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

Mark Christian Miller: Crazy Moon

Read "Crazy Moon" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 30, 2015

Mark Christian Miller has been performing for over 20 years, mostly in southern California. Recordings are rare, however: perhaps because he's also been working as promoter, booker, manager and festival director. Debut album Dreamer With A Penny (Sliding Glass Door) appeared in 2004; an album with Betty Bryant, Together (bry-mar music) in 2011. Crazy Moon is a welcome addition to this short list. Miller's voice--cheerful, positive--is one of the warmest and most welcoming voices in jazz. It's hard ...

Album Review

Electric Squeezebox Orchestra: Cheap Rent

Read "Cheap Rent" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 30, 2015

Yes, the name is intriguing--but what should one expect musically from the San Francisco-based Electric Squeezebox Orchestra? Bits and pieces of a number of disparate elements, really, from straight-ahead contemporary motifs to shuffle beats and old-line swing, from down-home New Orleans rhythms to throwback grooves from the '70s and even a seductive ballad. What matters most is that every number is capably performed by an ensemble comprised of some of the more seasoned sidemen (and one woman) the Bay Area ...

Album Review

RelativE ResonancE: RelativE ResonancE

Read "RelativE ResonancE" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
August 30, 2015

The music of drummer and composer Devin Gray traverses terrains that will be familiar to those who've investigated artists such as Tyshawn Sorey and Steve Lehman. As complex and highly structured as Gray's music can be, there's a palpable human warmth throughout Relative Resonance which makes the music--in spite of its ultra-busy, highly demanding nature--kind of easy on the ears. This was also a hallmark of Gray's excellent debut recording, Dirigo Rataplan (Skirl Records, 2012). While some of the pieces--"Jungle ...

Album Review

Jerry Garcia: Broadway: Act One: October 28th, 1987

Read "Broadway: Act One: October 28th, 1987" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
August 30, 2015

The deliciously relaxed air of the music on these three discs belies the precision in the musicianship as much as it does the operations necessary for a two week run on a Broadway theater. And all this attention to detail, well-served as it is, gives the lie to the moment of serendipity from which it sprung:an offhanded, good=humored exchange between Jerry Garcia and late impresario Bill Graham. Dennis McNally's perceptive recounting of the experience in New York at ...

Live Review

Los Van Van at Davies Symphony Hall

by Harry S. Pariser
August 30, 2015

Los Van Van Davies Symphony Hall SFJAZZ Festival San Francisco, CA August 14, 2015 Cheers erupted as Randall Kline, Founder and Co-Executive Director of SFJAZZ, began to introduce the evening's entertainment. Cheers from more than two thousand audience members overpowered Kline as the musicians came onstage, eleven in total, and took their places--the roar forcing him to pause until the ocean of sound subsided. Since its inception in 1969, Los Van Van ...

Tell Me More

Keb' Mo': Blues Meets Jazz in BluesAmericana

by Belinda Ware
August 30, 2015

Jazz and Blues go hand in hand like mother and daughter, father and son. Blues is often associated with a style of music imbued and cultivated within musicians born and raised in the downhome South hanging out in nightclubs on Memphis' Beale Street, New Orleans and Tupelo waiting for a spot to perform. Kevin Moore hails originally from the city of Compton, a city that has served as home to Venus and Serena Williams, Kendrick Lamar, and George ...

Book Review

The Band: Pioneers of American Music by Craig Harris

by C. Michael Bailey
August 29, 2015

The Band: Pioneers of American Music Craig Harris 214 Pages ISBN: #978081089040 Rowman & Littlefield 2014 It is difficult, if not impossible or unadvisable, to consider Bob Dylan and The Band separately. Theirs was an artistic event horizon that changed much of music afterwards. Writer and percussionist Craig Harris has lovingly committed to pixels The Band: Pioneers of American Music, the thoroughly researched and considered story of the Band, and necessarily, its ...

Album Review

Tiffany Austin: Nothing But Soul

Read "Nothing But Soul" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 29, 2015

While countless artists have covered the music of Hoagy Carmichael, album-length tributes from a single artist saluting his work aren't all that common; Carmichael salutes that reshape some of his most beloved compositions are, understandably, even more scarce, as there are heavy risks involved in toying with the nature of his treasured songs. Tiffany Austin, however, isn't afraid of expressing her love of Carmichael's work in her own sweetly soulful way. On Nothing But Soul, this Berkeley-based ...

Film Review

The Who Live at Shea Stadium 1982

by Doug Collette
August 29, 2015

The Who Live at Shea Stadium 1982 Eagle Vision 2015 It's equal parts courageous and foolish for The Who to release this document of their 'farewell' tour from over four decades ago as the group celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2015. Business enterprise aside, the band as it was constituted at Shea Stadium outside New York was not capable of the explosive dynamics of the original quartet with drummer Keith Moon who had died four ...

Album Review

The Global Jazz Orchestra: Global Warming / Globarhythm

Read "Global Warming / Globarhythm" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 29, 2015

One day, about a dozen or so years ago, a slender, unassuming Japanese man stood at a booth at the far end of an exhibit hall at an annual conference of the (now-defunct) International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE). Answering a question posed by a writer looking for big-band CDs to review, he said, in halting English, “Yes, I am Akira Nonomura, leader of Global Jazz Orchestra, and we do have CD." With that, he handed the writer a copy ...