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

Jaimeo Brown Transcendence: Work Songs

Read "Work Songs" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
March 1, 2016

The inventiveness to cope with difficulty lies at the heart of Work Songs, the follow-up to drummer Jaimeo Brown's outstanding 2013 release Transcendence (Motema). The syncopation of hammers on nails forging railroad tracks and weary chants of laborers are mixed with progressive blues, rock, jazz, and hip hop influences to create a patchwork that's soulfully compelling. Brown and co-producer/guitarist Chris Sholar deftly integrate sampled field recordings with scintillating performances from jazz saxophonists JD Allen and Jaleel Shaw, blues singer Lester ...

Live Review

Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri Tuba Project featuring Billy Hart at Cornelia St. Café

by Tyran Grillo
March 1, 2016

Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri Tuba Project featuring Billy Hart Cornelia St. Café Greenwich Village, NY February 13, 2016 Violist Mat Maneri and pianist Lucian Ban, whose Transylvanian Concert (released 2013 on ECM) gave listeners access to some of the most forward-thinking chamber jazz in recent memory, teamed up with drummer Billy Hart, altoist Bruce Williams, and tuba master Bob Stewart at Cornelia St. Café for a night of lightly composed, heavily improvised music.

Album Review

Jeff Williams: Outlier

by Roger Farbey
March 1, 2016

Drummer Jeff Williams is an American expatriate now residing in London, England. Following his formal drumming studies commencing in 1968 at Berklee College of Music, Williams became a seasoned veteran of the U.S. jazz scene, accompanying some of the biggest names in the business including Stan Getz, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, Richie Beirach, Cedar Walton, Lee Konitz, Bill Evans, John Scofield, and Miroslav Vitous. Outlier is his third album for Whirlwind and he's assembled a great line-up of British jazz ...

Album Review

Marc Copland: Zenith

by Budd Kopman
March 1, 2016

Whenever pianist Marc Copland is a sideman on a session, much less leading the session, there are very high expectations for the music. Whether it is the lustrous sound he gets from the keyboard, which includes his pedalling, the dense harmonies which create shimmering harmonics or the intelligence of his lines and compositions, Copland has a unique voice and musical personality. Zenith meets and exceeds any expectations one might have; it is a joy to listen from many ...

Album Review

Alan Davey: Sputnik Stan Vol. 1: A Fistful Of Junk

Read "Sputnik Stan Vol. 1: A Fistful Of Junk" reviewed by Jack Gold-Molina

by Jack Gold-Molina
March 1, 2016

The most recent solo outing by Alan Davey, Lemmy's former replacement in the space rock juggernaut Hawkwind, is a CD/colored vinyl LP that comes with a comic book. The artwork of the comic book is finely detailed and closely follows the lyrics of the songs, giving the reader and listener a vivid picture of the life of Sputnik Stan, who runs a space junk salvage operation. For the uninitiated, while there are great things in space, there is also a ...

Album Review

Brända broar: Röjer På Vinden

Read "Röjer På Vinden" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
March 1, 2016

After gigging around their native Sweden for a few years, Brända Broar (Burnt Bridges) have finally issued their first album, Röjer På Vinden on Anders Ahlén's tiny Signal and Sound label. An EP-length vinyl-only audiophile quality 45-rpm album limited to 300 copies, Röjer På Vinden (literally “Delays in the Attic") is another powerful musical statement from greater Scandinavia's thriving, youth-dominated modern jazz scene. Sporting a rather conventional instrumentation, Brända Broar consists of four young virtuosos--Niklas Persson, Rasmus Borg, Vilhelm Bromander, ...

Live Review

Chris Potter Quartet at Village Vanguard

by Tyran Grillo
February 29, 2016

Chris Potter Quartet Village Vanguard Greenwich Village, NY February 14, 2016 After showing so strongly at New York's 2016 Winter Jazzfest, Chris Potter and his quartet with pianist David Virelles, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Marcus Gilmore took the Village Vanguard by weeklong storm. The final performance dropped on Valentine's Day during this winter's coldest snap, filling the evening air with more than enough passion to combat the freeze. Among Potter's many gifts--he ...

Album Review

Thomas Albæk Jakobsen's Flux: Voyager

Read "Voyager" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 29, 2016

Flux is a project from Danish drummer and composer Thomas Albæk Jakobsen. In 2013, he released the album Relations. Voyager is the follow-up and as the name implies, it is an adventurous album that explores many moods, but the tone is predominantly lyrical. An important addition to the group is the experienced pianist Søren Møller. Besides his own albums as a leader, Møller has played in a duo with saxophonist Dick Oatts and in the Scan-Am Quartet ...

Album Review

Mike Herriott: Isn't Life Grand

Read "Isn't Life Grand" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
February 29, 2016

Canadian Award-winning trumpeter Mike Herriott is not only a prolific composer and arranger, he is a gifted multi-instrumentalist capable of writing, arranging and performing all of the music in an astounding one-person virtual band and does something similar to this on his seventh album as leader with the outstanding Isn't Life Grand. Taken from a track from his first album Free At Last (Boathouse, 1995), the album title track is an original piece that was arranged by the great Canadian ...

Album Review

Eric Olsen ReVision Quartet: Sea Changes

Read "Sea Changes" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
February 29, 2016

Sophisticated pianist Eric Olsen explores the western classical canon from a jazzman's perspective on the charming and delightful Sea Changes. The several selections on the disc span the range from Georges Bizet's “Carmen" to Olivier Messiaen and Jean Sibelius' modernistic compositions.Olsen's charismatic and unique interpretations mark the album with his signature elegance and forms a common thread through it. From the hard boppish rendition of the traditional Irish hymn °Be Now My Vision" to the vibrant performance of ...