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.

Extended Analysis

Light of the Supreme: Carlos Santana’s Devadip Trilogy

by Rob Caldwell
August 15, 2015

To the casual music fan in 1971 Carlos Santana appeared as if he was on top of the world. His band's appearance at Woodstock two short years earlier, plus their cover of Fleetwood Mac's “Black Magic Woman" had catapulted him to stardom. Yet, behind the scenes, his band was splintering. Different musical and personal objectives, plus the increased usage of hard drugs by some band members were getting in the way. By the end of the year, bassist David Brown, ...

Album Review

Gloria Reuben: Perchance To Dream

Read "Perchance To Dream" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
August 15, 2015

Based on her performance (back in the day) on NBC's ER, when she sang Green Day's “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)," it was obvious that Gloria Reuben had the chops. Reuben's character Jeanie Boulet, sang a stunning version of the song, which, don't let the title fool you, is actually a plaintive ballad, as a farewell to a young boy who had died in her care. On her new light jazz CD Perchance To Dream (MCG Jazz, ...

Album Review

Stacey & Alan: A Love Like Ours

Read "A Love Like Ours" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
August 15, 2015

Alan Schulman holds a Masters Degree in Jazz Arranging & Composition from Howard University. The guitarist was born in Cincinnati and has appeared on numerous jazz recordings by among others Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Anita Baker and Michael Feinstein. Stacey Schulman (yes they are married) is a native New Yorker who has been singing professionally since she was nine years old. She made her musical bones as a New York City studio singer contributing vocals on tracks for radio commercials, ...

Album Review

The Grahams: Glory Bound

Read "Glory Bound" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
August 15, 2015

Friends since their childhood, Alyssa and Doug Graham are now husband and wife. They are also a duo to be reckoned with. Their music is a joyous melange of country, folk, blues, roots, bluegrass and pop with some jazzy elements thrown in for good measure. It's definitely American music. If one were asked to place the Grahams into a genre or define the duo's music the best and most simplistic term would be Americana. Americana if only for the fact ...

Album Review

Tal Blumstein Trio: New York - Tel Aviv

Read "New York - Tel Aviv" reviewed by Nathalie Tamara Freson

by Nathalie Tamara Freson
August 15, 2015

Yes, modern jazz is still very much present among the younger generation, and Tal Blumstein proves it with his debut, New York-Tel Aviv. Freshly out of the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Blumstein teams up with two other Israeli-born jazz musicians who have already made their mark on the New York jazz scene: bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer Itay Morchi. The album features seven tracks, all original compositions, each one being a narrative on its own. This is ...

Live Review

Bennett and Gaga at Kennedy Center: Dissection of an Era

by Franz A. Matzner
August 14, 2015

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga's duet project has captured headlines from its inception and for the most part the carefully constructed and deliberatively delivered juxtaposition of styles, age, and temperament has been showered with praise, including receiving a Grammy award. Not surprisingly, then, their final performance together held in the Kennedy Center's expansive concert hall was met with great expectations. Judging by audience reaction alone, the ensuing spectacle of thirty-plus songs, deft stagecraft, extravagant costumes, and ingenuously delivered sentiment struck ...

Album Review

Shai Maestro Trio: Untold Stories

Read "Untold Stories" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 14, 2015

Hearing the Shai Maestro Trio is like awakening to a new world: a world of wonders, excitement, beauty, and uncertainty. Sounds of intrigue, expressions of joy, introspective thoughts, and heightened intensity all come to the fore at one time or another as Maestro, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Ziv Ravitz open up and share themselves through the music. Right out of the gate, these three men establish themselves as high energy players and shrewd sculptors of rhythm ...

Album Review

Enrico Rava Quartet with Gianluca Petrella: Wild Dance

Read "Wild Dance" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 14, 2015

The senior statesman, and easily the most recognizable name in Italian jazz, trumpeter Enrico Rava returns with a revised quintet line up on Wild Dance. Rava, who early in his career worked with saxophonist Steve Lacy, pianist Mal Waldron and trombonist Roswell Rudd, later went on to team with drummer Tony Oxley and sit in with the Global Unity Orchestra. His free jazz pedigree belies the fact that Rava has more often leaned toward the lyrical while incorporating his own ...

Album Review

Anthony Ocaña & Nelson Ricart-Guerrero: In Trance

Read "In Trance" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 14, 2015

In order to fully appreciate Anthony Ocaña's intriguingly beautiful In Trance, which consists of six multi-level instrumental tracks (some with choral background) followed by a twenty-minute recitation of the poem “La luna o los ritos del amor," written by Nelson Ricart-Guerrero, it is necessary to understand the inspiration for both. The music is inspired by the poem, and the poem's inspiration is described by its author: “The poem “La luna o los ritos del amor / ...

Album Review

Thollem McDonas / Michael Wimberly / Nels Cline: Radical Empathy

Read "Radical Empathy" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
August 14, 2015

Radical Empathy is the second in a series of three musical encounters between keyboardist and musical instigator Thollem McDonas and multi-disciplinary guitar whiz Nels Cline. The first collaboration, titled simply The Gowanus Session (Porter Records, 2008), featured bassist William Parker and was notable for its resolute resistance to free jazz cliché. Uncannily, it found Cline, McDonas, and Parker, with virtually no advance preparation, on very much the same page. Instead of the expected improvisational pyrotechnics (though, with three virtuosos in ...