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

Nancy Lane: Let Me Love You

Read "Let Me Love You" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
November 14, 2015

Nancy Lane's vocal quality looms large in the crowded world of jazz vocalists, and with her recording, Let Me Love You, her melodic delivery will attest that she belongs to a small subset within the field. Lane is accompanied by a talented core of musicians that perfectly support her formidable skills to deliver a melody. Lara Driscoll is on piano, Kenny Bibace is on the guitar, Mike De Masi plays the bass and Dave Laing is on drums ...

From the Inside Out

From Sea to Shining Sea: Music Central to South and Latin America

by Chris M. Slawecki
November 13, 2015

Aguankó Invisible Aguankó Music 2015 In 2012, conguero and composer Alberto Nacif, a Mexican native transplanted in Michigan, brought together some of the area's most skilled Afro-Cuban and Latin musicians to form Aguankó. Their small ensemble with a large Latin jazz sound herewith follows up their self-produced 2013 debut Elemental with a sparkling new set entirely written by Nacif, featuring Aguankó percussionist Jose “Pepe" Espinosa serving for the first time as their producer.

Live Review

Bill Charlap Trio at Tilles Center for the Performing Arts

by Dan Bilawsky
November 13, 2015

Bill Charlap Trio Tilles Center for the Performing Arts Jazz on Stage with Matt Wilson Brookville, NY November 8, 2015 To witness pianist Bill Charlap in action is to receive an education, so who better than the newly-appointed Director of Jazz Studies at William Paterson University to help kick off a new performance and education initiative at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts? While Jazz has always been part ...

Album Review

Oddjob: Folk

by Dan McClenaghan
November 13, 2015

In the mood for a snifter of schnapps, a kick back in the easy chair and a night soaking in some Swedish folk songs, tunes centered, for the most part, around the tradition of herding and goat calling? Aside from the schnapps part, that may seem like a lame idea, but the very progressive Swedish jazz/rock group, Oddjob, dug deep into their homeland's recorded archives and took away the inspiration that resulted in this marvelous and uniquely modern recording, Folk. ...

Album Review

Food: This Is Not a Miracle

Read "This Is Not a Miracle" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
November 13, 2015

Since the formation of Food, more than a dozen years ago, the duo at its core, saxophonist Iain Ballamy and drummer Thomas Strønen, have remained the nucleus of a small but impressive coop of players who have added their unique creative ideas to an already out-of-the-mainstream entity whose philosophy has been to stun without their lasers on full force. This is Not a Miracle continues the Food ritual without looking backwards or forsaking well thought-out processes. The “guest" ...

Album Review

Ernie Krivda: Requiem For A Jazz Lady

Read "Requiem For A Jazz Lady" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 13, 2015

It's been over 40 years since tenor saxophonist Ernie Krivda first appeared on record. In a career going back six decades he's released around 30 albums under his own name and appeared on many more. His tenor sound, often plaintive, is distinctive and affecting. On Requiem For A Jazz Lady the tenor is given a quartet setting, an ideal format in which Krivda's instrument can shine. The Jazz Lady of the album title is not, as one might ...

Album Review

Bill Payne/Eva Lindal/Carol Liebowitz: Payne Lindal Liebowitz

Read "Payne Lindal Liebowitz" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
November 13, 2015

Clarinetist Bill Payne is a bold but sensitive improviser from the pianist Lennie Tristano's school of musical thought. Violinist Eva Lindal has a solid footing in the Avant-Garde western classical tradition. Carol Liebowitz is an urbane and dramatic pianist who creates unique blends of jazz and free improvisation. All three have long associations with pianist Connie Crothers, herself a Tirstano disciple. On their eponymous release Payne/Lindal/Liebowitz they let loose a host of provocative and intriguing ideas with transforming ...

Album Review

Billy Gibbons and the BFGs: Perfectamundo

Read "Perfectamundo" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 13, 2015

We are one hell of a long way from 1971 and ZZ Top's First Album (London). That music was as purely organic chewing tobacco and loose as the dust on the bank of the Rio Grande. Well, all that ended in 1976 with Tejas (London), which was the beginning of the band's ascendency to pop stardom in the '80s with songs shining with polish, humor, and technology. Break forward 40 years and band-frontman Billy Gibbon's picks up where he left ...

Interview

Michael Gibbs: Still Pushing The Envelope

by Ian Patterson
November 12, 2015

In a career spanning well over fifty years, veteran composer/arranger Michael Gibbs has chalked up a truly impressive range of credits, from Mahavishnu Orchestra to Jaco Pastorius, from Gary Burton to John Scofield and from Kenny Wheeler to Norma Winstone. The Zimbabwe-born maestro has worked with the very best jazz musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, but his expertise is by no means restricted to that field. In an extremely diverse career Gibbs has also collaborated with the likes ...

Multiple Reviews

Michael Gibbs & The NDR Big Band: Play a Bill Frisell Set List / In My View

by Ian Patterson
November 12, 2015

Though his recording career dates back to the early 1960s, Zimbabwe-born arranger, composer and musician Michael Gibbs hasn't always been as prolific as a leader as he might have been. Five albums in the first half the 1970 represented his most industrious period of creativity, as teaching, television and film work and arranging for a surprisingly wide range of artists--from Marianne Faithful to Joni Mitchell and from Mahavishnu Orchestra to Pat Metheny--absorbed much of his time over the next three ...