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

J. Peter Schwalm: The Beauty of Disaster

Read "The Beauty of Disaster" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 22, 2016

"Ambient Music." Now that is a creatively coiffured pant load of a genre designation. An outgrowth of “New Age?" The bastard child of Minimalism? Radio personality Stephen Hill's cottage industry? Well, in a word, “yes," all of these things. The evolution of music is rapidly hurling toward a time when genre will mean nothing and no longer be useful in describing the music. A new paradigm will have to be adopted to make sense. So words like “jazz," “New Age," ...

Extended Analysis

Live in Toronto: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, November 20, 2015

by John Kelman
March 22, 2016

"The best live albums are the ones that make you glad they were recorded while simultaneously regretting you couldn't have been in the venue on the night." So writes Declan Colgan, president of Panegyric Records--the label responsible for, amongst other things, King Crimson's extensive 40th Anniversary reissue series of its initial run of studio and live albums, remixed by Steven Wilson or Jakko M. Jakszyk--in his liner notes to Live in Toronto: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, November 20, 2015, the full-concert ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Reuben Wilson: Blue Mode – 1969

by Marc Davis
March 21, 2016

1969 was the grooviest year in a very groovy decade. The Beatles, on the verge of a breakup, urged everyone to get back and come together. The Temptations couldn't get next to you. And Sly Stone took everyone higher at Woodstock. At that very moment, in the waning days of 1969, Reuben Wilson funked us up with a classic acid-jazz album called Blue Mode. If you remember 1969, you already know what Blue Mode sounds like, ...

Album Review

Jon Balke: Warp

by Karl Ackermann
March 21, 2016

Best known for his Magnetic North Orchestra, pianist and composer Jon Balke has a background that is rich with global influences and diverse musical stylings. Trained as a classical pianist in his youth, Balke was playing with Masqualero on Bande à Part (ECM, 1985) by the time he was eighteen. That recording, in the company of Arild Andersen, Nils Petter Molvær, Tore Brunborg and Jon Christensen, set some enduring musical relationships in motion, with all but Andersen going on to ...

Book Review

Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz by Chris Becker

by C. Michael Bailey
March 21, 2016

Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz Chris Becker 332 Pages ISBN: # 978-0692543603 Beckeresque 2015 Houstonian writer and composer Chris Becker had a labor of love in mind when he set out to assemble his Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz. What may have begun as a collection of interviews, morphed into a tautly-rendered history of jazz against a backdrop of America's decaying history of racism and sexism. What ...

Album Review

Phronesis: Parallax

Read "Parallax" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
March 21, 2016

Parallax (noun) “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer." This phenomenon is exactly how the listener new to Phronesis' oeuvre would perceive this, their sixth album recorded within the last decade.“67000 MPH" for example, is a whistle stop tour of musically-defined gravitational resistance. The mad tempo changes and frequent erratic structural modulations characterise this frenetic opening number penned by Anton Eger. But in spite of this wild compositional ...

Album Review

Zhenya Strigalev: Never Group

Read "Never Group" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
March 21, 2016

Tim Lefebvre was the last bassist to record with David Bowie. He's featured on Blackstar, arguably Bowie's best and certainly most poignant album. Drummer Eric Harland has recorded with Charles Lloyd's Quartet, Dave Holland, Joshua Redman and McCoy Tyner. These two musicians form the essential backbone of Russian-born, London-based alto saxophonist Zhenya Strigalev's trio who dominate this seventy three minute recording. Guest Bruno Liberda on electronics is not a jazz musician but a composer and academic and plays on four ...

Album Review

Hendrik Meurkens: Harmonicus Rex

Read "Harmonicus Rex" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 21, 2016

Long before he became a proponent of the Brazilian jazz sound, harmonica and vibraphone master Hendrik Meurkens was drawn to the “swing" of the traditional jazz style and has remained a musical conservative ever since. Harmonicus Rex is the first all straight ahead jazz album Meurkens produces in a fifteen-year period. Here, the harmonica's expressive swinging voice is presented on a blend of originals and standards from such icons as Dave Brubeck, Milt Jackson, Freddie Hubbard as well as traditional ...

Album Review

Alfredo Triff: Parodies: Jazz Music for Violin and Octet

Read "Parodies: Jazz Music for Violin and Octet" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 21, 2016

American-Cuban violinist Alfredo Triff is known for his long-standing work with composer-arranger-songwriter-producer Kip Hanrahan that began in 1985--five years after Triff arrived to New york from Havana, Cuba--and continues to this day. But Triff's work encompasses more than Hanrahan music. He experimented with recording solo electric violin, released solo albums that presented his diverse musical interests in changing formats, collaborated with Brazilian singer-poet Arnaldo Antunes and toured with another of Hanrahan frequent collaborators, Jack Bruce, and participated on Bruce's album ...

Drum Addiction

The Groove

by Mat Marucci
March 21, 2016

The groove, feel, pulse, beat, pocket--whatever it is called--is the essence of the feeling of the music being played. Musical genre has its own concept and texture--almost a personality. (In classical music the composer is the main force in the music's texture and interpretation. Very specific instructions for the feeling of a piece and dynamic markings are included by the composer to guide the performer's interpretation of the music. Percussion is used mainly as a coloring for the ...