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

Ian Brighton: Now And Then

Read "Now And Then" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
March 20, 2016

Ian Brighton's first album Marsh Gas was released on Bead Records in 1977. This, his second album, is released nearly forty years later. Marsh Gas is now, sadly, a rare and virtually unobtainable artefact (other than the availability of some tracks via YouTube) so it's significant that Brighton's Now And Then has been released to coincide with the guitarist's 72nd birthday and which proves that he has not lost an iota of the iconoclastic dynamism he evinced all those decades ...

Extended Analysis

Skip Heller: For EP Fans Only

by C. Michael Bailey
March 20, 2016

Fred “Skip" Heller is, in my estimate, a most undervalued cultural mind. Musically restless by nature, Heller is a two-million candle light, illuminating whatever musical style is intriguing him at the moment. This restlessness has led to Heller's exploration of the organ trio on It's Like That: The organ Trio Anthology 1998--2004 (Jewbilee, 2004) and Fakebook (Hyena, 2004) and a deep descent into the Heart of America. Heller began to sharpen his focus with specialized projects like 2012's ...

Album Review

Chaise Lounge: Gin Fizz Fandango

Read "Gin Fizz Fandango" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
March 20, 2016

Washington DC's Chaise Lounge know how to show the listener a good time. On their seventh album they take the “cocktail jazz" description literally, offering a recipe for the title cocktail in the CD liner notes, compliments of the band's resident mixologist, bassist Pete Ostle. Not only that: there's even a “Play along with Chaise Lounge" option: a link to lead sheets online for all of the original songs. As the title fandango implies, the program has a ...

Album Review

Letizia Gambi: Blue Monday

Read "Blue Monday" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
March 20, 2016

As the world continues to shrink--musically speaking of course--the melding of American jazz with Mediterranean melody is another spin cycle that makes appreciation of this evolving art form so interesting. With high expectations, Neapolitan vocalist Letizia Gambi, which hails from a theatrical family, and has extensive jazz education, releases Blue Monday, an exuberant and ambitious production that takes jazz on a romantic Italian holiday. After a collaboration with drummer extraordinaire Lenny White in 2009 led to “Introducing Letizia ...

Album Review

Misha Tsiganov: Spring Feelings

Read "Spring Feelings" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 20, 2016

Russian-born pianist extraordinaire Misha Tsiganov delivers his second album and follow up to his highly-acclaimed Criss Cross Jazz label debut The Artistry of The Standard, with the thoroughly enthralling and enchanting Spring Feelings presenting a superb selection of five outrages originals and four reimagined standards in one exquisite package of post-bop burners. Before recoding the label debut, Tsiganov realized he had so much material available that it could not actually fit in one album and therefore suggested that Artistry should ...

Album Review

Champian Fulton: After Dark

Read "After Dark" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 20, 2016

Veteran New York pianist and vocalist Champian Fulton offers another recording of time-honored standards on After Dark, except this particular effort focuses on the music of the Queen of the Blues, the music of the great Dinah Washington, who was her first major vocalist influence early on in her life. Though she grew up listening to Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Helen Humes among others, it was the sound of Dinah's voice that left the biggest impression and this album, ...

Live Review

Philadelphia Orchestra: Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand"

by Victor L. Schermer
March 20, 2016

Philadelphia Orchestra Mahler Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand") Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Verizon Hall Philadelphia, PA March 13, 2016 Gustav Mahler wasn't shy. The massive number of singers and musicians required for this Symphony (over four hundred for this performance) and its approximately hour and a half duration led a friend of mine lightly to dub it “The Screamer!" Its outlandish magnitude suggests a grand entertainment which obscures the ...

Album Review

Victor Prieto: The Three Voices

Read "The Three Voices" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 19, 2016

On the cover of his CD The Three Voices, Victor Prieto looks as if he's going to do something crazy with his accordions. He is a giant behind the big city skyline, towering over tall buildings. It's sort of like a “Godzilla of the squeeze boxes" scene. But the accordionist doesn't look like he's bent on Godzillian destruction; he, in fact, looks as if his intention is the spreading of musical joy. Prieto is New York City-based now--he ...

Extended Analysis

Grateful Dead: Dave's Picks Volume 17 - Selland Arena, Fresno, CA 7/19/1974

by Doug Collette
March 19, 2016

The debate is ongoing and will certainly remain so, but with each Grateful Dead archive release from the “Wall of Sound" era, the 1973-4 phase of the iconic band's history rises further in prestige. And it should hardly be surprising, given that the impeccable sound translates through recording and Jeffrey Norman's remastering. On this title, that uncanny clarity allowed the group to play at an elevated level precisely because they could hear themselves so well, individually and collectively.

Album Review

Tim Whalen: Oblivion: The Music of Bud Powell

Read "Oblivion: The Music of Bud Powell" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
March 19, 2016

Pianist/composer/arranger Tim Whalen pays tribute to the great bebop pianist Bud Powell with this set of creative arrangements. Whalen rightly points out that Powell was the architect of modern jazz piano, yet he is often overlooked when fellow bebop pioneers Bird, Monk, and Dizzy are mentioned. His arrangements of Powell compositions (plus one new original) are respectful to the originals, while adding his personal stamp at the same time. He has a premier crew of Washington DC-based players, ...