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

Autobahn: Of the Tree

Read "Of the Tree" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 23, 2016

A jazz trio named Autobahn, from Toronto, Canada, with an unusual make-up--piano, sax and drums--is just asking to called “experimental" on their modernistic recording, Of The Tree. And why not? Eliminating the bass (the obvious missing link) makes for new atmospheres, and creates new spaces. Looking for comparisons, Momentum Space (Verve Records, 1999), a masterpiece of the sparsely-populated piano/sax/drums genre by free jazz piano legend Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Dewey Redman and drummer Elvin Jones, is one that comes to mind--a ...

Album Review

Klaus Gesing, Bjorn Meyer, Samuel Rohrer: Amiira

by John Eyles
June 23, 2016

The trio of Swiss drummer & percussionist Samuel Rohrer, Swedish bass guitarist Björn Meyer and German reedsman Klaus Gesing first came together in 2013 when they released their only previous recording, open_source_music. Before they joined forces, each of the three had had years of experience on the road playing various styles of music. On coming together, their stated intention was to dissolve the borders between improvisation and composition, with the music on that debut recording demonstrating that they lived up ...

Album Review

Freddie Redd: With Due Respect

Read "With Due Respect" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
June 23, 2016

Freddie Redd is one of the last living links to the golden age of modern jazz. He started playing the piano after hearing Charlie Parker in the 1940s and made his mark on the scene in 1959 with his score for Jack Gelber's avant-garde play “The Connection." This told the story of a group of junkies, most of them jazz musicians, waiting for their man. When he arrives, everyone shoots up and one of the company dies ...

Album Review

Dave Hosley: Love For Sale

Read "Love For Sale" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
June 23, 2016

After more than four decades as one of the Bay Area's most popular entertainers, Dave Hosley decided it was time to release his first album entitled, Love For Sale. Hosley, or “Diamond Dave" as his fans know him, speaks about his success, “One of the things that my audience likes about my shows is the sense of spontaneity on any given night. I might jump from 'Strangers in the Night' to 'You Give Love a Bad Name' to 'Baby Got ...

Album Review

Mike Jones Trio: Roaring

by Dan Bilawsky
June 22, 2016

The musical legacy of The Roaring Twenties is alive and kicking. For his second date on the Capri imprint, pianist Mike Jones decided to pull together a collection of Jazz Age nuggets and drop into the studio for a nonchalant session with bassist Katie Thiroux and drummer Matt Witek--a blue-chip rhythm duo whose musical stock has steadily been on the rise in the past few years. Jones had never recorded with the pair before, there were no rehearsals, and everything, ...

Album Review

Protean Reality: Protean Reality

Read "Protean Reality" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
June 22, 2016

Alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos has been creating a buzz around NYC for a while now. After a series of releases on small independent imprints, Protean Reality constitutes one of the first opportunities for him to be heard by a wider audience. He appears in the eponymous triumvirate, alongside drummer Philipp Scholz and electric bassist Noah Punkt, recorded live in Leipzig in Germany. They combine for three spontaneously generated cuts each around the 20-minute mark which straddle the border between free ...

Album Review

Istanbul Sessions: Istanbul Underground

Read "Istanbul Underground" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
June 22, 2016

A secretive, renaissance saxophonist who travels in a multi-ethnic, trans-cultural dimension, Ilhan Ersahin embodies all aspects of the particular blend of cross-pollinated musical styles he produces. Started in 2002, his New York City club and record label Nublu, established his pioneering reputation, and he continues on a creative tear. Istanbul Sessions was formed in 2008, producing two previous albums, leading to Istanbul Underground. This ensemble has been playing steadily since their formation, extreme liveliness and cohesion evident from ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Musings

by Budd Kopman
June 22, 2016

There is no doubt that composer Christopher Zuar's debut recording Musings is an impressive achievement. The sheer overall sonic brilliance and obvious control of the instrumental forces at hand signal a talent to be reckoned with. Not even thirty at the time of the recording, Zuar's music is surprisingly mature and well conceived. The issue, then, becomes one of finding or developing a recognizable voice in a field (jazz orchestra) which is dominated by a few voices which ...

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Genius Guide to Jazz

Making A Jazz Blockbuster

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
June 21, 2016

Reprinted from June 2005. Hey kids, summer will soon be upon us like Julie Kaiser in 10th grade; long, hot and filled with endless entertainment possibilities. So let's make a jazz-themed summer blockbuster movie. It'll be fun, educational, bring newfound attention to jazz, and might just earn us all enough money to plunge ourselves into a nightmarish world of excess and megalomaniacal self-delusion. You'll need: Two 35mm Panaflex cameras 15,000 feet of Fuji ...

Album Review

Quincy Jones And His Orchestra: Live In Ludwigshafen 1961

Read "Live In Ludwigshafen 1961" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 21, 2016

Artistic dreams and financial realities are rarely in alignment. That's a sad fact that the great Quincy Jones learned the hard way at the dawn of the '60s. Jones was in Europe at the time, directing a dream orchestra that he put together for the musical Free And Easy. When that show closed in February of 1960, he decided to keep things going. The big band tours that followed--in 1960 and 1961--were, by all accounts, successful in an artistic sense; ...