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.

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Jazz Primer

Thinking Outside The Musical Box

by Donal Fox
April 22, 2016

What is jazz? It is a state of mind, a spiritual quest for true unfettered artistic expression. A human expression of individual freedom, social freedom and love. Jazz is also about diversity. Diversity is important, isn't it? We expect it in our social lives. We demand respect and honoring in our society as artists and as human beings, because we need to help maintain equality and social justice among all the people of the world. In our music and in ...

Album Review

A Bu: Butterflies Fly in Pairs

Read "Butterflies Fly in Pairs" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 22, 2016

Dai Liang (aka, A Bu) is a Beijing-based prodigy with remarkable potential and virtuosic piano skills. Marc Vincent, President of China's division of Sennheiser took note of the then thirteen year old pianist performing at a Beijing festival in 2012. A Bu, who began playing at the age of four, quickly found himself matched up with Grammy-winning engineer, Jakob Haendel to produce his first album, 88 Tones of Black and White (Sennheiser Media, 2015). Covering the likes of John Coltrane, ...

Album Review

Joe Syrian's Motor City Jazz Octet: Sanctuary

Read "Sanctuary" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 22, 2016

The Motor City Jazz Octet numbers in its ranks thirty or more of the Detroit metropolitan area's most accomplished musicians, eight of whom actually perform together at any given moment. Because of that, and some other quirks, the octet's debut album, Sanctuary, is in some respects a study in confusion. A press release accompanying the album, which was recorded in May 2013, names three guest artists--organist Jimmy Smith, guitarist George Benson, tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza--none of whom appears on the ...

Album Review

Kirk MacDonald: Symmetry

Read "Symmetry" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 22, 2016

It is no secret that Canada is the home of some of the finest jazz musicins in the world and Toronto-based saxophonist Kirk MacDonald, a long-time active educator, is one of those established stars and veteran of the Canadian jazz scene. He has appeared on over fifty albums as both a sideman and leader and Symmetry, his eleventh album as leader, which had been previously unveiled in Canada only, is now available in the U.S. and internationally for audiences everywhere ...

Album Review

New Zion w/ Cyro Baptista: Sunshine Seas

Read "Sunshine Seas" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 22, 2016

The third release by Jamie Saft's New Zion Trio expands the concepts he launched with his previous efforts, Fight Against Babylon (Veal Records, 2011), and Chaliwa (Veal Records, 2013). His reggae/dub-meets-piano trio explorations expand with the inclusion of Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. This rhythm trance music casts a much larger net, one of universal spirituality, beyond physical matter and the laws of nature. Without getting all theological on you, the fugue state of roots reggae and dub tap into a ...

Interview

Kind of Purple: Jazz Musicians On Prince

by Kurt Gottschalk
April 21, 2016

"Do you know who Prince kinda reminds me of, particularly as a pianist? Duke! Yeah, he's the Duke Ellington of the eighties to my way of thinking."--Miles Davis The tops of the pop charts isn't where we often expect to find genius. Brilliant performers sometimes, expert attention grabbers maybe more often, but it's not generally where ground is broken. Prince may not have topped the singles charts in some time, but then the charts aren't what ...

Multiple Reviews

Something old, something new, something reissued, something Brötzmann blew.

by Mark Corroto
April 21, 2016

Can the entire history of a musical genre be encoded in one man's DNA? If that is possible, then reading the DeoxyriboNucleic Acid molecules in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's body would yield all the information a musical scientist studying the development of free jazz would require. Since the 1960s, he has been in the center of the most powerful maelstrom in music, and maybe the most controversial sounds. From his Machine Gun (FMP, 1968) octet, to Last Exit, The Chicago Tenet, ...

Extended Analysis

Snowboy and the Latin Section: New York Afternoon

by Phil Barnes
April 21, 2016

The pervasive myths of New York are of a whole different order to those of just about any other world city. If 'Swinging London' ever existed before the offshore 'investors' moved in, it was long ago reduced, as the Clash put it, to the 'ring of that truncheon thing,' yet New York has somehow kept its mystique. Perhaps it's just a whole different level of myth, an Instagram filter on a rose tinted memory of a construction learned from beloved ...

Album Review

Shauli Einav Quartet: Beam Me Up

Read "Beam Me Up" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
April 21, 2016

Beam Me Up is Shauli Einav's fifth album as a leader, but his first as a new father. This is worth mentioning because jazz is, as we all know, something that is lived. How could such a momentous change not manifest itself in one's music? Here, it's quite evident though nothing about the album itself speaks directly to fatherhood or childhood. In a brief liner note, Einav ruminates on those magical moments when music transports one into the present moment, ...

Album Review

Tim Garland: One

by Roger Farbey
April 21, 2016

Tim Garland is one of the U.K's most talented reedsmen. He's recorded several albums with Chick Corea including Originations and The Vigil plus orchestral works, The Mystery and The Continents. With virtuoso percussionist Bill Bruford, he recorded Earthworks Underground Orchestra. He's also recorded numerous albums under his own name and with Llamas and Acoustic Triangle. This is Garland's third album for Edition, the first being Return To The Northern Sky (2014), closely followed by Return To The Fire (2015).