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.

Live Review

The Aki Rissanen Trio plays April Jazz, Espoo, Finland

by Anthony Shaw
April 27, 2016

The Aki Rissanen Trio Louhi Club April Jazz Espoo, Finland April 4, 2016 Espoo in southern Finland is nominally a city, having its own emblem, transportation system and council though for most people in the vicinity of Helsinki it's merely a close suburb of the metropolis. However every spring it comes into its own hosting the April Jazz festival mainly in the Tapiola Gardens area, heralding the start of the yearly Finnish festival music ...

Album Review

Bill Evans with Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette: Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest

Read "Some Other Time: The Lost Session From the Black Forest" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 27, 2016

It plays out like a tale of espionage. In Bremen, Germany, more than five-thousand miles from his Los Angeles home, American producer Zev Feldman, has a chance meeting with the son of a late German jazz producer. In a parking lot, the German plays a single track of music on his car stereo; a forgotten recording from tapes almost fifty years old. Feldman, upon hearing more of the tapes, decides he needs to get this out to the world. It ...

Roads Less Travelled

The Cotton Club, Shanghai

by Hrayr Attarian
April 27, 2016

On the night of April 15th 2016 the Cotton Club in Shanghai was teaming with young, fashionably dressed locals and intrigued tourists. Despite the overpriced drinks and extra charge for sitting down at a table (even standing at one) music lovers packed the small space. Located in the historic and hip French Concession neighborhood, The Cotton Club made Downbeat magazine's short list of Chinese jazz venues and every traveler's trusty companion; Lonely Planet lists it as the best in Shanghai. ...

Album Review

Kosi: Ghosts Appearing Through The Sound

Read "Ghosts Appearing Through The Sound" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
April 27, 2016

Abbey Lincoln (1930-2010) was a singer, actress, civil rights activist, writer, and artist. As one of jazz's truest storytellers, she painted from a stylistic palette that was as traditional as it was her own. After a string of albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s, she shunned the politics of the music industry to pursue a film career, only to return to her first love a decade later, more determined than ever to strengthen the import of her message. ...

Album Review

Joan Jeanrenaud: Visual Music

Read "Visual Music" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 27, 2016

Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud had been a member of the celebrated Kronos Quartet for more than twenty years when, she found herself sidelined with a serious health issue. Following an extended leave from music she embarked on a solo career, turning out the highly-regarded albums, Strange Toys (Talking House, 2008), Metamorphosis (New Albion, 2009) and--in association with PC Munoz--Pop-Pop (Deconet Records, 2010).On Visual Music Jeanrenaud is reunited with percussionist Munoz on three tracks, William Winant on vibraphone and Dohee ...

Album Review

Leila Bordreuil & Michael Foster: The Caustic Ballads

Read "The Caustic Ballads" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 27, 2016

On the surface, the album title might be an oxymoron. None of these free-form works resemble traditional ballads, but the young Brooklyn-based duo's ideology and vision is clearly distinct and personalized via these jaunts that to some extent, parallel the British free jazz scene with acidic, creaky and scorching elaborations. There is a consortium of zany nouveau classical music breakouts with bizarre episodic transgressions that tend to hold your attention. At times, the acoustic instrumental implementations sound like electronics are ...

Getting Into Jazz

Chet Baker Quartet Featuring Russ Freeman

by Mark Barnett
April 26, 2016

Getting Started If you're new to jazz, go to our Getting Into Jazz primer for some hints on how to listen. CD Capsule Iconic West Coast jazz by the legendary trumpeter at the cusp of his career. Baker made a slew of recordings in his lifetime, but this is among the crème de la crème. Background Trumpeter Chet Baker rose to prominence in the mid-1950's and continued to ...

Album Review

Jeremy Manasia Trio: Metamorphosis

Read "Metamorphosis" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 26, 2016

The Jeremy Manasia Trio: new names one and all in this neighborhood save for the gentleman who makes the trio a quartet, guitarist Peter Bernstein. As it turns out, pianist Manasia, a native of Staten Island, has been a mainstay on the New York jazz scene since he returned from Europe in 1997, and Metamorphosis is his sixth recording as leader of his own groups. While bassist Barak Mori and drummer Charles Ruggiero round out the trio, Bernstein appears on ...

Album Review

Eugenia Choe: Magic Light

Read "Magic Light" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
April 26, 2016

One of the most interesting aspects of jazz immersion studies is how it influences and affects players from diverse backgrounds. Korean born and classically trained pianist Eugenia Choe was drawn to jazz by its opportunities for compositional development and improvisational challenges, bringing to Magic Light a lyrical understanding of technical structure, and an intellectual ability to swing. This being her recording debut, Choe came to the sessions with an abundance of original material, revealing her pianistic virtuosity and ...

Album Review

Carla Bley/Andy Sheppard/Steve Swallow: Andando el Tiempo

Read "Andando el Tiempo" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 26, 2016

There are few figures in modern music that are truly more iconic than Carla Bley. Her list of accomplishments are impossible to chronicle in this limited space, but suffice to say that her influence traverses genres, styles and generations, in a way that perhaps no other artist has approached. Her early crowning jewel—the jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill (JCOA Records, 1971)—featured a who's-who of music including Jack Bruce, Linda Ronstadt, Don Cherry, Don Preston, Charlie Haden, Michael Mantler, Karen ...