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

Gilles Peterson: Magic Peterson Sunshine

Read "Magic Peterson Sunshine" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
May 7, 2016

Magic Peterson Sunshine is an indispensable compilation for the European jazz lover. It is the culmination of tireless archival digging by London-based DJ and audiophile Gilles Peterson, whose obsession with the German label MPS (née SABA) has resulted in this handpicked treasure trove of material. The label has near-mythic roots, founded as it was deep in the heart of Germany's Black Forest by the reclusive Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, a.k.a. HGBS, whose house concerts and personal studio captured and released some ...

Album Review

Cowboys & Frenchmen: Rodeo

by Geannine Reid
May 7, 2016

Today's jazz is a mix of culture and music; with a fresh mixing of the American song book along with American folk, R&B and pop music with the ever evolving canon of post-bop jazz. The ensemble that has taken an unusual name of Cowboys & Frenchmen found its inspiration for the band name in the short film by David Lynch, called The Cowboy and The Frenchmen. The film is a Western -but a “Lynchian" Western with a unique interpretation of ...

Album Review

Pat Metheny: The Unity Sessions

Read "The Unity Sessions" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
May 7, 2016

Guitarist/composer Pat Metheny felt the urge to make a more traditional record with a horn plus rhythm section when he assembled what became the Unity Band in 2012. Everyone was having such a great time that they went on to make the KIN album as the Unity Group (Nonesuch, 2014), with the quartet augmented by utility player Giulio Carmassi. Metheny has customarily documented his bands with a live concert film, but this time he made The Unity Sessions in a ...

Album Review

Stefania Dipierro: Natural

Read "Natural" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 7, 2016

Based in their homeland of Italy, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Nicola Conte first worked with singer-songwriter Stefania Dipierro in Conte's 1990s collective called Fez. When Fez disbanded, Dipierro moved on to share her rich and succulent voice through a series of other collaborations, while Conte released a series of works in samba-influenced acid-jazz that was acclaimed throughout Europe, including his five- volume series Viagem, a look back at bossa and samba jazz lost in the past which inspired his music ...

Album Review

Bobby Avey: Inhuman Wilderness

Read "Inhuman Wilderness" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 6, 2016

The failings and callousness of mankind have long served as muse and model for artists, but rarely have such negative stimuli yielded such powerful, probing, and positively mesmerizing work as what can be heard on Inhuman Wilderness. This fifth album from pianist Bobby Avey provides extraordinarily intense and thoughtful musical commentary on topics ranging from the unknown heroes and history-makers of our time to U.S. drone actions in the Middle East and Africa. In doing so, it ...

Album Review

Melissa Aldana: Back Home

Read "Back Home" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
May 6, 2016

Saxophonist Melissa Aldana leaves an indelible impression of her musicality in Back Home, her fourth release as a leader. She was the first female instrumentalist and first South American to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2013. One listen to her tenor's flowing birdsong and the symbiotic connection with longtime trio mates bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Jochen Rueckert it is understood the work she's put in and the gift she possesses. First there's Aldanas's ...

Album Review

Avataar: Petal

Read "Petal" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 6, 2016

While growing up in the Northern Ontario mining town of Sunbury, he was known as “Sam." But in his early twenties, Sundar Viswanathan reconnected with his Indian name and heritage, and, through several conservatory courses spanning North Indian classical to Turkish maquam music, dove deeply into his Indian musical roots as a saxophonist and composer. “I had to transcribe flute and sitar improvisations as part of class assignments. The vocabulary got into the language of my own writing," ...

Extended Analysis

Carla Bley: Andando el Tiempo

by John Kelman
May 6, 2016

A few months shy of three years following the release of Trios (ECM, 2013), composer/keyboardist and NEA Jazz Master Carla Bley returns with Andando el Tiempo, an album of largely introspective music that shares much with its predecessor, but also acts as a flip side of the same coin. Like Trios, Andando el Tiempo was recorded in Lugano, Italy (albeit in two different rooms) and brings back the same trio that first appeared on 1994's Songs With Legs ...

Live From Philadelphia

Center City Jazz Fest: Five Years Strong

by Geno Thackara
May 6, 2016

Center City Jazz Festival Philadelphia, PA April 30, 2016 “The Fifth Annual Center City Jazz Festival is officially sold out!" Thus tweeted a spokesperson from @ccjazzfest two days before the start of Philadelphia's annual celebration (most likely its founder, local trombonist Ernest Stuart). I'm not sure if there was any backup plan for late stragglers; clearly the familiar crowd knew they didn't want to wait too long to get in on the festivities. The timing had ...

Album Review

Eric Revis Trio: Crowded Solitudes

Read "Crowded Solitudes" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 6, 2016

Listening to a recording, one can assume, as opposed to attending a performance, involves just one of your five senses, hearing. The concert has of course sight, but something about Eric Revis' Crowded Solitudes suggests other senses to consider. This trio recording follows City Of Asylum (Clean Feed, 2013). Revis has retained pianist Kris Davis, but Gerald Cleaver replaces Andrew Cyrille at the drum chair. Revis, the longtime bassist for Branford Marsalis, can also be heard on the ...