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

Quartet: Live at the Deer Head Inn

Read "Live at the Deer Head Inn" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
January 12, 2016

A few months ago, I discovered the Deer Head Inn at the Delaware Water Gap.. That led to discovery of Deer Head Records. Which led to the discovery of this recording. Sometimes, ignorance can lead to bliss. I hadn't heard much of Joe Locke, and aside from Bill Goodwin, the other musicians were unknown to me. I clearly don't get out enough. This is, no exaggeration, a spectacular recording of a group put together for, I ...

Album Review

Jeff Coffin with Caleb Chapman's Crescent Super Band: The Inside of the Outside

Read "The Inside of the Outside" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 12, 2016

The first time woodwind artist Jeff Coffin heard Caleb Chapman's Crescent Super Band, he was greatly impressed--so much so that he decided to record an album with the band. You may be impressed too, especially upon learning that the Super Band, which sounds for all the world like a professional (or advanced university) ensemble, is actually comprised of high school students whose ages range from fifteen to eighteen. And in spite of its New Orleans-sounding pedigree, the Super Band is ...

Album Review

Carol Welsman: Alone Together

Read "Alone Together" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
January 12, 2016

Canadian jazz pianist and vocalist Carol Welsman unveils her eleventh album as leader with the audacious Alone Together where she's never alone and altogether very spicy and splendid on vocals as well as on the keys. The album contains a superb selection of time-honored standards like Sammy Cahn's “Day By Day," Rodgers & Hammerstein's oft-recorded “It Might As Well Be Spring," Duke Ellington's classic “I Didn't Know About You" and of course, the Arthur Schwartz/Howard Dietz 1932 title song, “Alone ...

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Extended Analysis

Blackstar

by Nenad Georgievski
January 11, 2016

The 10-year long absence from the limelight clearly didn't dim singer David Bowie's sense of guile or invention. That was clearly evident with the sudden reappearance with the utterly brilliant The Next Day which pilot single “Where Are We Now?" appeared from nowhere on his birthday and delighting many people along the way. In a career that has lasted for 50 years, Bowie has always refused to be pigeonholed and with Blackstar that is set to continue. Many years into ...

Album Review

Carlos Vega: Bird's Ticket

Read "Bird's Ticket" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 11, 2016

Saxophonist Carlos Vega's band crackles. The sound of “A Confluence in Chi-Town," the opener on his Bird's Ticket recording, has an on-the-edge urgency in its distinctive approach to the standard jazz quintet format--bass/drums/keyboard rhythm section and a trumpet and a saxophone--a line up like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie used. Vega, a veteran of trumpter/band leader Doc Severinsen's band, sets up, with that high octane opener, an expectation for high level interaction, brash solo slots for himself on ...

Album Review

Rich Halley 4: Eleven

by Budd Kopman
January 11, 2016

Following up on his wonderful previous release, Creating Structure, the Rich Halley quartet (Halley on tenor, trombonist Michael Vlatkovich, bassist Clyde Reed and drummer Carson Halley) strikes again with Eleven, tearing through eleven Halley compositions. The organizing factor of the previous album was how structure can arise and be perceived in music that is spontaneously improvised by skilled musicians with fast reflexes who know each other. Eleven turns this on its head in that while there is compositional ...

Album Review

Richard Sorce: A Place I've Never Been

Read "A Place I've Never Been" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
January 11, 2016

New York-based pianist/Composer and educator Richard Sorce has had a life-long affinity for the Brazilian genre and the music that emanated from the periods of the 50s through the 70s which led the artist to form the Latin Jazz group, The Richard Sorce Project in 2012. Sorce and the group now present their ten-track Brazilian- styled Latin jazz album A Place I've Never Been full of light smooth- tinged rhythms and percussions reflecting the leader's preference for the music that ...

Album Review

Marlene VerPlanck: The Mood I’m In

Read "The Mood I’m In" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 11, 2016

Marlene VerPlanck has been recording since 1955. In round numbers, that is 60 years. She is a natural singer in the same way that Frank Sinatra, Roseanna Vitro, and Lyn Stanley are natural singers... they open their respective mouths and music just comes out. And, at the far end of this career, VerPlanck sounds very good. Age has not diminished her singing as it has in many of her peers singing at the bright age of 82. So, immediately, hats ...

Album Review

Thelonius: Where Do We Go From Here?

Read "Where Do We Go From Here?" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 10, 2016

Where Do We Go From Here? asks Bristol-based Thelonius on a seven track live mini album featuring the hip-hop tunes (from A Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla, Gang Starr and others) that formed the core of the band's early influences. Where indeed. The title might suggest a band that's lacking direction--the music suggests a band that's more than capable of taking its jazz and hip-hop roots in whatever direction it might choose. Thelonius recorded this album at a ...

Album Review

Ches Smith with Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri: The Bell

Read "The Bell" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
January 10, 2016

Despite appearing on at least fifty recordings since 2001, Ches Smith remains the more under-recognized, yet highly in-demand, member of this newly formed trio. The drummer/percussionist and vibraphonist for Tim Berne's Snakeoil, Smith has played with John Zorn on Voices in the Wilderness (Tzadik, 2003), as well as Wadada Leo Smith, and guitarists Fred Frith and Marc Ribot. The Bell is his fifth outing as a leader, three being solo efforts and one with his recent group, These Arches, which ...