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

Will Bernard: Out & About

Read "Out & About" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 17, 2016

Will Bernard has received his due for sideman work in a variety of settings, but you rarely hear anybody talk about stylistic range when it comes to his own leader dates. This is the album that could--and should--change that. Over the course of eleven originals, Bernard continually frames himself in different ways, constantly redefining his outlook and mining fresh musical veins with some help from four A-list musicians--organist Brian Charette, saxophonist John Ellis, bassist Ben Allison, and drummer Allison Miller. ...

Album Review

Svetlana and the Delancey Five: Night at the Speakeasy

Read "Night at the Speakeasy" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 17, 2016

The name Svetlana and the Delancey Five sounds like a Cold War cadre of marauding spies. Moscow-native Svetlana Shmulyian is the real article and brings a certain “other-worldness" to a jazz repertoire existing somewhere between 1920 and the Rapture. The band's Night at the Speakeasy is their debut for the West Coast OA2 Record label. With that title, it is just too easy to assume that this recording is simply an expose of the older forms of jazz typically committed ...

Album Review

Grupo Fantasma: Problemas

Read "Problemas" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
February 17, 2016

It took five years and a new producer for Grupo Fantasma, the powerhouse Austin (TX) fusion ensemble that brings together musicians from Texas and Latin America, to follow-up their 2010 Grammy-winner El Existential (Ingrooves/Nat Geo Music).But Problemas, the first release that the band did not produce itself, proves worth the wait. “We thought a new process would help us find a unique voice and create a story," explains bassist Greg González. “For our part, we felt that one ...

Album Review

Lars Møller's Aarhus Jazz Orchestra feat. David Liebman and Marilyn Mazur: ReWrite of Spring

Read "ReWrite of Spring" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 17, 2016

In the early twentieth century, at a time when the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was barely known, he had already composed the celebrated works Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). The 1913 work, The Rite of Spring, was to become renowned both as a ballet and as a stand-alone orchestral score. The Paris premier at the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées set off a violent riot though it was never clear if the avant-garde music, the Vaslav Nijinsky choreography, or a ...

Album Review

Alister Spence: Live

by Duncan Heining
February 17, 2016

Alister Spence Trio: Live is, apparently, this Australian group's sixth recording. Sadly, the others have passed me by and pianist Alister Spence only recently crossed my CD deck in the company of Scottish saxophonist / improviser Raymond MacDonald. To be honest, much contemporary piano trio jazz--EST, Brad Mehldau, The Necks--bores me. Perhaps unfairly so but to me a lot of it sounds to me like a Michael Nyman soundtrack from some seemingly endless film that Mrs. O'Groove would have me ...

Live Review

A Day With Dave Liebman

by Ian Patterson
February 16, 2016

A Day With Dave Liebman National Concert Hall Dublin, Ireland January 31, 2016 Lasting the course in jazz, that's to say, building a successful career that, just like any other job, spans more than half a lifetime, brings with it a wealth of knowledge and experience. Sharing that knowledge with young, aspiring jazz musicians has long been a part of jazz culture, even if the mentoring role of myth and legend in late-night jazz ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Not Feelin’ All Right: Guilt and Those Cheap Imported Box Sets

by Marc Davis
February 16, 2016

When I was in high school in the '70s, I bought a jazz record with an unusual request in the liner notes. The artist--I think it was Chick Corea--asked fans not to tape his record and pass it around to friends. He said (and I'm paraphrasing from memory): “If you like jazz and you like this record, please don't copy it. Buy another copy. The jazz market is small, he said, and most jazz musicians don't make much ...

Album Review

Ingrid James: Trajectoire

Read "Trajectoire" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 16, 2016

Australian vocalist and lyricist Ingrid James has collaborated with French pianist Alexis Tcholakian's trio for her fifth album, Trajectoire. The collaboration works well, creating a sophisticated collection of songs with depth and beauty. Tcholakian's trio--bassist Simon Teboul and drummer Thierry Tardieu--is augmented by additional musicians from time to time. Flute, guitar, flugelhorn and saxophone all add color and tonal variation to the songs, effective contributions in every case. James' slow, dreamlike, take on Jimmy Rowles and ...

Album Review

Dan Weiss: Sixteen: Drummers Suite

Read "Sixteen: Drummers Suite" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 16, 2016

Dan Weiss began his professional drumming career touring with the likes of saxophonists David Binney, Lee Konitz, Rudresh Mahantthapa, among others. Weiss has also been studying tabla with Pandit Samir Chatterjee for two decades and has been named a top drummer in a number of prominent polls. Sixteen: Drummers Suite bears more than a passing resemblance to Weiss' Fourteen (Pi Recordings, 2014) at least in terms of the music's development and the cohort of musicians. Weiss' inspiration for ...

Album Review

High Definition Quartet: Bukoliki

Read "Bukoliki" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 16, 2016

Surprises abound on Poland's For-Tune Records label, reminding us of this country's well-known and important legacy within modern jazz circles. On the heels of their widely acclaimed debut Hopasa (Emarcy, 2013), the High Definition Quartet strikes again with this superfine effort that substantiates its moniker with the crystal clear audio characteristics and the musicians' strict attention to detail. Featuring spacey sound-sculpting processes, Classical music inferences and intertwining dialogues, the quartet's meticulous inner-workings consist of variable currents and loosely ...