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

The Necks: Vertigo

by Dave Wayne
January 5, 2016

Permit me a moment on a soapbox. Improvisation is merely a process, just as composition is a process. It is simply a way to organize sound. There are no imperatives, no agendas. Just spontaneity and interaction. Contrary to what's been drilled into your head over the years, improvisation doesn't necessitate “harsh" or “abrasive" sounds. In the early days of freely improvised jazz, harsh and abrasive sounds were common currency as the development of the style was steeped in the energy ...

Album Review

Fabrice MOURLON Quartet: Facing the Lough

Read "Facing the Lough" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
January 5, 2016

Trained early in his career as a pianist, the French artist Fabrice Mourlon later joined a vocal jazz class at the Paris suburb Pantin School of Music. In 1994 he trained as a vocalist with Italian singer Valentina Casula and was a member of her workshop for the next half-decade. He met pianist Richard Razafindrakoto, bassist Emmanuel Brunet and drummer Thierry Tardieu in 2001 and the four would eventually solidify as a quartet playing various jazz clubs in Paris and ...

Year in Review

2015: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
January 4, 2016

The year 2015 was a curious blend of ups and downs, with glimmers of optimism offset by its losses. Venues opened to great fanfare, but others closed for a variety of reasons. UNESCO's International Jazz Day became firmly entrenched as the exclamation point on Jazz Appreciation Month activities in April. Daily arts journalism took a hit with music writers leaving significant newspapers. A prominent trumpeter found himself under FBI investigation for program funding in New Orleans. The jazz world again ...

Album Review

Dr. Lonnie Smith: Evolution

Read "Evolution" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 4, 2016

Artist repatriation seems to be something of a theme in the Don Was era of Blue Note Records. In 2013 there was the return of saxophonist Wayne Shorter, a jazz giant who delivered many of his landmark '60s albums on this storied imprint. Then, in 2015, Charles Lloyd left ECM for Blue Note, a label that had previously held one Lloyd album in its portfolio. Now, as 2016 arrives, organist Dr. Lonnie Smith returns to the fold. ...

Album Review

Marnix Busstra: Firm Fragile Fun

Read "Firm Fragile Fun" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
January 4, 2016

Let's get one thing out of the way: guitarist and leader of the eminently capable quartet featured on Firm Fragile Fun Marnix Busstra sounds a great deal like John Scofield. Busstra's tone, phrasing, attack, and even his choice of guitar parallel those of the celebrated solo artist and ex-Miles Davis plectrist. When he digs into the second-line strutter “Fun" and the blues-based ballad “Smoky," he could provide a real challenge for someone being subjected to one of those DownBeat Blindfold ...

Album Review

Randy Bernsen: Grace Notes

Read "Grace Notes" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
January 4, 2016

Grace Notes is a tasteful album, chalked full of fresh, creative compositions by guitarist Randy Bernsen. If you like the Rippingtons, Weather Report or the Yellowjackets, you will love this CD, too! As a composer and player, Bernsen possesses a unique creative vibe that does combine a wonderful “grace" that you can hear in every note he plays or writes. His cool, yet extraordinary talent is augmented by an all-star cast including: Yellowjackets co-founders Jimmy Haslip and Russell Ferrante, drummers ...

Album Review

Urs Leimgruber - Alex Huber: Lightnings

Read "Lightnings" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 4, 2016

Wide Ear Records is a nascent Swiss experimental jazz label, co- founded by drummer Alex Huber who performs here, in a duo setting with his fellow countryman and eminent improviser, saxophonist Urs Leimgruber. Hence, the musicians generate some cerebral merry-making on this set via the saxophonist's gyrating and stunted battle cries and the customary call and response processes, integrated with Huber's highly musical approach. The 4 tracks spawn a hodgepodge of torrential downpours and quieter parts, constructed on menacing flows ...

Multiple Reviews

Simon and Garfunkel: The Complete Columbia Albums Collection

by Nenad Georgievski
January 4, 2016

Simon and Garfunkel The Complete Columbia Album Collection Music on Vinyl 2015 Probably the most celebrated duo in pop folk music, Simon and Garfunkel, were the essence of harmony. The duo's voices are definitely one of the most cherished sounds of the '60s. Their harmonizing game, where their voices sang complementary melodies that were joined by rhythm, phrasing and tone, all blending into a new melody, was truly supernatural. Influenced by the Beatles, the ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Duke Jordan: Flight to Jordan - 1960

by Marc Davis
January 3, 2016

If this isn't a perfect hard bop record, it comes awfully close. And coming from an artist who is virtually forgotten, it's all the sweeter. Duke Jordan was an A-list pianist who was there at the birth of bebop. He was part of Charlie Parker's classic quintet in 1947. So why don't we know his name the way we know Thelonious Monk's or Bud Powell's? My guess is Jordan just didn't have the personality to be ...

Album Review

Pawel Kaczmarczyk Audiofeeling Trio: Something Personal

Read "Something Personal" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
January 3, 2016

For fans of Pawel Kaczmarczyk it's been a lengthy wait for a follow-up to Complexity in Simplicity (ACT Music, 2009), his sole recording for Siggi Loch's label. Six years seems like too long a gap for such a prodigiously talented performer and composer but this extended stewing period sees the Krakow pianist return in absolutely splendid form with Something Personal, his fourth album as a leader. On Complexity in Simplicity Kaczmarczyk was bursting with ideas, harnessing a dozen of Poland's ...