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.

Catching Up With

Natacha Atlas: A Myriad of Possibilities

by Nenad Georgievski
June 12, 2016

Belgian singer Natacha Atlas' music sits on the brink between two cultures: Western and Eastern. She uses this meeting of sounds to create something unique that takes the best from both worlds. Atlas began her career with Transglobal Underground, a world music and electronic dance fusion act with whom she recorded four albums. The group's unorthodox approach received widespread acclaim and served as a catalyst for furthering fusion between world music sounds and Western electronic dance music. When she left ...

Album Review

US4: My Scandinavian Blues: A Tribute to Horace Parlan

Read "My Scandinavian Blues: A Tribute to Horace Parlan" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 12, 2016

Once in a while, you encounter a special album that tells the story of a remarkable musician, not only as a snapshot, but as a full musical narrative with words and pictures. My Scandinavian Blues: A Tribute to Horace Parlan is such an album. The main character, pianist and composer, Horace Parlan, does not participate himself as a musician and yet he is everywhere: in the songs, in the spirit in which the project was conceived and ...

Album Review

Grateful Dead: Red Rocks 7/8/78

Read "Red Rocks 7/8/78" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
June 12, 2016

As much of a bonafide treasure trove is the existing Grateful Dead vault as maintained by David Lemieux, Nicholas Meriweather and their team(s), there are some holes where the aforementioned archivists are constantly in the process of filling with research and negotiations to uncover and regain ownership of items not already ensconced in their rightful location. The source of this recording, the so-called 'Betty Boards' (so named for Dead sound engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson), is just such content. The ...

Album Review

The Claudia Quintet: Super Petite

Read "Super Petite" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 12, 2016

Except for a brief dalliance with the ingénue Lucy, drummer and bandleader John Hollenbeck has been faithful to his Claudia for nearly twenty years. Super Petite is the 8th release and 7th on Cuneiform Records. Actually, the band leader has had others. Besides his Lucy Quartet, there is his John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Refuge Trio, duos with Jorrit Dijkstra and Theo Bleckmann, and the apropos (is there a pattern developing here?) Blind Date Quartet. His quintet is always ...

Album Review

John Blues Boyd: The Real Deal

Read "The Real Deal" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
June 12, 2016

For those who love the blues, the thrill of discovering a new artist is still special. Blues singer John “Blues" Boyd just released The Real Deal--at 71 years young--as a testament that the blues continues to be a vital American art form that will never die. Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Boyd picked cotton as a youngster, worked at hard labor, and loved to sing. Relocating to the Bay Area in the 1980's he was a roofer, sat in at local ...

Album Review

Julie Kjaer 3: Dobbeltgaeenger

Read "Dobbeltgaeenger" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 12, 2016

Danish multi-reed player Julie Kjaer blends an infectious enthusiasm with innovative ideas that, together with hersuperb instrumental prowess, result in captivating works. Her second release as a leader, the stimulating Dobbeltgaeenger is the perfect showcase of her superb skills and brilliant musicianship. Sticking only to alto saxophone, a woodwind she has thoroughly mastered, Kjaer lets loose a flood of creativity that carries within it multifaceted expressions and vibrant emotions. “Out of Sight" opens the album with a ...

Interview

How to Listen to Jazz: A Q&A with Ted Gioia

by S.G Provizer
June 11, 2016

In How to Listen to Jazz, Ted Gioia has tasked himself with writing a book that asks people to drop their musical prejudices and open up their ears. The challenge in writing a book like is to find a middle path between, as Gioia says, “those who pretend that music is objective science and those who insist it is “subjective whimsy..." For my money, he has succeeded; talking about the nuts and bolts of melody, harmony and rhythm in a ...

Film Review

Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty

by Doug Collette
June 11, 2016

Johnny Winter Down & Dirty Megaforce Records2016 Johnny Winter's life and times were so colorful that even a painstakingly conceived and executed documentary such as Down & Dirty almost begs credibility. Yet as closely as the film delves into the albino bluesman's lifestyle in his later years, on the road and off, it makes a viable case that his album Still Alive and Well (Columbia Records, 1973) was just the first step in his road ...

Album Review

Allen Toussaint: American Tunes

Read "American Tunes" reviewed by Mike Jacobs

by Mike Jacobs
June 11, 2016

When it comes to the New Orleans sound and its purveyors, drummers may be the most integral, but the most celebrated are perhaps the pianists. Longhair, Booker, Rebbenack, Cleary, and even Fats Domino are all acknowledged to be in that pantheon. And certainly the name Toussaint has long been counted among them as well but, outside of New Orleans, more so by those in the know than the general public. This is partly because throughout his career, Toussaint's preferred role ...

Album Review

Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers: Rehab Reunion

Read "Rehab Reunion" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
June 11, 2016

A Bruce Hornsby album with no piano seems sort of like a Chinese dinner without rice. Well, upon further consideration it may not be quite as crazy as it sounds. The man's career is defined by nothing if not restlessness, and he's managed to do something fresh and different almost every time out. The most surprising thing he could do would be to not surprise us somehow. Rehab Reunion shows that that danger is as remote as ever. ...