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.

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Profile

Howard Rumsey: The Lighthouse All Star

by Rex Butters
July 20, 2015

Reprinted from August 2007. With the release of Ken Koenig's exhaustive, enlightening, and entertaining DVD history of a SoCal treasure, Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse (RoseKing Productions, 2005), 89 year-old Howard Rumsey returns to the spotlight. Bassist, booker, and raconteur extraordinaire, Rumsey presented the best jazz shows in Los Angeles for 33 consecutive years. First with a group of studio musicians and Kenton veterans, he ran the ongoing jam and experimentation of the Lighthouse All ...

Album Review

Matthew Stevens: Woodwork

Read "Woodwork" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 20, 2015

Guitarist Matthew Stevens has already made a name for himself through his work with artists like trumpeter Christian Scott, saxophonist Walter Smith III, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, and bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding. But he shouldn't be pigeonholed as a support player or viewed simply as sideman du jour in the eyes of the jazz world. That would be a mistake, as he has plenty to offer on his own. With Woodwork, Stevens' long-awaited debut, the guitarist steps forward and shows himself ...

Extended Analysis

Bugge Wesseltoft: Bugge and Friends

by Phil Barnes
July 20, 2015

Back in the late 1990s Bugge Wesseltoft was best known as a leading light in the jazz house scene that sought to integrate jazz into the electronic music of the day. His primary outlet at the time was his New Conception of Jazz project that culminated in the wonderful 2001 collection Moving and which represented a high water mark for the scene, alongside other classics like St Germain's Boulevard from 1995. Wesseltoft has, of course, since shown us a wide ...

Album Review

Amir ElSaffar and the Two Rivers Ensemble: Crisis

Read "Crisis" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 20, 2015

On his third album with the Two Rivers ensemble, Crisis trumpeter and composer Amir ElSaffar continues to explore the Arabic Maqam modal system. He uses this melodic type in a context with strong American influences and particularly jazz sensibilities. The result is not merely a superficial, kitschy fusion but true marriage of two improvisational traditions. ElSaffar's tenure In Egypt and Lebanon partly inspired the seven-part suite commissioned for and performed at the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival. The work's ...

Album Review

Walt Weiskopf: Open Road

Read "Open Road" reviewed by Blaine Fallis

by Blaine Fallis
July 20, 2015

"Premonition" was the perfect opening tune on Walt Weiskopf's Open Road album, because it sets the tone. It even matches the album cover...we're going somewhere fast, barely able to quite focus in due to the speed. But it's exciting! Bassist Mike Karn drives the band until 1:45 when he and pianist Peter Zak suddenly drop out, and the duo of Weiskopf and drummer Steve Fidyk keep pushing forward, as if during a high-speed corner two passengers couldn't hold ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields

Read "The Thompson Fields" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
July 20, 2015

At the time Maria Schneider released Evanescence (Enja, 1994), big band jazz--especially in the US--was overly predictable and indecisively hanging on like ballroom music in a ghost town. Schneider, while embracing the best practices of earlier legendary big band leaders and her mentors, Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, had added unconventional elements to her own compositions. With each release she has become more of an avant-garde impressionist capturing the beauty and sadness of a nomadic soul wandering through what was ...

Album Review

Julian Lage: World's Fair

Read "World's Fair" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
July 19, 2015

Guitarist Julian Lage's chameleon-like abilities have covered many styles from jazz in ensembles with vibraphonist Gary Burton and drummer Eric Harland to avant-free expressions with guitarist Nels Cline in Room (Mack Avenue, 2014) and folksy bluegrass with Punch Brother's member Chris Eldridge in Avalon (Modern Lore, 2014). A phenomenal technician Lage is more importantly a player with pronounced tonality and delicate touch who exudes a plethora of moods from his instrument as displayed with his first solo release World's Fair. ...

Album Review

Sam Taylor: My Future Just Passed

Read "My Future Just Passed" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 19, 2015

One spin of saxophonist Sam Taylor's debut CD, My Future Just Passed, and it's not hard to tell where he's coming from, influence-wise. He's a traditionalist with a muscular sound, and you hear Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and bringing things forward in time, perhaps Dexter Gordon, and on this particular trio affair at hand, Sonny Rollins certainly comes to mind in terms of concept. Hawkins and Webster for their rich, robust tones; Gordon for his blowing power, and Sonny Rollins ...

Album Review

A Bu Trio: 88 Tones of Black and White

Read "88 Tones of Black and White" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
July 19, 2015

China is rarely thought of as a geographic source of jazz from the perspective of westerners, partly due to a less than robust presence of the genre and partly because the country remains closed off in many respects. In the past ten years or so, only a handful of “jazz" recordings have come out of the more open environment of Hong Kong. That music would be more accurately classified as pop or “Cantopop" (Cantonese popular music) as Chinese music critics ...

Album Review

Deep Tone Project: Flow

by Budd Kopman
July 19, 2015

Flow might just be the perfect record for late-night, candle light-and-wine listening with that special someone. As the music comes out of the speakers, it floats and softly envelops the room in deep violet, making time stop for the duration. If the group can be said have a leader, electric bassist Konstantin Ionenko would share the honors with guitarist Alexandr Pavlov, since they each composed four of the tunes. Tenor saxophonist Viktor Pavelko and drummer Pavel Galitsky round ...