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

Lauren Lee / Charley Sabatino: Dichotomies

Read "Dichotomies" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
May 22, 2016

Vocalist extraordinaire Lauren Lee and the very active bassist Charley Sabatino, both New York City area residents, have collaborated to create the The Velocity Duo, and Dichotomies is their debut recording. For many readers, listening to music, perhaps especially jazz, is an immersion experience, but this music demands complete attention, and gets it with soft-spoken intensity and unstrained concentration. Completely exposed and alone in what sounds like a large, acoustically alive, but dimly lit space, the ...

Album Review

Luis Perdomo: Montage

by Mark Corroto
May 22, 2016

The highest praise you can give to a recording by a solo performer is that the music was made just for your ears. Pianist Luis Perdomo's Montage gives just that impression. It's easy to imagine these fifteen tracks were played in your living room, or automobile, for that matter. After releasing seven discs as a leader, with sideman like drummers Jack DeJohnette, Rudy Royston, Ralph Peterson, Eric McPherson and Nasheet Waits, bassists Dwayne Burno, Drew Gress, Ugonna Okegwo, ...

Album Review

Arnold Ludvig Sextet: Iceland

by Dave Wayne
May 21, 2016

Situated in the North Atlantic, roughly equidistant from Scotland, Norway, and Iceland, the Faeroe Islands are one of the last places one would expect to find a thriving international jazz scene populated with world-class improvisers and a record label dedicated to documenting all of the action. Tutl Records, founded in 1977 by the Danish jazz musician and composer Kristian Blak, is dedicated to the popularization of Faeroese music of all stripes, including the jazz-based efforts of Blak's own band, Yggdrasil. ...

Album Review

Larry Coryell: Heavy Feel

Read "Heavy Feel" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
May 21, 2016

Only the most most skilled and confident musicians can record a sterling album in two days but if anyone qualifies for inclusion in that category, it's Larry Coryell. A veteran of no small renown, albeit somewhat under the radar compared to peers like John McLaughlin, the former leader of the Eleventh House radiates the surety of a master on Heavy Feel, all the while maintaining the distinctive sound of his guitar that hearkens straight back to influential titles from early ...

Album Review

Sonic Liberation 8 with Classical Revolution Trio & Oliver Lake: Bombogenic

Read "Bombogenic" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
May 21, 2016

There are a few artists out there who are successfully merging authentic traditional Afro-Cuban and Caribbean rhythms with 21st Century jazz in a way that refers to, but doesn't sound like, typical Latin jazz: Adam Rudolph's Go Organic Orchestra and Kip Hanrahan's various groups immediately come to mind. Taking their cues equally from the early 70s recordings of Miles Davis and Weather Report, from Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, and from contemporary composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Morton Feldman, ...

Album Review

Jane Monheit: The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald

Read "The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 21, 2016

Long Island native and vocalist Jane Monheit pays tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, one of the most enduring jazz singers in history and a very influential figure in Monheit's own musical career. The singer had long thought about recording a homage project to Fitzgerald and on The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald, Monheit finally accomplishes this releasing the album on her own Emerald City Records label. Produced and arranged by Nicholas Payton--who did not originally intend on playing in the recording, but ...

Extended Analysis

Security Project: Live 1

by John Kelman
May 21, 2016

While so many singer-songwriters of the past 50 years have been covered time and again-even fostering tribute bands that recreate the live experience as close to perfection as possible-one of the most important, groundbreaking and forward-thinking songwriters of the past five decades has, for the most part, been overlooked. Peter Gabriel may have spent the first few years of his career in progressive rock trendsetters Genesis, but it's been his solo career, which began in 1977, that ultimately elevated the ...

Bailey's Bundles

Heard It In A Love Song: Ted Gioia & James Gavin

by C. Michael Bailey
May 20, 2016

Recently, I had to admit to myself that: (1) I will not live forever, and because of Number 1, (2) Not listen to all the music there is, and (3) not read all of the books on my list. Well, I am trying to bring up the rear on this latter point reviewing books by two prominent music writers, Ted Gioia and James Gavin... about a year late... well, better that than... Love Songs: The Hidden History ...

Album Review

David Gibson: Inner Agent

Read "Inner Agent" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 20, 2016

The idea of creating a safe space to allow for disregarding safety may be paradoxical in nature, but it makes perfect sense when contextualized or couched in jazz terms. There can be no resolution of faith in one's surroundings and colleagues without taking the trust fall, there can be no reward without risk, and there can be no true growth without belief. Those ideals are jazz to the core, and they're at the heart of this project from trombonist David ...

Album Review

The Peter Edwards Trio: A Matter Of Instinct

Read "A Matter Of Instinct" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
May 20, 2016

This is the second album by Trinity Laban graduate and 2014 MOBO Awards nominee Peter Edwards, his first being 2014's Safe And Sound. Edwards was a member of a group led by the late trumpeter Abram Wilson and is currently a member of vocalist Zara McFarlane's band. Opening with an infectious Latin beat, “Samba City" recalls the foot- tapping imperative of Chick Corea's Return To Forever era. A calmer mood ensues with “Loved Ones" recalling the blues-infused, chordal-rich piano of ...