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

Kitt Lyles: Real Talk

Read "Real Talk" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
May 20, 2016

For his debut recording bassist/composer Kitt Lyles draws on his love for the jazz tradition, as well as southern folk and blues. A South Carolina native now residing in Chicago, he leads a working sextet (with one additional player on two tracks) through a varied program of originals. The title tune is built on a vamp, with guitarist Hans Luchs and tenor saxophonist Roy McGrath opening, joined by the trumpeter Justin Copeland. “Snowfall On Carolina" is an upbeat swing tune, ...

Album Review

Lauren Bush: All My Treasures

Read "All My Treasures" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 20, 2016

"I love the human race," sings Lauren Bush on the opening track of All My Treasures, Bob Dorough's life-affirming “I've Got Just About Everything I Need." It's a positive sentiment, just one brief moment on an album that bursts with positivity, an album that sounds like the product of a mature and very experienced artist. Surprisingly, it's the debut release from a singer who's yet to reach 30 years of age. Bush--born in Canada and now based in ...

Multiple Reviews

When the Moon Hits the Sky, Via Veneto Jazz/Jando Music 2016

by Mark Corroto
May 19, 2016

Whether or not you speak Italian, know that Italians are fluent in the language of jazz music. Traditional Italian record labels like Black Saint, Soul Note, CAM Jazz, and Splash(h) Records, have paved the way for a deep and rich pool of artists worth your attention. Via Veneto Jazz and Jando Music are two such labels, releasing music since the early 1990s. Listeners can find many American guests artists like Bob Mintzer, Steven Bernstein, Donny McCaslin, and Jack DeJohnette, and ...

Live Review

Andy Milne and Dapp Theory at SOUTH Jazz Kitchen

by Mike Jacobs
May 19, 2016

Andy Milne and Dapp Theory SOUTH Jazz Kitchen Philadelphia, PA May 11, 2016 Venues can be a boon to a jazz show, or a detriment. Seeing Andy Milne and Dapp Theory in the moderately upscale (yet warm and inviting) digs at South turned out to be a huge plus for the evening, but initially, skepticism loomed. Places this nice, with food this good, often book jazz more for ambiance than musical substance. ...

Album Review

The Branford Marsalis Quartet with Special Guest Kurt Elling: Upward Spiral

Read "Upward Spiral" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 19, 2016

To one extent or another, jazz has always maintained a discriminatory dividing line between vocalists and instrumentalists. Instead of being viewed as equals--artists on par with all the rest, possessing the same good sense, skill, and stake in an artistic outcome--vocalists have often been unfairly stigmatized and interned in a separate category. But all of that has slowly been changing, due in no small part to a large and continually growing crop of vocalists who are consistently raising the bar. ...

Album Review

On Kaa Davis: X-Ray Search Light Project: Djuke Music

Read "X-Ray Search Light Project: Djuke Music" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
May 19, 2016

Though he's logged considerable time in Sun Ra's Arkestra, Kenny Wolleson's Himalayas Collective, and groups led by Donald Ayler, Charles 'Bobo' Shaw, and Luther Thomas, On Kaa Davis is not just another avant-garde jazz dude. As a teenager, the Cleveland, Ohio native journeyed to Vienna, Austria, where he studied classical guitar at the Hochschule for Music and Performing Arts under Luise Walker (herself a protégée of Andrés Segovia). Though most of his recordings are self-produced, he's recorded for John Zorn's ...

Album Review

Matt Wilson’s Big Happy Family: Beginning of A Memory

Read "Beginning of A Memory" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
May 19, 2016

For this mostly retrospective session drummer/composer Matt Wilson convened all of the members--past and present--of his longest established groups: the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, and Christmas Tree-O. So it's not only a larger ensemble than usual, but also a melding of the different stylistic focuses represented by those projects. There are 13 players altogether, and although they don't all play on everything, most of them play on most of the tracks. The core group included all five horn ...

Album Review

Tomasz Dabrowski: S-O-L-O: 30th Birthday/30 Concerts/30 Cities

Read "S-O-L-O: 30th Birthday/30 Concerts/30 Cities" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
May 19, 2016

Playing solo is a challenge that takes a lot of discipline. Whereas jazz often relies on the exchange of ideas in a group, there is only one person to carry out what pianist Bill Evans called his “conversations with himself." The consequence is that a soliloquy has the risk of going stale, but it can also be a unique opportunity for the artist to communicate directly with his or her surroundings. The reason why Polish trumpeter Tomasz ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Paul Chambers: Bass on Top – 1957

by Marc Davis
May 18, 2016

In the world of 1950s hard bop, there is no more prominent bassist than Paul Chambers. The man was absolutely everywhere. He shows up on an astonishing number of jazz classics, including Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, John Coltrane's Giant Steps, Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners, Sonny Rollins' Tenor Madness and Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth. He was a sideman on 200 albums from the '50s and '60s. So it's natural to associate Chambers ...

Album Review

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: Special Kay!

Read "Special Kay!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 18, 2016

WOW! No, it is definitely not advisable to open a review with an unequivocal superlative (for one thing, it sort of gives the game away, doesn't it?). But on Special Kay!, its ninth impressive album in twenty-four years, DIVA--the gold standard among all-female big bands since its inception--really gives a commentator no reasonable choice. Simply put, this is a mind-blowing live performance at the Tannery Pond Community Center in North Creek, NY, that electrifies and satisfies from ...