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

Dave Cappello & Jeff Albert with William Parker: New Normal

Read "New Normal" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 7, 2016

If sentimentality is the synonym of nostalgia, then the antonym is anticipation, and maybe a better word would be modernity. That word comes to mind spinning the trio recording New Normal by trombonist Jeff Albert, drummer Dave Cappello and their guest, bassist William Parker. Sentimentality is often associated with New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. While the uninitiated (and a certain musical family from NOLA) often look backwards to sounds of a bygone era, let us not forget ...

Album Review

Sebastian Lexer + Steve Noble: Muddy Ditch

Read "Muddy Ditch" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
April 7, 2016

In a similar manner to the simultaneous Fataka release by Evan Parker and Seymour Wright, Muddy Ditch successfully pairs a long-established member of the London improv scene with a player who emerged from Eddie Prevost's weekly workshop --drummer Steve Noble and pianist Sebastian Lexer, respectively. But in Noble and Lexer's cases, the descriptions “drummer" and “pianist" are barely adequate, only scratching the surface of what each of them does. While Noble's awesome power always ensures he is a ...

Album Review

Henry Threadgill Ensemble Double Up: Old Locks And Irregular Verbs

Read "Old Locks And Irregular Verbs" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 7, 2016

Here, one modern era jazz innovator pays homage to another modern era jazz innovator. The premise for this album is framed on Henry Threadgill's friendship and admiration to the late composer-conductor Butch Morris who cunningly established a new twist on large ensemble conduction processes. And the Ensemble Double Up is viewed as an extension to Threadgill's long-running Zooid band, now featuring two alto saxophonists and two pianists. Consequently, he doesn't play alto sax on this outing, devised on a four-part ...

Live Review

Gregory Porter At The Ulster Hall, Belfast

by Ian Patterson
April 6, 2016

Gregory Porter Ulster Hall Belfast, N. Ireland March 31, 2016Though Gregory Porter has played Ireland several times, it's unlikely that any of the previous venues to welcome the Californian singer-songwriter have quite the history--or indeed the character--of Belfast's Ulster Hall. In its one hundred-and-fifty-year history this handsome Victorian music hall has hosted novelist Charles Dickens, composer Edgar Elgar, entertainer and activist Paul Robeson and, in 1971, Led Zeppelin, who premiered “Stairway to Heaven" here. From ...

Album Review

Jacknife: The Music Of Jackie McLean

Read "The Music Of Jackie McLean" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 6, 2016

If you ask any well-informed jazz fans and performers about the legacy of Jackie McLean, you're likely to be met with a response that focuses on one or two specific areas: his work as a mentor-educator and/or his playing on a number of classic Blue Note dates from the '60s. But how many will mention the songs--McLean's own compositions and the writings of his fellow travelers--that appeared on those albums? Probably very few. Saxophonist Steve Lugerner rightly sees that as ...

Album Review

Ernie Watts Quartet: Wheel of Time

Read "Wheel of Time" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 6, 2016

On the Buddy Rich band's album Big Swing Face (circa 1967), Ernie Watts unleashes a blazing alto sax solo on the title track that is guaranteed to send chills up and down the spine and leave listeners wondering, “How did he do that?" Now, almost half a century later, the seventy-year-old Watts continues to weave those mind-bending solos, this time on tenor sax, on Wheel of Time, a quartet date whose nine selections include four written by the leader himself ...

Album Review

Bruno Råberg/Phil Grenadier/Allan Chase: For The Unknown

Read "For The Unknown" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 6, 2016

Three-quarters of bassist Bruno Råberg's Hot Box (Orbis Music, 2015) quartet, reunites on an unusual trio recording, For The Unknown. Among the unusual aspects of the album are Råberg, trumpeter Phil Grenadier and saxophonist Allan Chase turning out nineteen free improvisations in just over forty-five minutes, eight of the pieces clocking in at less than two minutes each.Råberg, Grenadier and Chase have been recording together since the bassist's nonet recording Chrysalis (Orbis, 2004) and for the most part, ...

Album Review

Uwe Oberg - Frank Paul Schubert - Wilbert de Joode - Mark Sanders: Rope

by Glenn Astarita
April 6, 2016

These upper-echelon European improvisers offer a grab bag of tasty treats in front of an audience at the Festival Just Music in Wiesbaden, Germany. This 2015 performance consists of three works, but the 35-minute opener “Drifter," is a tour de force amid a macrocosm of delicate phrasings, succinct shadings, ethereal background treatments and scorching, climactically driven buildups. Essentially, they keep you on the edge. Frank Paul Schubert's darting and weaving soprano sax lines and pianist Uwe Oberg's multifaceted ...

Album Review

Ferenc Snetberger: In Concert

Read "In Concert" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
April 6, 2016

Hungarian classical guitarist Ferenc Snétberger makes his ECM debut with a live solo guitar recording, surely the most demanding and revealing format for any guitarist. His music is the product of diverse stylistic influences: starting with jazz, but then a strong classical music influence, followed by exposure to Brazilian, South American, and flamenco guitar music. Snétberger cites his first encounter with Johann Sebastian Bach's music as life-changing, followed by hearing ECM label mates Egberto Gismonti in duo with Nana Vasconcelos. ...

Album Review

Baltazanis: End Of Seas

Read "End Of Seas" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 5, 2016

The bounding main knows no single shape, size, or direction. It's both timeless in nature and organic in its arc and flow. Greek guitarist Costas Baltazanis seems to intuitively understand those facts. His is a music that taps into the water's vastness, appreciates its beauty, respects and harnesses its strengths, and rides the ever-adjusting tides. End Of Seas contains an aqueous assortment of music. Some songs are tranquil, others are full of danger, and all are unique ...