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.

New York Beat

Steve Miller and Jimmie Vaughan at Jazz at Lincoln Center

by Nick Catalano
April 9, 2016

No matter what the style where African-American influences and developments upon the modern music scene have been pervasive--work songs, ragtime, jazz, stride, and boogie-woogie, the most important contribution has been the Blues. The country Blues as heard by pioneers such as Robert Johnson, The City Blues epitomized by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Rhythm n' Blues as iterated by players like Robert Cray continue to provide the major foundation for jazz and the other aforementioned musics. Muddy Waters, B.B. King ...

Album Review

Steve Wiest And Phröntrange: The High Road

Read "The High Road" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 8, 2016

You don't encounter a lot of trombone-centric fusion dates these days. But then again, you also don't encounter too many musicians like Steve Wiest, the unabashedly enthusiastic veteran trombonist fronting this project. He's a true polymath, respected as a performer, educator, science fiction author, cartoonist, and composer-arranger. But he also clearly knows how to let rip and have a good time. That much is made clear on this powerful date. The High Road was born out of ...

Album Review

The Jim Cullum Jazz Band: Porgy and Bess Live

Read "Porgy and Bess Live" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 8, 2016

Since its New York City debut in September 1935, George Gershwin's beloved folk opera Porgy and Bess has been recreated and performed in almost every possible context, from classical opera to musical theatre to mainstream jazz, in America and overseas. The opera has been probed and dissected so often, in fact, that at first blush another version, this one by a seven-piece trad jazz group that calls San Antonio, Texas, home may seem superfluous at best. What sets this double-disc ...

Album Review

Maciej Fortuna: Zośka

by Anthony Shaw
April 8, 2016

Maciej Fortuna is obviously a power to be reckoned with on the Polish music scene, as not only the founder and director of Fortuna-music and a teacher in Poznan's Academy of Music but as a leading jazz trumpeter in the country. On this disc he has invited three stalwart American musicians to join him and together his bandmates have selected their repertoire of six nineteenth century Polish folk tunes, to which are added four of Fortuna's own compositions. It makes ...

Album Review

Noah Preminger: Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Read "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
April 8, 2016

The Delta Blues, spawned from the callous conditions on Mississippi plantations and farmlands, is an artistic manifestation that creativity can overcome, survive, and thrive, amidst overwhelming situations. These sparse, rural blues, which came out of the fields so long ago, continue to influence contemporary musicians seeking a raw form of expression. Count saxophonist Noah Preminger among those who have gone back to these roots, his Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground, is a re-invigoration process based on primordial ...

Bailey's Bundles

Jazz Quanta April – Five Women II: Sarah Vaughan, Barb Jungr, marty Elkins, Phyllis Blanford, and Tina Phillips

by C. Michael Bailey
April 8, 2016

There is never too much of a good thing... Sarah Vaughan Live at Rosy's Resonance Records 2016 The most important and popular female jazz vocalists all had nick names. Lady Day, The First Lady of Song, The Devine One..."The President" Lester Young gave Billie Holiday her nom de plume, while Ella Fitzgerald was dubbed the First Lady early on. Chris Becker, in his book Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women ...

Album Review

Torben Snekkestad: Winds Of Mouth

Read "Winds Of Mouth" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 8, 2016

The Homo sapien caveman picked up a goat's horn and blew some notes through it to entertain the Neanderthals, who had somehow, not paid the cover charge for the spring solstice show. No worries he thought, they'll soon be extinct, and I've just invented music. What the Neanderthals were fascinated with, was, just how did the caveman make those sounds? Same can be said of musician Torben Snekkestad's recording Winds Of Mouth. Actually, it's just one of three ...

What is Jazz?

How Teachers can Swing in the Classroom

by Douglas Groothuis
April 8, 2016

I am a jazz aficionado as well as a philosophy professor. Being in front of a classroom teaching is my favorite place on earth, second to a good jazz club with hip friends. In the midst of a philosophy class, I may wax enthusiastic about the transcendent qualities of a John Coltrane saxophone solo or the preternatural swing of Buddy Rich's timekeeping or the song-writing and band-leading genius of Duke Ellington. These comments are not merely idiosyncratic. They reflect something ...

Album Review

David Friesen & Glen Moore: Bactrian

Read "Bactrian" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 7, 2016

Time and space can take nothing away from certain musical relationships. There are those on-and-off partnerships that flourish regardless of the frequency of encounters and years gone by, and this is clearly one of them. The connection between bass masters David Friesen and Glen Moore goes back some five decades. It yielded two previous duo recordings--In Concert (Vanguard, 1977) and Returning (Burnside, 1993)--and it continues to bear fruit. This third recorded chapter of the Friesen-Moore story began ...

Album Review

Walt Weiskopf: The Way You Say It

Read "The Way You Say It" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
April 7, 2016

The trail leading to The Way You Say It, the latest from tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf, is marked by performances from superb Posi-Tone releases of recent vintage. Organist Brian Charette was the ballast of the 2015 Triple Play, a three tenor date led by Doug Webb, which featured Weiskopf. Vibraphonist Behn Gillece made significant contributions to Overdrive, Weiskopf's debut for the label in 2014. And drummer Steve Fidyk laid down a stable, stimulating beat throughout Open Road, Weiskopf's recording from ...