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.

Live Review

Duane Eubanks Quintet at Blues Alley

by Steve Bryant
September 19, 2015

Duane Eubanks Blues Alley Washington, DC July 15, 2015 Duane Eubanks has been fighting to establish a noteworthy identity as a jazz trumpeter for years. One, he's had to dwell in the shadow of his more well-known brothers, Duane and Robin, as well as hustling in the often rough-and-tumble New York jazz scene. 2015 seems to be the year that he has broken out as one of more significant players in modern jazz. His latest ...

Album Review

Lars Vogt: Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations

Read "Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 19, 2015

With widely performed compositions, I will usually listen to closely to the introductory section to begin formulating my thoughts overall. Consistently, I do this with Handel's Messiah, paying close attention to the opening Sinfonia. Its pacing and grandeur often give clue to what is to come later in the oratorio. Likewise, in Bach's Goldberg Variations, I will listen to the opening “Aria" and closing “Aria da Capo" with an interest in what it reveals to me about the work as ...

Album Review

Matt Haimovitz: Orbit: Music for Solo Cello (1945 – 2014)

Read "Orbit: Music for Solo Cello (1945 – 2014)" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 19, 2015

The solo cello repertoire is dominated completely by Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, BWV 1007-1012. While there exists much more solo cello music than this, the majority of commercial media releases are of Bach's mountain. So, what a about a sampler of solo cello music other than Bach? Matt Haimovitz provides us exactly that with Orbit: Music for Solo Cello (1945-- 2014). Rather than one more prim exposition of the Suites or an avant-garde exploration of the ...

Album Review

Orchestre National de Jazz: Europa Berlin

Read "Europa Berlin" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 19, 2015

When guitarist-composer Olivier Benoit was appointed in 2014 as the new artistic director of the prestigious French Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ) some local neo-cons expressed their worries that this orchestra may lose its jazzy touch. Benoit composed before music for orchestras like the Lille-based Circum Grand Orchestra and the La Pieuvre ensemble, but is known as an experimental guitarist and adventurous improviser whose musical language is genre-binding. Europa Berlin, the second musical portrayal of a major European cities after ...

Album Review

Van Morrison: The Essential Van Morrison

Read "The Essential Van Morrison" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 19, 2015

Here is a compilation that truly lives up to its name--a generous collection of 37 singer Van Morrison's classic gems, covering a period of several decades of immense creativity and musical journey, from his earliest classics with the band Them up until songs from his later recordings like Magic Time and Pay the Devil. Blessed with an electrifying soulful and booming voice, deep, introspective and stream of consciousness sort of lyrics, Morrison is a living testament to a career wrought ...

Interview

Gary Burton: On ECM & Playing With Pat Metheny

by Mark Sullivan
September 18, 2015

Vibraphonist Gary Burton was a busy man at the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival. He was a member of the Mack Avenue Superband (organized by Mack Avenue Records, his current record label), and joined Artist-in-Residence Pat Metheny for two shows. The Pat Metheny/Gary Burton Quartet Reunion took place on Saturday night, and the North American premiere of Metheny's “Hommage" for Eberhard Weber for soloists and big band closed the festival on Monday night. This interview took place backstage just before the ...

Album Review

Liberation Music Collective: Siglo XXI

Read "Siglo XXI" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 18, 2015

Siglo XXI ("21st Century" in Spanish) is big-band jazz with a conscience, cerebral music capably performed by the Indiana-based Liberation Music Collective, a successor to Charlie Haden / Carla Bley's similarly high-minded Liberation Music Orchestra from the '70s and beyond. Interspersed among the nine musical selections are brief interviews with alto saxophonist Matthew Setzler, baritone Durand Jones, trumpeter Jess Henry and percussionist Julian Loida on topics ranging from religious tolerance and feminism to jazz mass, the benefits of unity and ...

Album Review

Oscar Peterson: Exclusively For My Friends

Read "Exclusively For My Friends" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 18, 2015

An 8-CD set of recordings from the great Oscar Peterson, beautifully recorded, sumptuously packaged and accompanied by a 60-page booklet full of informative writing: Exclusively For My Friends is a treat for ears and eyes. All of the recordings on this set were made between 1963 and 1971. The sessions took place in the home of producer and MPS Records owner Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Germany's Black Forest--Peterson and Brunner-Schwer were friends and the pianist often visited the label owner's ...

Album Review

Yoshie Fruchter: Schizophonia: Cantorial Recordings Reimagined

Read "Schizophonia: Cantorial Recordings Reimagined" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
September 18, 2015

A stalwart of New York City's astoundingly creative Judaic music scene, multi-instrumentalist and composer Yoshie Fruchter specializes in one thing: moving on from what he's already accomplished. Though he has two genre-smashing albums of edgy, Judaic jazz- rock-prog fusion on John Zorn's Tzadik label under his belt (Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, Tzadik Records, 2011, and the now out-of-print Pitom, Tzadik Records, 2008), Fruchter has also contributed his talents to several of Zorn's projects, and an array of unlikely hyphenated ...

Album Review

Josh Maxey: Celebration of Soul

Read "Celebration of Soul" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
September 18, 2015

Celebration of Soul is the tenth and final album in a series of recordings made in just three years by guitarist/composer Josh Maxey. Such a uniquely prolific output did not happen by accident. Maxey says “The key to the series has been having a goal beyond what I would have considered reasonable." The series is a creative declaration from a musician who considers himself an improviser, composer and bandleader in equal parts. It documents 50 original compositions with 20 musicians. ...