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

Chaise Lounge: A Very Chaise Lounge Christmas

Read "A Very Chaise Lounge Christmas" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
December 21, 2015

Sparkling holiday music from the Washington, DC area group Chaise Lounge. Calling what they do “martini-jazz" gives them license to toss just about anything into the stylistic mix, and they have an eclectic good time with it. The use of “Christmas" in the album title is a bit of a misnomer, since only about half of the songs actually are Christmas songs--the rest have more general holiday or winter season themes. The opener, a jump blues cover of Jimmy Charles' ...

Album Review

Gilad Atzmon And The Orient House Ensemble: The Whistle Blower

Read "The Whistle Blower" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
December 21, 2015

There's a soulful crying to much of this music that makes it so convincing, so enjoyable. It's blues music from someplace other than the Deep South. Starting with the first track, “Gaza Mon Amour," veteran multi-instrumentalist Gilad Atzmon somehow manages to invoke the spirit of John Coltrane (think “A Love Supreme"), along with a kind of tantalizing ethnic, Israeli vibe that conjoins East with West. The Whistle Blower is an intoxicating blend of romanticism with an edge that somehow bespeaks ...

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Catching Up With

My Life With Orrin Keepnews

by Walter Atkins
December 20, 2015

The prolific record producer and label founder Orrin Keepnews passed away at his El Cerrito CA home on March 1,2015, a day before his 92nd birthday. The November 2015 memorial and benefit concert was a time for friends and family to come together to celebrate his full life and acclaimed 60 year recording industry career. His illustrious history includes working with and nurturing jazz giants like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Julian Cannonball" Adderley, McCoy Tyner, Mulgrew Miller and much more. ...

Album Review

Myriam Alter: Crossways

Read "Crossways" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
December 20, 2015

There's a soulful melancholy to much of this music. Composer/pianist Myriam Alter has created yet another collection of her songs that have the potential to evoke feelings of yearning, sadness and perhaps a deep buried joy with Crossways. Akin to a previous outing on enja, the elegiac Where Is There, Crossways can be heard as a kind of movie soundtrack, where the listener is swept up in another world full of imaginings and wonder across 11 tunes. One of the ...

Book Review

Oxford American 17th Annual Southern Music Issue: Georgia

by C. Michael Bailey
December 20, 2015

Oxford American 17th Annual Southern Music Issue: Georgia Eliza Borne, Editor Issue 91, Winter 2015 One of my best friends (and fellow Arkansans) and I often discuss the maddeningly conflicted legacy of those United States making up the Old Confederacy. He likes to point out that in no other region is ignorance and cultural retardation more embraced and valued than our very own Dixie. My friend often laments that anywhere is better than the American South ...

Album Review

Various Artists: Detroit Jazz City

Read "Detroit Jazz City" reviewed by Mark E. Gallo

by Mark E. Gallo
December 20, 2015

Blue Note president Don Was is a metro Detroit native. He grew up exposed to the rich musical legacy of the city, as well as to the economic struggles of many of the city's residents. This celebrates both. As the press release states, “All proceeds from the album will be donated to Focus: HOPE to aid in their on-going pursuit of intelligent and practical solutions to the problems of hunger, economic disparity, inadequate education, and racial divisiveness in Southeastern Michigan." ...

Album Review

Free Jazz Group Wiesbaden: Frictions / Frictions Now

Read "Frictions / Frictions Now" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
December 20, 2015

History is written by the victors. That holds as true for art as for war. When looking for pioneers from the formative days of free jazz in Germany, the names of reedmen Peter Brötzmann and Gunter Hampel, trumpeter Manfred Schoof and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach are likely to spring to mind. But now the Lithuanian No Business imprint, acclaimed for excavations in the music's more obscure American strata, turns its attention to some of the forgotten facets of the European ...

Album Review

Kim Kashkashian Sarah Rothenberg Steven Schick Houston Chamber Choir Robert Simpson.: Rothko Chapel

Read "Rothko Chapel" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 20, 2015

On ECM's superb and captivating Rothko Chapel an elite group of musicians interprets Morton Feldman's sublime title piece and several others by John Cage and, the father of western musical modernism, Erik Satie. The disc explores the common conceptual and stylistic threads between the Feldman and Cage's works and their origins in Satie's oeuvre. Although Feldman's composition is not recorded in the Chapel itself the ambience is evocative of the physical building itself. The spiritual sanctuary and painter ...

Live Review

The Chuck Anderson Trio featuring Coreen at The Media Jazz Festival

by Mike Oppenheim
December 20, 2015

The Chuck Anderson Trio featuring Jazz Vocalist Coreen Media Jazz Festival Media, PA November 21 2015 At the 13th annual Media Jazz Festival, the Chuck Anderson Trio made their fourth appearance since 2007, but this time with a new component to the show: the trio was joined by featured jazz vocalist Coreen. The Trio of Chuck Anderson, drummer Ed Rick and bassist Eric Schreiber played familiar and original tunes, with standards that are especially ...

Live Review

Live From Old York: The Extricated, Jim Boyes, Electric Six, Dick Gaughan & Queen Kwong

by Martin Longley
December 20, 2015

Brix & The Extricated The Duchess November 24, 2015 Brix Smith was an integral member of The Fall, between 1983 and 1989, then again, on-and-off, betwixt 1993 and 1998. Well, she was married to main man vocalist, poet and Svengali auteur Mark E. Smith. This period of the Manchester combo's output featured some of their most accessible material, unavoidably influenced by American garage rock, Brix's melodic grit sprinkled across Mark E.'s caustic verbal ...