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

Ikarus: Echo

by Budd Kopman
August 4, 2015

Music has the extraordinary power to alter time and space for its duration, as well as being used to arouse emotions. The terms “abstract" and “concrete" are often used to describe particular music in a way that is widely understood, and yet the actual definitions remain elusive. Echo, from the band Ikarus, contains music which is extremely powerful, shocking, eerie and, in the end, beautiful. Composer and drummer Ramón Oliveras, is joined by two vocalists, Stefanie Suhner and ...

Album Review

Glenn Zottola: Miles Davis Remembered

Read "Miles Davis Remembered" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
August 4, 2015

A young musician's mind can be so very impressionable, so capable and available to lock onto a recording, a phrase or texture and hold it. The effect is almost nuclear--one note, perfectly placed by the performer and into a young listener's ear, can set into play a chain of music-driven events that can spawn professional careers, if not a lifelong interest in the art. Such was-and is--the case with trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist, Glenn Zottola. A phenomenon in his own right. ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

August 2015

by Mr. P.C.
August 3, 2015

Dear Mr. P.C.: What's wrong with the people who made up the names for how to play? When you get to a section that's double-time, you would think it would take twice as long, but it's actually faster. Then you get to a part that's half-time, so it should take half as long to play, but it's slower. Am I missing something? --Concerned Citizen Dear Concerned: Yes, you are. Your math assumes ...

Album Review

Jakob Bro: Hymnotic/Salmodisk

Read "Hymnotic/Salmodisk" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 3, 2015

The exploration of different musical formats has been one of the defining characteristics of Danish guitarist Jakob Bro for a long time. It makes perfect sense when you think about Bro's approach to music. He is an artist that likes to work with different voices to see what they can bring to the music. Back in 2008, Bro introduced a nonet that was documented on the live-recording White Rainbow (Loveland Records, 2008). Many of the musicians that ...

Album Review

Tom Cox: The Journey Home

Read "The Journey Home" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 3, 2015

Little Rock pianist Tom Cox and bassist Bill Huntington follow their plaintive, 2014 release Red (Self Produced) with the present The Journey Home. Like Red it is an exploration of spare melody with harmony on piano, propelled by Huntington's certain time. It is a crepuscular recital of mood pieces, warmly conceived as if at the end of day. The majority of pieces are Cox composed with the Coots/Lewis standard “For All We Know," Keith Jarrett's “Prism" and Gonzalo Rubalcaba's arrangement ...

Album Review

Chicago Reed Quartet: Western Automatic

Read "Western Automatic" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 3, 2015

After a heyday in the late 1970s which saw the World Saxophone Quartet, ROVA and the 29th Street Saxophone Quartet, to list but three of the more celebrated, strutting their stuff, the format has undergone a hiatus more recently. However it remains firmly established as an instrumental configuration and perhaps the only surprise is that it has taken so long for a Chicago version to emerge. That deficit has been filled by saxophonist Dave Rempis, who has convened a foursome ...

Album Review

Romain Vuilleman: Swinging In Paris

Read "Swinging In Paris" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 3, 2015

Anyone who needs a lift from current state of the world could do much worse than popping Swinging In Paris into the player and be transported back to the late 1930s and Django Reinhardt's Quintette du Hot Club de France. Guitarist Romain Vuillemin's quartet (guitarist Stephan Nguyen, violinist Guillaume Singer and bassist Jeremie Arranger) was created to, in his own words, “pay tribute to Django Reinhardt in his purest style, interpreted with a pinch of originality in the ...

Live Review

Montreux Jazz Journal 2015: Lenny Kravitz Enlists a Sweet Swiss Army

by Phillip Woolever
August 3, 2015

Lenny Kravitz, Assorted Others Auditorium Stravinski, various locations Montreux Jazz Festival Montreux, Switzerland June 13, 2015 Sometimes a performer's most primary appeal is obvious. In tonight's case that appeal was verified by a large percentage of fired-up females, wedged in for Lenny Kravitz's sweltering, sold-out set in the grand Auditorium Stravinski. The enduringly fashionable Kravitz and his fans brought more progressive wardrobes than you'd normally see for typical Montreux attire, ...

Album Review

Mark Winkler: Jazz and Other Four Letter Words

Read "Jazz and Other Four Letter Words" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 2, 2015

Vocalist Mark Winkler has been something of a victim of his own talent: his work as a vocalist has often been routinely overlooked, largely eclipsed by his renown as a songwriter. But the tide seems to be turning for this cool school singer-of-note. With the critical success and positive public response to The Laura Nyro Project (Cafe Pacific Records, 2013), the arrival of his duo project with Cheryl Bentyne--West Coast Cool (Summit Records, 2013)--and this hipper-than-hip outing, Winkler is finally ...

Live Review

The Gaslight Anthem at The Paramount

by Mike Perciaccante
August 2, 2015

The Gaslight Anthem The Paramount Huntington, NY July 21, 2015 New Jersey's newest favorite sons rocked a sold-out, packed-to-the-gills Paramount on a steamy Tuesday evening in late July. It was blistering hot outside and the Gaslight Anthem's burning performance insured that it was just as hot inside the Huntington, NY rock 'n' roll mecca. The energy was high, the walls were sweating and the audience was bopping, clapping and singing along with singer/guitarist Brian Fallon ...