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

Jennifer Leitham: Mood (S)wings

Read "Mood (S)wings" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 17, 2015

One of the rules of thumb in jazz is that hardly anyone ever looks forward to a bass solo. Rules, however, were made to be broken, and a case in point is multi-talented Jennifer Leitham whose solos on Mood (S)wings are nimble, well-crafted and consistently engaging--in other words, worth looking forward to. Not that anything less would be expected from someone who has been at the top of her game for more nearly four decades and performed with a who's ...

Album Review

Joe Smith & The Spicy Pickles: High Fidelity

Read "High Fidelity" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 17, 2015

The Swing Era, usually thought of as the late 1930s to the early 1940s, is that one unique time when jazz was America's pop music. While this is not the place to go into the history of that period or its precedents, suffice it to say that the bands of say, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, to produce an arbitrary list, each had and has diehard fans who will declare them to ...

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Interview

Ron Aprea: On John Lennon, Jazz Legends, And Life In Music

by Dan Bilawsky
August 16, 2015

Picture this: The year is 1974 and you've just gotten off the road with Lionel Hampton. The phone rings, and on the other end of the line is an old buddy of yours. After a little small talk, he asks if you're available for a recording session. You indicate that you're free and ask him about the session. That's when he tells you, nonchalantly, that it's for John Lennon. That little episode may sound like it's coming ...

Album Review

Clay Giberson: Minga Minga

Read "Minga Minga" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 16, 2015

From the mouth of his young daughter came the four playful syllables that don't mean a thing in the adult world, but Portland, Oregon-based pianist Clay Giberson took the idea--and the momentous event of the birth of his child--and went into the studio to record solo, every day for two weeks. The result is Minga Minga. Giberson's association with Origin Records has been a fruitful one, featuring a double handful of excellent albums, with his Upper Left Trio ...

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Live Review

Oakland Art + Soul Festival 2015

by Walter Atkins
August 16, 2015

Oakland Art + Soul Festival Oakland, CA August 1-2, 2015 Oakland's 15th annual Art+Soul Festival continued its ongoing tradition of featuring the rich variety of music and art of the San Francisco Bay Area. A+SF's multiple venues highlighted Blues, soul, rap, Latin jazz, spoken word and dancers along with crafts and vendor booths over two leisurely days. Local performing artists included Lenny Williams (Tower of Power), Sheila E. (Prince), The Family Stone (Sly Stone), ...

Album Review

David Berkman: Old Friends And New Friends

Read "Old Friends And New Friends" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 16, 2015

With Old Friends and New Friends, pianist/composer David Berkman reunites with the Palmetto label, as well as Matt Balitsaris, who both founded the label and was the recording engineer. Berkman nostalgically describes the process of making the earlier recordings as a group undertaking where disparate personalties are melded into a whole to produce a distinct sound. Besides Balitsaris, this recording features drummer Brian Blade and saxophonists Adam Kolker and Billy Drewes, who are the “old friends" from recordings ...

Album Review

Dre Hocevar Trio: Coding Of Evidentiality

Read "Coding Of Evidentiality" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 16, 2015

With his multinational trio, Slovenian drummer Dre Hocevar molds unorthodox instrumentation into a branded musical statement. He integrates an asymmetrical configuration of structure and improvisation, offering fragmented and rolling thematic designs with similes of gravitational pull during the artists' exchanges. Electronics performer Sam Pluta makes his lone contribution to “Critical Discourse Analysis" and ignites the festivities with peculiar effects akin to mechanical grinding, offset by pianist Bram De Looze's delicate twinkles of sound, summoning an oddly balanced overture ...

Album Review

Rose Colella: Cocktail

Read "Cocktail" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 16, 2015

Vocalist Rose Colella is from Chicago. And so is vocalist Paul Marinaro ( Without a Song (Self Produced, 2013)). It is no coincidence. Colella and Marinaro duet on the medley “Would You Like to Take a Walk--I get Ideas" on her present Cocktails. They shared a holiday duet on a steamy and good-natured “Baby, It's Cold Outside" in 2013. Her Small Hours (Lola bard Productions, 2009) was warmly received as a collection of tried and true standards; and she returns ...

Interview

Sharon Robinson: My Journey as an Artist Continues

by Nenad Georgievski
August 15, 2015

The seven years since singer and producer Sharon Robinson's debut album Everybody Knows have been transformative for her. She toured the world several times as part of the Leonard Cohen's band, for what is considered to be one of the most impressive comebacks in music history. The result to that are several live recordings, the last of which are Live in Dublin and Can't Forget that serve as a testament to the many great nights when the band played to ...

Album Review

Abra: Vocal Sessions / For Four Emotional Registers / 2014-2015

Read "Vocal Sessions / For Four Emotional Registers / 2014-2015" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 15, 2015

Abra is an Israeli improvising vocal ensemble featuring four musicians--Noa Haran, Faye Shapiro, Chanan Ben Simon and Yifat Ziv, taking its name from the Aramaic incantation Abra Ka Dabra (I shall create what i speak). The ensemble debut album documents the ensemble exploratory vocal improvisations during its live performances and studio sessions in different spaces and halls during the years 2014 and 2015.The ensemble focuses on exploration of its varied vocal techniques and vocal qualities but balances this ...