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

Neal Black & Larry Garner: Guilty Saints

Read "Guilty Saints" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
June 18, 2016

They're calling him the new king of the Voodoo blues. Unlike the old king, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Neal Black is white. He's from Texas and plays high voltage boogie guitar but has also studied under jazz giants Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel. Perhaps his best known song to date is “Let Jesus or Johnny Walker take your hand," delivered in a hoarse growl that evokes the shade of Blind Willie Johnson, greatest of the Texas gospel shouters. ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Antonio Adolfo

by AAJ Staff
June 18, 2016

About Antonio Adolfo Pianist, arranger, producer and educator Antonio Adolfo grew up in a musical family in Rio de Janeiro and began his studies at the age of seven. At seventeen he was already a professional musician. His teachers include Deodato and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. During the 60's he participated in several Bossa Nova and jazz shows in Brazil and toured with singers Leny Andrade, Flora Purim, Wilson Simonal, Elis Regina and Milton Nascimento, Adolfo wrote tunes ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Roberta Piket

by AAJ Staff
June 17, 2016

About Roberta Piket Born in Queens, New York, Roberta inherited a passion for music from both her parents. Her father was the Austrian composer Frederick Piket, who made significant contributions to both the musical liturgy of Reform Judaism and the concert hall with works performed by the New York Philharmonic under conductor Dimitri Metropolis. From her mother, Cynthia, she absorbed the glories of the American Songbook, learning the tunes (and accompanying lyrics) of Porter, Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, and Berlin. Roberta ...

Album Review

Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Azul Infinito

Read "Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Azul Infinito" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 17, 2016

By now, trombonist and composer Ryan Keberle has established himself as a solid name on the jazz scene, but like all musicians, he did not come out of nowhere. On the album Azul Infinito, he pays homage to South American music and the composers that have meant something to him. The opener “I Thought I Knew (for Pedro Giraudo)" starts out with looped wordless vocals from singer Camila Meza and spiraling brass patterns from Keberle and trumpeter ...

Album Review

Sal Lozano: Everything's Gonna Be Great

Read "Everything's Gonna Be Great" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 17, 2016

If you're looking for a superlative one-man saxophone section, better call Sal (Lozano). And if you need some dazzling charts to make that section shine, better phone Tom (Kubis, that is). After spending years as one of Southern California's leading sidemen, Sal Lozano has at last recorded an album under his own name, one on which he literally becomes the entire sax section by overdubbing soprano, alto, tenor and baritone parts. To further ensure its success, he has called on ...

Album Review

Pascal Battus / Dafne Vicente-Sandoval: Pascal Battus / Dafne Vicente-Sandoval

Read "Pascal Battus / Dafne Vicente-Sandoval</em>" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
June 17, 2016

This double CD features the duo of Pascal Battus on rotating surfaces, styrofoam, paper, plastic objects and microphones plus Dafne Vicente-Sandoval on bassoon, microphones and mixing board. Although the two have not recorded together previously, they have each recorded before for Potlatch, in duos that were similar enough to be seen as preparation for this meeting, Battus with saxophonist Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour on Ichnites (2010) and Vicente-Sandoval with Klaus Filip playing sine waves on Remoto (2013). Each of those albums ...

Album Review

Scott Hamilton / Rein de Graaff Trio: Live at the JazzRoom

Read "Live at the JazzRoom" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 17, 2016

Scott Hamilton, whose enviable career has taken him around the world many times and ensured his appearance on more than a hundred notable recordings, is a throwback to an era in which tenor saxophonists could be readily identified by their sound, phrasing and singular approach to improvising. Not that Hamilton can be; he has instead incorporated many of the more admirable trademarks of his predecessors to become a sort of Everyman on his chosen instrument--not easily spotted in a lineup ...

Live Review

Burlington Discover Jazz Festival 2016

by Doug Collette
June 16, 2016

Discover Jazz Festival Burlington, Vermont June 3-12, 2016 With thirty-two years of history, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is an avowed tradition, but those who oversee the wide variety of events that take place in Vermont's Queen City for the duration of its multiple nights regularly find a way to inject fresh ideas into the basic concept. 2015, for instance, saw the introduction of recording shows at the intimate FlynnSpace, later to be broadcast on Vermont ...

Multiple Reviews

Five New From Konvoj Records

by Mark Corroto
June 16, 2016

If you are a free jazz fanatic, you probably look for those out-of-print vinyl offerings from labels like Hat Hut, FMP, Sonet, and El Saturn Records. Sadly, you would have to be either independently wealthy or Mats Gustafsson to acquire the rarest of the rare music. But take heart, there are small labels producing the free jazz scarce finds of the future. One such label is Ola Paulson's Konvoj Records from Sweden. He has assembled a small, but growing and ...

Album Review

Ryan Carraher: Vocturnal

Read "Vocturnal" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
June 16, 2016

Guitarist and composer Ryan Carraher is blessed with an enormous technique and a fertile and inventive musical mind (having received the Achievement Award from the guitar department of the Berklee College of Music), which is doubly impressive in one so young. Carraher states that the compositions in Vocturnal “are heavily inspired by the classical composers of the 20th century (Messiaen, Schoenberg, Berg, Stravinsky, etc.) and the expressive freedom of jazz." In this he has beautifully succeeded, but what ...