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

Linus + Skarbø / Leroux: Linus + Skarbø / Leroux

Read "Linus + Skarbø / Leroux" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
April 21, 2016

In the seven years since its inception, El Negocito Records, based in Ghent, Belgium, has established itself as one of the most adventurous and far-ranging independent labels on the European new music scene. The phrase “new music" is operative here because the label concentrates on improvisation in all of its musical guises. There are modern jazz offerings (e.g., Bambi Pang Pang's amazing Drop Your Plans with drummer Andrew Cyrille), free improvised outings (e.g., John Dikeman's Live at La Resistenza with ...

Album Review

Twenty One 4Tet: Live At Zaal 100

Read "Live At Zaal 100" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 21, 2016

I'm assuming that the Twenty One 4Tet recording Live At Zaal was conceived as a one-off deal, with Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente visiting Amsterdam-based players John Dikeman, Wilbert De Joode and Onno Govaert. This concert, from September 2015, finds Vicente combining his impressive craftsmanship with three like-minded players. Then again, it might be just part of Vicente's revolving, maybe a better word “evolving," sound world. Of late, he has collaborated with the French/Portuguese quartets Deux Maisons For Sale ...

Interview

Waclaw Zimpel: How The Music Of The World Influences Me

by Nick Davies
April 20, 2016

Waclaw Zimpel is a Polish clarinetist and composer who is recognised both nationally and internationally. His compositions have received many positive reviews in the press ("The Polish composer and clarinetist Waclaw Zimpel is a musical chameleon" --Stephen Heyman, New York Times) and he has been the recipient of numerous awards such as City of Poznań Artist Prize. Waclaw Zimpel is always pushing the boundaries of his musicality and this has led him to explore the music of India, Japan and ...

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Genius Guide to Jazz

Old and Improved

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
April 20, 2016

It should come as no surprise to those of you who follow this column religiously (welcome members of St. Bud's and Our Lady of Perpetual Drinking) that Your Own Personal Genius must, from time to time, step away from his post at AAJ to recharge his creative batteries. While this happens less often than it used to, since I switched to lithium ion from the outdated nickel cadmium creative batteries, I must still occasionally retreat from the pressures of being ...

Album Review

Cuong Vu Trio With Pat Metheny: Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny

Read "Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 20, 2016

There's a bit of a role reversal going on with this one. Trumpeter Cuong Vu--a Pat Metheny devotee from the time he first heard the guitarist's Travels (ECM, 1983) as a teenager--eventually came to join the Pat Metheny Group, enhancing the sound of the band on a pair of Grammy-winning albums: Speaking Of Now (Warner Bros. 2002) and The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005). Now Metheny returns the favor, joining Vu's crew for this expansive outing. The concept ...

Album Review

Marianne Trudel: La vie commence ici

Read "La vie commence ici" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
April 20, 2016

Pianist and composer Marianne Trudel may not be so well known outside her native Canada, but her elegantly crafted sound, as all good music does, carries its own passport and travels where it will. La vie commence ici is Trudel's sixth album as leader and immerses her within the sympathetic vibrations of trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, saxophonist Jonathan Steward, bassist Morgan Moore, and drummer Robbie Kuster. Trudel and Jensen share the deepest rapport of this particular session, and so it is ...

Album Review

Sheila Jordan: Better Than Anything

Read "Better Than Anything" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
April 20, 2016

Better Than Anything showcases Sheila Jordan in an unusual trio with bassist Harvie S and pianist Alan Broadbent (subbing for Jordan's go-to, Steve Kuhn). The latter two triangulate Jordan's incomparability with graciousness in this archival treasure, restored from a 1991 live recording at Kimball's East in Oakland. Yet the rarity of the combination is easily forgotten once the listener becomes aware of its interlocking geometry. The title song seals a foundation between the instrumentalists, Sheila scatting so fluidly throughout that ...

Album Review

Lina Nyberg: Aerials

Read "Aerials" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
April 20, 2016

There are very few musicians who dare to expand their artistic vision with every new project as Swedish vocalist-songwriter-composer Lina Nyber. Aerials, is the her second installment in a trilogy of albums that offers her unique perspective about the world, the elements and the music itself. Nyberg began the trilogy with the double album The Sirenades (Hoob, 2014), that featured her songs composed for her quintet and the Norrbotten Big Band, sketching poetic images of cyber-seas, monsters and waves. On ...

Album Review

Tord Gustavsen with Simin Tander & Jarle Vespestad: What was said

Read "What was said" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 20, 2016

An exciting new trio sees Tord Gustavsen and Jarle Vespestad combine with German-Afghan singer Simin Tander to submit Norwegian church music to the push and pull of improvisation and the spell of thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic, Jalal al-Din Rumi's poetry. What might seem like an esoteric experiment, in fact follows logical currents. Gustavsen's ensembles have often exhibited folkloric colors, while Tander's unique improvisational idiom on her debut Wagma (Neuklang, 2011) and her Pashto-sung arrangements of Afghan poems on Where ...

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Genius Guide to Jazz

The 9% Solution

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
April 19, 2016

Recently, as I was doing my extensive research for these little excursions, I was on my way to the refrigerator for another bottle of inspiration when I happened to overhear a report that stated pop music accounted for only 9% of all record sales. Frankly, I was stunned. All of the fawning media attention given to pop stars and their wares, the seemingly ubiquitous presence of pop music in every facet of American life, it all seemed a little excessive ...