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.

In Pictures

New York City Winter JazzFest 2016

by Frank Rubolino
January 30, 2016

In the dead of winter, a musical oasis erupts each January as festival jazz comes out of hibernation at the NYC Winter JazzFest. Although the program encompasses many, many venues featuring many, many performers, one location beckons the listener to sit tight without scurrying from site to site. It is the stage that presents ECM recording artists exclusively. For the January 2016 festival, ECM producer and founder Manfred Eicher was in attendance at the New School's Tishman Auditorium as a ...

Album Review

Didier Verna @-quartet: Roots And Leaves

Read "Roots And Leaves" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
January 30, 2016

French guitarist and composer Didier Verna delivers his second album as leader with the very audacious Roots and Leaves containing eleven original compositions ranging from contemporary traditional to funky, bluesy and even folky at times. A classically-trained pianist who at age eleven moved to the guitar as his preferred instrument, employs the fretless and three other different guitars including a synthesizer to produce a variety of sounds that makes this album a pleasure to hear. Inspired by the ...

Album Review

Ulrich Gumpert Quartett: A New One

Read "A New One" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 30, 2016

Swiss pianist Ulrich Gumpert's clearly illustrated Thelonious Monk influences underscore many of the rhythmic implementations amid a diverse bag of tricks on this exceptional studio date. It's a comprehensive program where each track imparts a distinct story via an aggregate of alluring themes. The quartet initiates the festivities with an uplifting jazz waltz on the aptly titled “The Opener." Other tracks are engineered with quirky odd-metered choruses and a host of variables that inject an air of suspense ...

Album Review

Rik Wright's Fundamental Forces: Green

Read "Green" reviewed by Jack Gold-Molina

by Jack Gold-Molina
January 30, 2016

Rik Wright is a Seattle based guitarist inclined toward the styles of the fusion-esque rock of Andy Summers and John Abercrombie as much as the post bop stylings of Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. On this album, as with his previous two outings, he teams up with reeds and flautist James DeJoie, acoustic bassist Geoff Harper, and drummer/percussionist Greg Campbell. From the opening phrases of the first tune, “Contradiction," the band demonstrates its intensity and ability to blow ...

Album Review

Lowell George: The Last Tour

Read "The Last Tour" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 30, 2016

Well, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. First, do not purchase this disc. There is absolutely no reason to as you may acquire it free from Internet Archive. specifically, at the address, Lowell George & His Band -June 28, 1979. The Internet Archive detail of this recording is thus, “Recorded at the Listner Auditorium in Washington DC. George had recently separated from Little Feat and ...

Album Review

Tom Chess: Momentarily Endless

Read "Momentarily Endless" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 29, 2016

Oud performer Tom Chess and associates go for the gusto on this sterling quartet date recorded at different venues in New York. With asymmetrical doses of free-form and conventional improvisational tactics shadowing attractive themes and hooks, the band tethers jazz with Middle Eastern and North African motifs, immersed within a sparkling soundstage. Chess leads the group through a buoyant assortment of song-forms and occasionally treks into the avant-garde domain, as they sustain a high level of interest amid a suspenseful ...

Album Review

Roswell Rudd/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balazs Pandi: Strength & Power

Read "Strength & Power" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 29, 2016

Buckle up. This is one wild ride that cares not for your apprehension, concerns, expectations, or fears. Pianist Jamie Saft and two of his regular collaborators--bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Balazs Pandi--got together with trombone icon Roswell Rudd to get down to the art of music making with nothing but their senses to guide them. It was an improvised session in its purest form--no charts, no sketches, and no preconceived notions about where things should or shouldn't go. These men ...

Album Review

Joo Kraus/Omar Sosa/Gustavo Ovalles: JOG

by Dan Bilawsky
January 28, 2016

You have to hand it to pianist Omar Sosa. With the exception of some return trips to the solo piano format, he never really repeats himself. Over the past two decades, Sosa has worked alone, gone the duo route with Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, shared billing/leadership duties with flutist Mark Weinstein, worked with Germany's NDR Bigband, paid tribute to Miles Davis' iconic Kind Of Blue (Columbia Records, 1959) in unique fashion, mingled with Moroccan musicians, worked the Afro-Cuban seam in ...

Album Review

Nils Landgren: Some Other Time

Read "Some Other Time" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 28, 2016

Hot on the heels of his guest appearance on Mo' Blow's funky Live In Berlin (ACT Music, 2016), trombonist and singer Nils Landgren moves over to Broadway with Some Other Time. As the sub-title makes clear, this is A Tribute To Leonard Bernstein--a worthy and at times achingly beautiful tribute, too. Landgren is joined by Manhattan Transfer vocalist Janis Siegel and by the excellent rhythm section of Jan Lundgren on piano, Dieter Ilg on bass and Wolfgang Haffner ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Ferit Odman

by AAJ Staff
January 28, 2016

About Ferit Odman: Ferit Odman is an on demand and busy jazz drummer based in Istanbul. He started his music studies in Sweden as an AFS exchange student (1999), got a full scholarship to get his B.A. in Music at Istanbul Bilgi University (2001), attended the School For Improvisation workshops in NYC (2004), and has been granted a Fulbright Scholarship to further build on his studies at William Paterson University (2006). He spent / played two years in ...