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

UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2015

by Jack Bowers
December 18, 2015

Jay Saunders, director of the University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, sums up the group's latest recording, Lab 2015, in one concise and canny sentence: “Sometimes it's best just to let the band play what they want to play." With that in mind, Saunders writes in the album's liner notes, he “threw the keys" to the band, its arrangers and composers and told them “to write anything they wanted." From twenty-three submissions, the members of ...

Live Review

Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble: Motown Meets Jazz at the Annenberg Center

by Victor L. Schermer
December 18, 2015

Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble Annenberg Center: Harold Prince Theater Motown Meets Jazz Philadelphia, PA December 11, 2015 Philadelphia-based Lifeline Music Coalition has for over a decade sponsored jazz events which are eclectic in taste and attract fans by making the music listenable and providing enjoyable atmospherics. Thus it has been with their Philadelphia Jazz and Poetry Festival, West Oak Lane Jazz and Arts Festival, Woodmere Art Museum Jazz Series, and Philadelphia United Jazz Festival. ...

Album Review

Michael Kocour: Spiffy

Read "Spiffy" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
December 18, 2015

Though a soulful swing-to-bop ethos reminiscent of the popular organ combos of the mid-to-late twentieth century is evident throughout, at its core Spiffy speaks to the malleability and open-endedness of the standard elements of jazz performance. Michael Kocour is the leader of the date, but the record's triumph is collective in nature. It's difficult to imagine substituting any member of the quartet--or, for that matter, isolating the solos from the tightly knit ensemble work. The band rejuvenates the classic Hammond ...

Multiple Reviews

MCG Jazz does Christmas: New Holiday Releases From Ann Hampton Callaway and the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra

by Dan Bilawsky
December 18, 2015

The inevitability of new Christmas albums often fills jazz journalists with dread. And while some may assume it's because we're a cynical breed with unreasonable standards and upturned noses, that couldn't be further from the truth (in most cases). The reason jazz journalists approach new Christmas albums with caution is simple: the number of slipshod, hastily-produced, derivative holiday albums produced in a given year always seems to significantly outweigh the number of quality Christmas projects that appear in the same ...

Album Review

Various Artists: Groove & Grind: Rare Soul 1963 - '73

Read "Groove & Grind: Rare Soul 1963 - '73" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 18, 2015

We call it “soul music" for a reason: Because from Ray Charles grooving on “America the Beautiful" to Maxwell gently hammering out his steps to “Ascension," the best soul music hits deep in our ears, our minds and our hearts. Groove & Grind: Rare Soul 1963 -'73, which compiles more than 100 rare soul singles across four themed CDs, is sure to tickle the ears, mind and heart of just about anyone who digs just about any style ...

Extended Analysis

The Spike Orchestra: Cerberus (Book of Angels - Volume 26)

by Phil Barnes
December 18, 2015

Taking inspiration from the divine is a tough sell. Get it wrong and it can appear sacrilegious or insulting to the faithful; too devout and our largely secular society turns away. In the past the poet William Blake was famously beaten by his own mother when he claimed to have had angelic visions at the age of eight, but nowadays an artist is more likely to receive concerned enquiries as to their sanity. Yet creativity is so hard to pin ...

Live Review

Jazztopad 2015: World Premieres

by Ian Patterson
December 17, 2015

Jazztopad 2015: World Premieres National Forum Of Music Wroclaw, Poland November 27-29, 2015 November in Wroclaw means jazz. Ten days no less. Jazztopad, however, is more than just another jazz festival. A core component of the programme since Piotr Turkiewicz took up the reins as Artistic Director in 2008 has been the commissioning of new music, where artists are afforded the rare luxury of having a choir, chamber ensemble or philharmonic orchestra at ...

Album Review

UMO Jazz Orchestra with Michael Brecker: Live in Helsinki 1995

Read "Live in Helsinki 1995" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 17, 2015

If your fondness for big-band jazz includes searching for hidden treasures, here's a recently uncovered gem that should more than gladden your spirit: a concert recording from 1995 by Finland's superb UMO Jazz Orchestra featuring the renowned tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker who left us far too soon a dozen years later at age fifty-seven. The impeccably preserved performance at Helsinki's Royal Cotton Club finds Brecker in his customarily assertive mode, sprinting through ten engaging compositions that run the gamut from ...

Album Review

Sonny Sharrock: Ask the Ages

Read "Ask the Ages" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
December 17, 2015

Guitarist Sonny Sharrock had been recording since 1969, in a variety of formats. In 1991, he recorded his masterpiece, Ask the Ages for Axiom records. The recording was produced by Sharrock and MOD Technologies founder and bassist Bill Laswell. Axiom Records was a precursor to Laswell's MOD Technologies. It is fitting that Laswell resurrect Sharrock's magnum opus recorded the year before the guitarist's death. Much has been made of Sharrock making music with former John Coltrane sidemen Pharoah ...

Album Review

Kenny Clarke: The Golden 8

Read "The Golden 8" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
December 17, 2015

The first time I dropped a needle on a Music Matters 33 rpm test-pressing of Kenny Clarke and Francy Boland's The Golden 8 I was surprised to hear something quite unusual: a Blue Note record that was clearly not recorded in Hackensack. With only a few exceptions, most Blue Note records of the 1950s and 60s were recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio with a unique sound that many listeners can pick out in just a ...