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

Chris Kelsey/Lewis Porter: Free: Kelsey/Porter Duo Plays Ornette, Vol. 1

Read "Free: Kelsey/Porter Duo Plays Ornette, Vol. 1" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 24, 2015

Intrepid saxophonist and recovering jazz journalist Chris Kelsey went to his longtime friend, renowned author-educator-pianist Dr. Lewis Porter, with the idea of recording some of Ornette Coleman's music. That's how Free came to be, plain and simple. But nothing is really that simple. Kelsey and Porter worked through this material for a year, allowing the music to have ample time to settle into the mind and soul, and then they recorded these seldom-performed pieces in March of 2015. The album ...

Album Review

Lori Bell: Brooklyn Dreaming

Read "Brooklyn Dreaming" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 24, 2015

No matter where we go, our formative experiences travel with us. That's what Lori Bell appears to say with Brooklyn Dreaming. For her ninth album, this California-based flutist decided to glance eastward, recalling time spent soaking in the sounds of New York City with her musical family in her youth. The result? A love letter that proves that Bell has bi-coastal jazz citizenship, having been baptized in Brooklyn's swing and sizzle while currently belonging to the hot Golden State scene. ...

Album Review

Giya Kancheli: Chiaroscuro

Read "Chiaroscuro" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 24, 2015

Introspective Georgian composer Giya Kancheli turned 80 years old in on August 10, 2015. As a birthday commemoration ECM has released two of his most intimate works on the deeply mystical Chiaroscuro. In addition to the title track the album includes the musing “Twilight" for two violins and orchestra. Inspired by Kancheli's brush with a serious illness, “Twilight" is a cinematic meditation on mortality that encompasses a moving, emotional continuum. It opens with the two violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja ...

Album Review

Rich Halley 4: Eleven

by Dave Wayne
December 24, 2015

Rich Halley and Michael Vlatkovich have been on a real hot streak as of late. Halley, who also runs the Pine Eagle record label, continues to maintain a number a groups. Besides the quartet featured on Eleven, he has a new quartet with the excellent LA-based trumpeter Dan Clucas, and continues to work with the legendary Bobby Bradford. Halley also leads the Outside Music Ensemble, a large group which performs creative music exclusively in outdoor settings. Vlatkovich, also a member ...

Year in Review

James Nadal's Best of 2015

by James Nadal
December 24, 2015

These selections start out heavy into the blues, in appreciation to those that are still playing and producing this important American art form. Gospel and soul tinged vocals as well as a Latin dance oriented orchestra are represented, as is African derived world music featuring native acoustic instrumentation. We round it out by offering a trio of jazz releases which cover the spectrum from an innovative take on the music of Miles Davis, a dynamic Spanish piano trio and a ...

Album Review

Peter Erskine: Dr. Um

by Dan Bilawsky
December 23, 2015

It would appear that this project has awakened the Peter Erskine of yore, the drummer who became legend while cresting the waves of fusion with Weather Report and Steps Ahead. In recent years Erskine's drumming has been spare, elegant, open, and, in enough instances, lightly swinging. If one word would come to mind to describe that playing, it would be “tasteful." But does that automatically mean that joining forces with some plugged-in players and laying down some ...

Album Review

Valery Ponomarev Jazz Big Band: Our Father Who Art Blakey

Read "Our Father Who Art Blakey" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 23, 2015

Who is Russian-born trumpeter Valery Ponomarev's favorite musician? A clue may be found in the title of Ponomarev's first CD as leader of his New York City-based big band: Our Father Who Art Blakey. The first jazz recording he heard while still in Russia, Ponomarev recalls, was Blakey's Jazz Messengers with trumpeter Lee Morgan playing pianist Bobby Timmons' jazz touchstone, “Moanin.'" Later on, Ponomarev was able to play that song (and many others) as a member of the Messengers in ...

Interview

Tomoko Omura: Roots And Branches

by Ian Patterson
December 23, 2015

It's been a good year for New York-based, Japanese violinist/composer Tomoko Omura, whose second CD as leader, Roots (Inner Circle Music), has earned high praise from critics and peers alike. The roots of the title refer to Omura's heritage as she reimagines popular Japanese tunes through the prism of jazz. The ten tracks draw inspiration from film themes, folk tunes and even the national anthem-- material familiar to and beloved of successive generations of Japanese. Yet Omura's idiom is pure ...

Multiple Reviews

John Abercrombie on ECM - Part 1: Through the '80s

by Budd Kopman
December 23, 2015

Now that the The First Quartet set of recordings by guitarist/composer John Abercrombie from 1979-1981 has been released, it is as good a time as any to explore Abercrombie's career on ECM as a leader/co-leader, plus some his work as a sideman. There is a famous epithet from Bill Evans: “Jazz is not a what, it is a how." He is saying many things here, but essentially it is that jazz is not any particular rhythmic pattern (i.e. ...

Album Review

Chris Foreman: Now Is The Time

Read "Now Is The Time" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 23, 2015

As the house organist at the legendary The Green Mill as well as a member of various ensembles Chris Foreman is one of Chicago's unsung jazz heroes. As a sideman Foreman has marked several recordings with his soulful, earthy grooves and, finally he has released an album under his own name. On his much-anticipated debut Now Is the Time Foreman interprets, unaccompanied or in duets, several covers with his unique laid back charm and organic style. The title ...