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

Echoes Of Swing: Dancing

Read "Dancing" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 28, 2015

Across a couple of decades and seven albums Echoes Of Swing, a quartet based in Germany, has been inspired by swing music. Dancing is once again centered on swing, with the band taking its inspiration from the music and adding a contemporary twist. The band draws its material from a wide range of sources--both chronologically and stylistically. Generally this eclectic approach is effective, but Johann Sebastian Bach's “Gavotte I, English Suite No. 6" is more kitsch than swinging. ...

Album Review

Jacob Roved Quintet: Remembering Billy Strayhorn

Read "Remembering Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
October 28, 2015

Rock music has its fair share of musical collaborations, among others, the partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles. Jazz, however, also has its own canon of collaborators and at the top of the list is the duo of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. No one disputes the groundbreaking role of Duke Ellington in jazz history, but, sometimes, the influence of his partner Strayhorn is not emphasized enough. He was an original composer and ...

Album Review

Billie Davies: Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon

Read "Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
October 28, 2015

Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon is a heartfelt homage to the artist Serge Vandercam (1924-2005) whose paintings, depicted on the inside CD cover, originally inspired this suite of collaborative improvisations. Initially the inspiration drew from a period of three days of the full moon in 1995 when the artist was influenced by the drummer's playing. For this recording in 2015, following a 20 year gestation period, the painting corresponding to each title was hanging on a ...

Album Review

Alex Ward Trios & Sextet: Projected / Entities / Removal

Read "Projected / Entities / Removal" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
October 28, 2015

This release follows so hard on the heels of Glass Shelves and Floor (Copepod, 2015) by Alex Ward Quintet that it is tempting to see the two as a matched pair. Released on Ward's own Copepod label, the two have consecutive serial numbers and very similar sleeve designs and graphics. Each of the albums is titled after the Ward compositions it features. Where the previous album contained two readings--one studio-recorded, one live--of its title piece by the same quintet, the ...

Album Review

Colin Trusedell: It’s All About the Hustle

Read "It’s All About the Hustle" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 28, 2015

Bassist Colin Trusedell is making quite the name for himself. His previous recordings, Colin Trusedell Trio: Some Of My Best Friends Are... Divas (Self Produced, 2013) and Colin Trusedell: Quartet Of Jazz Death (Self Produced, 2014) were well received within these electronic pages. The former was a most excellent acoustic affair featuring some of Trusedell's singing colleagues from the US Air Force. The latter is an electric smorgasbord showing that Trusedell is capable of ramping up the funk as in ...

New York Beat

Juilliard Jazz Ensemble at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola

by Nick Catalano
October 28, 2015

One of the most important booking traditions established early on at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola is “Monday Student Night" where pupils are admitted for a small fee and are able to see and hear outstanding musicians. Very quickly, Mondays became showcases for two of Gotham's premier music schools--The Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School of Music. Both institutions have top notch jazz ensembles and I have frequently taken my music students at Pace University down to the club where ...

Live Review

Fred Hersch Trio at The Village Vanguard

by Dan Bilawsky
October 27, 2015

Fred Hersch Trio Village Vanguard New York, NY October 26, 2015 While sitting in wait before a set at New York's Village Vanguard, the eyes are inevitably drawn to the various photos, posters, and odds and ends lining the walls--images and items that may seem random and incongruous to the unknowing eye, yet actually serve as a patched-together, semi-photojournalistic spread detailing the venue's storied past. You spot dearly departed legends inextricably linked to the ...

Live Review

Jazz Found Alive! Man In Blue Suede Shoes Wanted For Questioning.

by Duncan Heining
October 27, 2015

Colin Towns' Mask Orchestra LSO St. Lukes London October 17, 2015 The gap between the music that Colin Towns makes and much that currently passes for jazz grew even wider last weekend. Performing compositions from his new double CD Drama with his stellar Mask Orchestra, the composer-bandleader revealed the music's potential in ways that few others could even imagine. Drama features music that draws on Towns' twenty year history of composition for film ...

Live Review

Art Lillard's On Time Trio at Sugarcane, Brooklyn

by Tyran Grillo
October 27, 2015

Art Lillard's On Time Trio Sugarcane Brooklyn, NY June 24, 2015 Attend jazz performances in a big city like New York long enough, and you're liable to realize how often the genre serves as a background to social activities. By the same token, music which isn't always fully acknowledged can peek its head above the surface with a voice all the more genuine for reaching out from a place of self-reflection. Such was the dynamic ...

Album Review

Erik Friedlander: Oscalypso

Read "Oscalypso" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 27, 2015

As a veteran of the fertile 1990s Downtown NYC scene, cellist Erik Friedlander has been involved in myriad creative endeavors, including innovative sideman work with Dave Douglas and John Zorn, while leading his own unique ensembles, such as Chimera and Topaz. More recently, Friedlander has been performing solo and developing projects inspired by rural Americana, but he has never released an album of covers--until now.Oscalypso features creative reinterpretations of nine of Oscar Pettiford's most beloved tunes. Although Friedlander ...