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.

Film Review

Jaco Pastorius: Jaco

by Victor L. Schermer
February 6, 2016

Jaco Pastorius JACO Slang East/West 2015 If you think you know the legendary Jaco Pastorius, you may not, until you see this film produced by Metallica's Robert Trujillo and directed by Paul Marchand. Not only does it contain liberal samples of Pastorius' music throughout his career, it includes home movies, location shots, and other live footage as well as new and past interviews that reveal Pastorius in all his glory and vulnerability, including ...

Album Review

Naked Truth: Avian Thug

Read "Avian Thug" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 6, 2016

Avian Thug is this multinational quartet's third release and was recorded in England after the completion of a 2013 tour and offers more of the band's explorative powers, intimating similes of treks into mysterious galactic corridors. Comparisons to the electric Miles Davis era and so on are in order, but this unit gels to heavyweight cadences amid electric trumpeter Graham Haynes' stark pronouncements; brisk modern jazz flurries and succinctly stated melodic choruses. No doubt, they straddle a contemporary electronics-induced jazz ...

Album Review

Konstrukt & Peter Brötzmann: The Message: Live At Kargart

Read "The Message: Live At Kargart" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 6, 2016

Breathe, just keep breathing, you tell yourself as the latest offering from the free jazz saviors spins on the turntable. Pressed in an edition of just 200 LPs, The Message: Live At Kargart is a treasure of sound. Actually it is more than just sound, it is an independent self-contained space craft carrying music from a future. A time once prophesied by the likes of John Coltrane & Rashied Ali, Frank Lowe, Sunny Murray, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and ...

Multiple Reviews

Roger Waters: The Wall Live

by Nenad Georgievski
February 6, 2016

Roger Waters and Sean Evans Roger Waters the Wall Universal 2014 It is interesting how things from a distant past still resonate deeply with people even decades after they were first made and introduced. Pink Floyd's seminal album The Wall (EMI, 1979) was the pinnacle of this band's career, both artistically and commercially, arriving as a culmination after a decade of meteoric successes with one of the most successful recordings of ...

Album Review

Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus: The Distance

Read "The Distance" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
February 5, 2016

Jazz composers writing for large ensembles have often avoided the label “big band," going back to the Jazz Composer's Orchestra in the '60s, not to mention Sun Ra's Arkestra and the many Swing Era bands that called themselves orchestras. It's an understandable choice, given the unavoidable--and potentially limiting--stylistic associations that come with the big band name. Bassist/composer Michael Formanek playfully calls this 18-piece group Ensemble Kolossus: it represents a bold creative leap forward from his previous quartet recordings Small Places ...

Album Review

Blind Willie Johnson: God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson

Read "God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
February 5, 2016

As time moves on and the genuine bluesmen slip into historical archives, it is a cause for celebration when someone makes the effort to reconstruct the music of one of the true innovators in the blues genre. Produced by Jeffrey Gaskill, God Don't Never Change: The Songs Of Blind Willie Johnson, is a contemporary tribute to this seminal slide guitarist who was also unique in his imaginative vocal interpretations and compositions of gospel blues. Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) recorded thirty ...

Album Review

Tomás Doncker: The Mess We Made

Read "The Mess We Made" reviewed by Paul Naser

by Paul Naser
February 5, 2016

Prolific New York based guitarist/vocalist/composer Tomás Doncker's work can be recognized by its organic, soulful quality, it's true, but what sets him apart is the way his musical identity comes across in the wide variety of projects he conceives. Whether it's a tribute to blues legend Howlin' Wolf, or a collaboration with an award winning poet, Doncker's albums retain his unique compositional voice which can be described as groove-centric and bluesy but never predictable. His latest record, The ...

The Vinyl Post

Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948

by C. Andrew Hovan
February 5, 2016

So it is no secret that the entertainment industry is floundering these days and that record companies are doing just about anything to snatch some bucks away from the pirates and casual listeners. Perhaps this is why vinyl has become such a hot commodity. Blue Note spent the past two years reissuing classic titles on black wax and word on the street is that Impulse will be doing the same shortly. There was a minor hint that Savoy Jazz, the ...

Album Review

Avishai Cohen - Trumpet: Into the Silence

Read "Into the Silence" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
February 5, 2016

Trumpeter Avishai Cohen makes his ECM leader debut with Into the Silence, an album dedicated to the memory of his late father. Cohen composed the melodies over six months following his father's passing in November 2014, inspired by an album of Rachmaninoff's solo piano music. It's not always sad music--this is not a collection of dirges--but it does maintain a contemplative mood throughout. Cohen says “The title of the song and album refers to the silence of absence, the way ...

Musings of a Jazz Piano Teacher

Jazz Practice

by Paul Abrahams
February 5, 2016

Why practise? The obvious answer has to be that we practise in order to improve. But why does the very word cause many of us to go running for the TV remote? Is it just possible that the thought of practising conjures up the brain numbing activity of running up and down scales and arpeggios? The problem is not the scales themselves but the way we approach them. The solution is to approach scales and arpeggios musically and ...