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

INNERrOUTe: Fourmation

Read "Fourmation" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
March 27, 2016

Starting with keyboardist Joe Vincent Tranchina's steady, alarming tone, Fourmation suggests an emergency of some kind. “Consensual Motion" gradually includes the other three members entering the fray, a fray that's loose and free-form, and eventually calming, not to mention a little bit funky. Michael D'Agostino's drum fills combine with Bill McCrossen's probing basslines to form a rhythmic framework for trumpeter Rick Savage to follow suit, his tone softer, more meditative even as it follows a similar probing trajectory.

Album Review

Yoni Kretzmer 2 Bass Quartet: Book II

by John Sharpe
March 27, 2016

One of the major innovations of the 1960s New Thing was to liberate the so called rhythm section from time keeping duties. The role of the bass in particular was transformed, allowing it leeway to sit alongside the front line. But there was still sometimes a need to impart momentum. One solution was to double up, a gambit first utilized in Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960), but then elsewhere such as John Coltrane's sessions for Africa/Brass (Impulse!, 1961) and ...

Album Review

Peter Van Huffel - Alex Maksymiw: Kronix

Read "Kronix" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 27, 2016

Hailing from Canada, but now calling Berlin home base, saxophonist Peter Van Huffel and guitarist Alex Maksymiw (Marcus Strickland) are radiant stars in the progressive jazz universe. As a solo artist, Van Huffel's Gorilla Mask band and similar undertakings have been wowing jazz audiences with a high-impact and kinetic modus operandi. And Maksymiw's Without a Word (Double Moon, 2015) features formidable saxophonist Marcus Strickland and is a program devised on the guitarist's perceptive compositional approach, tasteful riffs, strong soloing and ...

Album Review

Shunzo Ohno: ReNew

by James Nadal
March 27, 2016

Though the samurai warriors of Japan have passed on to legend and folklore, their Bushido Code of Conduct continues to have an impact of Japanese society. It emphasizes eight virtues, utmost which are honor, discipline and morality. As a son of Japan, trumpeter Shunzo Ohno, has personally adhered to these guiding principles, and ReNew reveals a profound sense of purpose, accented by total mastery of his instrument in service to a higher calling. Dedicated to the ongoing recovery ...

Extended Analysis

Time Is A Blind Guide

by John Kelman
March 27, 2016

Over the past couple of decades, Thomas Strønen has become, perhaps, best-known for his unfettered improvisational forays in electro-centric contexts: sometimes freewheeling and frenetic, as in Humcrush, the drummer/percussionist/electronics wizard's hardcore duo with his similarly inclined Norwegian partner, keyboardist Ståle Storløkken (and occasional guest, singer Sidsel Endresen); other times more spaciously ambient in the atmospheric Anglo/Norwegian collaboration, Food—initially a quartet that has, since releasing Last Supper (Rune Grammofon, 2005), whittled down to a core duo with British saxophonist Iain Ballamy, ...

Drum Addiction

Going Forward... Or Is It Backward?

by Mat Marucci
March 27, 2016

This title came from a saying I heard long ago, and many times since, but can't think of where I originally heard it. The saying is “To go forward, you have to go back" and the meaning of this saying will be very obvious by the end of this article. To begin, I will relate a short story: Years ago a young guitarist who I was working with in a rock band was sitting in the living room ...

Album Review

Walt Weiskopf: The Way You Say It

Read "The Way You Say It" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 26, 2016

Do jazz jukeboxes exist? I'm not referring to an online streaming service that tells you what to like. I'm talking about a mechanical box in a roadhouse you put money in, and everyone in the joint listens to your selections. If there are such establishments with said jukeboxes, I'm certain customers would select WW1, WW2, WW3, et cetera, for most of the tracks on Walt Weiskopf's The Way You Say It. The saxophonist a veteran of the big ...

Book Review

No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead

by Doug Collette
March 26, 2016

No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead Peter Richardson 384 Pages ISBN: # 1250010624 St. Martin's Press 2015 The declarative tone Peter Richardson adopts and maintains throughout No Simple Highway renders his depiction of the evolution of the Grateful Dead seem like nothing less than destiny. In fact, the way this erudite writer follows the evolution of the band, it's as if any story of modern American culture would be ...

Book Review

The Band Photographs 1968-1969

by Doug Collette
March 26, 2016

The Band Photographs 1968-1969 Elliott Landy 160 Pages ISBN: # 149502251X Backbeat Books 2015 As much as the Band disavowed imagemaking, preferring to focus as strictly as possible on their music when they emerged from the shadows Bob Dylan's backing ensemble, when embarked upon their own career, they definitely nurtured a distinctive collective persona and the photography of Elliott Landy, in the midst of an illustrious career that found him capturing the essence ...

Album Review

Oğuz Büyükberber/Tobias Klein: Reverse Camouflage

Read "Reverse Camouflage" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 26, 2016

Outside the classical genre, clarinet duos are not common but Turkish native Oğuz Büyükberber and German, Tobias Klein, each play an assortment of clarinets including the lower octave bass and contrabass versions. Along with the more familiar Bb instrument, the two musicians cover a full spectrum of woodwind sounds. Both artists, now residing in The Netherlands, are brought together on Reverse Camouflage by the Amsterdam-based TryTone label.The program consists of structured compositions and improvisations with three of the ...