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

Jason Palmer and Cédric Hanriot: City Of Poets

Read "City Of Poets" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
June 3, 2016

The formal structure of this album recorded live at London's Pizza Express Jazz Club on September 23, 2014, centres around Olivier Messiaen's Seven modes of limited transposition, musical modes or scales that fulfil specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups. As with George Russell's Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization much has been written about this, so this review will confine itself exclusively to the music. The titles of the nine pieces ...

Book Review

Why Jazz? A Concise Guide

by Douglas Groothuis
June 3, 2016

Why Jazz? A Concise Guide Kevin Whitehead 184 pages ISBN-10: 0199731187 Oxford, University Press 2011 Small books on big themes are a tough gig. Jazz is a uniquely American, musically challenging, and highly improvisational musical form. Jazz is also a rather vexing topic to explain to the uninitiated (or even to the initiated, who quarrel much over it). Several years ago, I played some late-period work of John Coltrane (the first four ...

Album Review

Henning Sieverts: Double Quartet

Read "Double Quartet" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 3, 2016

The press kit discloses a wealth of thought-provoking information behind bassist, composer, Henning Sievert's motivation for this Double Quartet release. In sum, these compositions reflect the output of his deep dive into 600 years of the Bavarian Irsee Monastery and his discovery of a mass created in 1614, namely for the Abbey's festival of St. Benedict. But no matter how you spin it, this is a progressive jazz outing and at the time of this writing the record label has ...

Album Review

Alex Merritt Quartet: Anatta

by Budd Kopman
June 3, 2016

Everyone, listeners and composers/players bring their life experience to the music at hand. Jazz musicians in particular, especially today when many, if not most, compose as well as perform, pour themselves once into a composition, and then again when performing it. The performer aims to virtually disappear, to separate the distance and space between himself and the listener, and allow the music to flow. Of course, the listener is also asked to fully “be present" and , in a sense, ...

The Vinyl Post

Gerry Mulligan: The Emarcy Sextet Recordings

by C. Andrew Hovan
June 2, 2016

While there are many reasons why the cool jazz movement on the west coast was a somewhat short-lived era, one of the key aspects of its quiet demise was the decidedly harder-edged music coming out of New York at about the same time period. Back around 1955, hard bop was making its ascendency and this might shed some light on how it's possible for the great music recorded by Gerry Mulligan's sextet to have been so blatantly ignored. Truth be ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Pete La Roca: Basra - 1965

by Marc Davis
June 2, 2016

When drummer Pete La Roca recorded Basra in 1965, the Iraq war was decades away. Today, the name Basra evokes memories of the 2003 invasion. A recording called Basra in 2016 would probably make listeners think of Saddam Hussein. Not a good association. But in 1965? It was just an exotic-sounding, Middle Eastern name. And that's exactly what the 10-minute title track to Basra sounds like. It begins with a heavy, pulsing bass. It features a meandering, haunting ...

Big Band Report

Time Check: A Paucity of Riches?

by Jack Bowers
June 2, 2016

On May 18, Betty and I flew to Los Angeles to attend Time Check: A Buddy Rich Alumni Reunion, a four-day panorama sponsored by the L.A. Jazz Institute and held at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel, about a stone's throw or two from the LAX airport. We arrived early afternoon so we could also be present for the “bonus" concert that evening, billed as an all-star tribute to vibraphone great Terry Gibbs with Chuck Redd sitting in on vibes for the ...

Album Review

Brad Mehldau Trio: Blues and Ballads

Read "Blues and Ballads" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
June 2, 2016

It's easy to play the blues--or at the very least it's easy to learn the basics--but keeping the form fresh and interesting is another matter entirely. Likewise, any beginner can tackle a quiet ballad, but presenting something simple and pretty is really harder than it sounds. The Brad Mehldau Trio manages its always-distinctive blend of all those things on this lineup's fifth release, still making song-sculpting and harmonic shifting into something both inventive and accessible.They run a vast ...

Album Review

Ben Crosland Quintet: The Ray Davies Songbook

Read "The Ray Davies Songbook" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
June 2, 2016

Given the number of hit songs Ray Davies has written over his years fronting The Kinks, it's astonishing that nothing like this CD has ever seen the light of a laser. There have been a myriad of Beatles tunes set to jazzy interpretations plus jazz covers of the music of other 1960s rock stars including Jimi Hendrix, (Gil Evans) and even The Rolling Stones (Joe Pass). A further example is found on the excellent, if slightly bizarre, Experiments With Pops ...

Album Review

Jukka Perko Avara: Invisible Man

Read "Invisible Man" reviewed by Anthony Shaw

by Anthony Shaw
June 2, 2016

The three major names in the Finnish jazz world featured here come from three very different corners of the firmament. Jukka Perko achieved global recognition as a youth playing alto and soprano saxophone with Thelonius Monk, while guitarists Teemu Viinikainen and Jarmo Saari are better known in Scandinavia, the latter also for his proggy and pop excursions with XL Finland and Von Hertzen Brothers. Together on this disc they combine these orientations to play an assortment of self-penned and cover ...