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

Fahir Atakoglu: Live At Umbria Jazz

Read "Live At Umbria Jazz" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
March 9, 2016

The globalization of jazz has not only garnered an expansive audience for the music, but has also brought worldwide artists into the genre, bringing with them unique cultural distinctions and dimensions. The Italian city of Umbria is home to the esteemed Teatro Morlachi, where in 2010, pianist Fahir Atakoglu recorded Live At Umbria Jazz an adrenaline charged set of precision and emotion. Turkish born Atakoglu is joined by Canadian electric bass virtuoso Alain Caron, and Cuban master drummer Horacio El ...

Album Review

Marcos Varela: San Ygnacio

Read "San Ygnacio" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 8, 2016

Bassist Marcos Varela, Houston-bred and now New York-based, opens his recording debut, San Ygnacio, with a big, brash version of the standard, “I Should Care." His rhythm section is rounded out by veteran pianist George Cables and drum icon Billy Hart, so a free swinging zest is expected, and delivered. Logan Richardson on alto sax makes it a quartet, with tart tone and stretched notes that bring the legendary alto saxophonist Jackie McLean to mind. It's a bold anthem of ...

Live Review

Abdullah Ibrahim at The National Concert Hall, Dublin

by Ian Patterson
March 8, 2016

Abdullah Ibrahim National Concert Hall Dublin, Ireland March 4, 2016 South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim is showing few signs of a diminished appetite for the road, despite turning eighty one this past November. A short UK tour precedes a string of US dates and there are already gigs in the diary for 2017. This one-off Irish show at the National Concert Hall presented Ibrahim solo, a context he has repeatedly explored during his ...

Live Review

WDR Jazz Fest 2016

by Phillip Woolever
March 8, 2016

WDR Jazz Fest Theatre Munster Münster, Germany January 30, 2016 The multi-stationed broadcaster WDR (West German Radio) is known throughout most of greater Germany as a powerhouse of jazz programming and concert promotion. That lofty reputation was upheld and then some with Jazz Fest 2016, which included a Saturday night with one of the strongest single day lineups of pure jazz seen recently. From a pair of dynamic big bands to some intense small formations, ...

Album Review

Jim Rotondi: Dark Blue

Read "Dark Blue" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 8, 2016

Back in 1997 when Introducing Jim Rotondi announced that a major new trumpeter star was on the ascent, few could have predicted how important and prolific Rotondi would become to the mainstream landscape. A foremost stylist in the lineage of Freddie Hubbard and Wood Shaw, Rotondi quickly proved he had absorbed the legacy, only to jettison imitation in favor of innovation. Working regularly with his own groups and the hard bop ensemble One For All, Rotondi was a major force ...

Album Review

Ameen Saleem: The Groove Lab

Read "The Groove Lab" reviewed by Alex Franquelli

by Alex Franquelli
March 8, 2016

Composer Irving Berlin once famously said that “everybody ought to have a Lower East Side in their life." True and, although technically speaking Brooklyn is not part of the octagon that thrives between Houston Street and FRD Drive, the groove, that precious intimate rumble of inspiration, is the one element that connects one area with the other; contemporary music and its multiple historical declinations. While the paradigm differs and keeps on evolving, the end result is invariably of a similar ...

Album Review

Alfredo Dias Gomes: Looking Back

Read "Looking Back" reviewed by Jim Olin

by Jim Olin
March 8, 2016

Alfredo Dias Gomes pays an exquisite homage to the greats that inspired him throughout his career in his album Looking Back, a labor of love to Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, and more. His powerful drum beats match every saxophone note and guitar riff. Gomes also bravely adds his signature drum exhibitions to his heroes' works, making them more alive and pulsating. “Red Baron" is like a melting pot of electrifying riffs, sizzling saxophone, and ferocious drum ...

Album Review

Renee Rosnes: Written in the Rocks

Read "Written in the Rocks" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 8, 2016

Always a major talent who has transcended the hokum that usually accompanies the precept of women jazz musicians, pianist Renee Rosnes offers a mature and individualistic touch that has been recorded on far too few occasions over the years. In fact, prior to this fabulous session, Rosnes' last U.S. release was a 2010 duo set with husband Bill Charlap on Blue Note. Around the same time she gathered together Steve Nelson, Peter Washington, and Bill Stewart for the Japanese only ...

What is Jazz?

Co-Improvisation: Explaining the Magic

by Victor L. Schermer
March 7, 2016

When we listen to great jazz performances, we pay most attention to the soloists, some of whom become our musical heroes. In that respect, jazz is an affirmation of the individual, the uniqueness and liberation of either the “free and joyful spirit," of whom there was none greater than Louis Armstrong, or the arduous struggle of the existential hero to become free, a musician whose inborn talent and valor met the awesome challenges of life and music. Perhaps the most ...

Album Review

Ira Hill: Tomorrow

Read "Tomorrow" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 7, 2016

Ira Hill. Remember that name, for you're likely to see it in print a lot more in the future. While this up-and-comer was still in his late teens when this album was recorded and released, you'd never know that from a blind listen. His debonair delivery, sure-voiced scatting, and all-around taste belie his years. And the cherry on top is his welterweight soulfulness, a unique quality that counters the notion that truly fervent feelings can only be found in the ...