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

Sly and the Family Stone: Live at The Fillmore East October 4th and 4th 1968

by Doug Collette
August 9, 2015

Sly and The Family Stone's galvanizing appearance at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair in August of 1969 may well represent the pinnacle of their career, but their rise to this apogee of recognition was the culmination of a long slow climb to fame dating back even further than Sylvester Stewart's, nee Sly, tenure as a disc jockey and record producer during the early to mid-Sixties in San Francisco. Melding r&b, gospel, rock and roll, blues and pop, ...

Live Review

Steely Dan at Blossom Music Center

by C. Andrew Hovan
August 8, 2015

Steely Dan Blossom Music Center Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio July 28, 2015 Back in April, Steely Dan got the busses loaded up for their semi regular touring season that included a few nights at Coachella. July 6th then brought forth the official summer tour, with twenty-three dates set through the middle of August. Billed as the “Rockabye Gollie Angel" tour, whatever the hell that means, The Dan brought its travelling minstrel show to Blossom Music Center ...

Album Review

Mary Halvorson: Meltframe

Read "Meltframe" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 8, 2015

It should come as no shock that Mary Halvorson's first solo guitar album is a mind-bender. In the past, regardless of where she's gone and who she's gone with, Halvorson has managed to surprise by liberally mixing uncommonly aggressive assaults, open-ended exploration(s), and, on occasion, calm(ing) cogitation. Here, standing all by her lonesome, all three of those aspects are in play. What's most shocking about this one is the material that Halvorson uses and the way she ...

Album Review

Mark Winkler: Jazz and Other Four Letter Words

Read "Jazz and Other Four Letter Words" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 8, 2015

On Jazz And Other Four Letter Words songwriter and vocalist Mark Winkler explores themes of love and romance and also takes time to investigate hipness. Exploration and investigation succeed joyously, resulting in one of the year's finest releases. Winkler's aided and abetted by some fine musicians-- pianist Jamieson Trotter (who also arranged most of the songs) and bassists Dan Lutz and John Clayton prove to be especially sympathetic. The Manhattan Transfer's Cheryl Bentyne duets with Winkler on two ...

Live Review

The 2015 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival

by Christine Connallon
August 8, 2015

The 2015 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival Nikon at Jones Beach Theater Wantagh, NY July 26, 2015 In a world of full of corporate branding and everything under the sun being sponsored, there are some partnerships that truly make sense. Vans backing the Warped Tour, which started as a skate punk rock festival, is a perfect example. Another is the fusion of Rockstar Energy Drinks and Mayhem Festival. In its eighth year, this North American ...

Live Review

Whitesnake at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury

by Mike Perciaccante
August 8, 2015

Whitesnake with special guests the Dead Daisies NYCB Theatre at Westbury Westbury, NY July 27, 2015 In 1978, following his departure from Deep Purple, David Coverdale formed Whitesnake. Since that time Whitesnake's music has evolved from sounding much like the blues-rock of Deep Purple to a more accessible rock 'n' roll-based ethos and then back to the Deep Purple sound, with its The Purple Album (Frontiers Records, 2015) containing rerecorded versions of Deep Purple songs ...

Album Review

Luca Aquino: OverDOORS

Read "OverDOORS" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
August 8, 2015

Nearly fifty years after they burst onto the rock scene and into legend, The Doors, led by gone-too-soon rocker, Jim Morrison still resonate through the music world. However, oddly outside of their most successful hit, “Light My Fire," little of the group's repertoire has been explored by jazz artists. Italian jazz trumpeter and innovative sonic explorer, Luca Aquino has always had a special affection for the legendary group and, with this recording, moves the Doors' music into areas into which ...

Album Review

Old Time Musketry: Drifter

by Dave Wayne
August 8, 2015

Old and new collide and intermingle in a variety of appealing ways on Drifter, the second long-player by the Brooklyn-based collective, Old Time Musketry. It's funny, though, how old has become new and new has become old. J. P. Schlegelmilch, the keyboardist and primary composer for the band (he wrote all but 2 of Drifter's varied and evocative compositions) specializes in the accordion, an instrument all but conscribed to the scrapheap of history until the innovations of artists such as ...

Live Review

Gent Jazz Festival 2015: Part 2

by Martin Longley
August 7, 2015

Gent Jazz Festival Bijloke Gent, Belgium July 15-18, 2015 Part 1 | Part 2 The second half of the festival began with another themed day, heavy on the European female singer front. In fact, this was just the beginning of a definite tipping towards that direction, with even a few token American vocalists slipping across the border. Londoner Andreya Triana is now fronting her own band, after introducing herself ...

Album Review

Indigo Kid II: Fist Full Of Notes

Read "Fist Full Of Notes" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 7, 2015

At the risk of implying that the very selective UK-based Babel Label has gone “mainstream," they have--of late--issued a number of releases that certainly have a broader appeal. A homage to Bill Evans Postcard to Bill Evans (2015) and vocalist Emilia Mårtensson's fine Ana (2014), now share a catalog with cutting edge artists like pianist Alexander Hawkins and groups like Woven Entity and Black Top. To be fair, Babel has long produced more genre-agnostic talent like vocalist Christine Tobin (the ...