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

Anne Akiko Meyers: Serenade: The Love Album

by C. Michael Bailey
September 6, 2015

One of the creative aspects of music that stands to be lost with the continued atomization of the industry where the long-playing record album of compact disc gives way to the individual song as the commodity unit, is the art of programming a multi-piece recording. The vinyl record album and, more so, the compact disc, has always provided classical music a format with ample time to contain a given piece of music. The format offers plenty of time to capture ...

Album Review

Spiro: Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow

Read "Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 6, 2015

Spiro is a strange, indefinable, delightful band of merry musicians which have developed a style so spare, so unaffected, and so melodic that you'd swear you'd heard all the tunes before. Drawing on classical music, folk traditions of Britain, Spiro is unlike anything else on record. Its music may be rooted in the sounds of English folk traditions, but its music is more than that as it brims with modern ideas. Adventurous and open minded, the band is thoroughly a ...

Talking 2 Musicians

Jon Batiste

by Alan Bryson
September 5, 2015

As is commonly known in jazz circles, talent doesn't inevitably guarantee success. In my nearly nine year association with All About Jazz I have come across way too many struggling musicians with undeniable talent. If you're an ardent jazz fan, it's pretty much a given that you develop a deep admiration for people willing to follow their passion and dedicate themselves to the pursuit of a career in jazz. It's wonderful when such a person achieves something extraordinary, and today ...

Album Review

Glenn Zaleski: My Ideal

Read "My Ideal" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 5, 2015

Pianist Glenn Zaleski had a couple of classic 1959 Bill Evans touchstones on his mind-- Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Riverside Records) and Portrait in Jazz (Riverside Records)--when he recorded his debut, My Ideal, setting his own piano trio table with a batch of time-tested Standards along with a couple of originals from composer friends of his. Almost every modern pianist digs Bill Evans. The influence is on Zaleski's sleeve, and he and his interactive trio do a fine job of ...

Album Review

Maya Nova: Days

Read "Days" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 5, 2015

Bulgarian vocalist/composer Maya Nova made the move from a lengthy teaching and performing engagement in Singapore to New York City, releasing Days in the creative bargain. She continues to study the seam between pop and jazz that she did on her previous Open (Self Produced, 2010), sprinkling jazz standards among interpretations of more modern tunes and her own informed compositions. Her feather-light take on Roberta Flack's “Feel Like Making Love" sets a subtle tone for a collection simply crafted with ...

Album Review

Elliot Galvin Trio: Dreamland

Read "Dreamland" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
September 5, 2015

From the jokey toy piano start of “Ism" to the aborted boogie woogie of “Blues" where Galvin introduces a reflective change of mood, introducing a luxuriant chord-rich theme, it's patently obvious that this is no ordinary piano trio album. The pastoral “A Major" for example, one of the less frenetic tracks, nonetheless contains its own intriguing meanderings. This contrasts sharply with the succeeding, feistier “J.J." which is propelled by an insistent bass and drum-led rhythm. The sparse ...

Album Review

Elliott Sharp: Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!

Read "Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 5, 2015

Polymath musician Elliott Sharp fears nothing creatively. He will as readily dismantle the blues into its atomic components as he will Western European classical music. Or jazz, for that matter. On Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!, Sharp attempts the impossible, that is: a post-modern dissection of five Thelonious Monk pieces, played on guitar no less. Ex vivo Monk could be seen as one of the first musicians to apply post-modern method to music. Fearlessly, Monk readily expanded the tonal and harmonic ...

Catching Up With

Marcia Ball: Still excited about the music

by Jim Trageser
September 5, 2015

Looking back some 15 years, blues singer and pianist Marcia Ball says the old San Diego Street Scene was one of her favorite gigs on her calendar each year. Modeled after New Orleans' Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Street Scene featured jazz, blues, R&B, Cajun, Creole, zydeco, bluegrass, folk and worldbeat in a three-day stew of music and food. “I loved playing on that stage with all my friends," she remembered in a phone interview from her home ...

Album Review

Abbey Rader's West Coast Quartet: First Gathering

Read "First Gathering" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
September 5, 2015

With the provocative First Gathering, drummer Abbey Rader unveils an intriguingly new musical approach. Over the past decade or so Rader has consistently utilized two woodwinds on his recordings with saxophonists John McMinn and Noah Brandmark filling those roles on his last three sessions. Rader's current West Coast Quartet features reedmen Peter Kuhn and Drew Ceccato whose style is more expansive, rarified than McMinn and Brandmark's earthier, denser sound yet equally adventurous. The record is organized in a ...

Interview

Simon Toldam: A New Perspective in Jazz

by Jakob Baekgaard
September 4, 2015

Danish pianist and composer Simon Toldam is a man who is used to getting involved in many different musical situations. Toldam thrives on diversity and he has played all kinds of music, from folk music to modern jazz and avant-garde. No matter what he is playing, he invests himself in the different musical contexts and brings his own sounds to each musical universe. It might be the lyrical sounds of Danish trumpeter Jakob Buchanan or the playful avant-garde music of ...