notes will start to sing. In the beginning, everything is just a sketch, a preparation for actual composition. The ancient flute whispers and a steel string guitar maps the railroads of faraway places. The flute becomes a trumpet and says, “I know you." They have played together before, Herb Robertson and Mark Solborg. Tonight, they speak together ...

Album Review

Elliot Galvin Trio: Punch

by Roger Farbey
June 29, 2016

Punch is the follow-up to British pianist Elliot Galvin's debut album Dreamland, released in 2014 and his first for Edition Records. The title track opens with an ancient recording of a Punch and Judy show which forms a recurring leitmotif within the number and at a few other points throughout the album. The ensuing trio's performance contains all the vituperative attack of Mr Punch, replete with fascinating staccato interludes of interspersed and alternating bouts of silence, the Punch recording and ...

Album Review

Jane Ira Bloom: Early Americans

Read "Early Americans" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 29, 2016

One jazz music's premier soprano saxophonists, Jane Ira Bloom, crafted a career-defining recording with Sixteen Sunsets (Outline Records, 2013). So how does she follow that up? With an alteration of her quartet trajectory. Bloom's recorded output has consisted, over a career that began in the late 90s, of a series of mostly quartet sets, featuring terrific pianists, including Fred Hersch and Jamie Saft and Dominic Fallacaro in the piano chair. For Early Americans, the piano disappears, and Bloom ...

Album Review

Elektra Kurtis: Bridges From The East

Read "Bridges From The East" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
June 29, 2016

Elektra Kurtis is an incredibly talented composer and violinist; her album, Bridges from the East, celebrates the composer's Greek, Mediterranean and Southern European heritage. Her compositions are deeply personal with elements referencing different music styles and origins, both reflecting the sounds of Eastern Europe and North Africa. The European influences are by 20th Century classical composers such as Bartok, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, with the influences of jazz and Arabic classical music being represented by the melodic and harmonic colors and ...