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.

Live Review

Jyderup Accordeon Traef 2015: Meeting of the Master Improvisers

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 24, 2015

Jyderup Accordeon Traef Jyderup, Denmark June 14-21, 2015 Where do you find some of the greatest improvisers in music today? The answer, in a folk high school in the middle of a forest near a small Danish town called Jyderup, seems like a bad joke. Nevertheless, it is the truth -at least these days where a meeting of improvisers is taking place in an unlikely, but beautiful setting. It is an encounter between students ...

Album Review

Jack Wright / Ben Wright: as if anything could be the same

Read "as if anything could be the same" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
June 24, 2015

It's only apropos that I am writing this review on Father's Day. As if anything could be the same is a duet album by the father and son team of saxophonist Jack Wright and contrabassist Ben Wright. In the world of improvised music, or non-idiomatic improvised music if one must, Jack Wright is a seminal figure. A self-taught bluegrass and folk musician as a youth, and later a history professor at Temple University, Wright's trajectory out of “normal" life coincided ...

Album Review

Michael Bates: Northern Spy

Read "Northern Spy" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 24, 2015

Did you ever get a bit envious listening to a recording and thinking the band is having way too much fun making music? I'm not saying Northern Spy stirs up jealousy, but damn the trio of bassist Michael Bates, saxophonist Michael Blake and drummer Jeremy “Bean" Clemons are up to some serious jollification here.This, Bate's ninth release as a leader, diverts from the complex post-bop sounds of his Outside Sources band and Acrobat, his take on Dmitri Shostakovich. ...

Album Review

Dre Hocevar Trio: Coding Of Evidentiality

Read "Coding Of Evidentiality" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 24, 2015

Given the title of drummer Dre Hocevar's recording, the question arises: can one classify or identify a system's disorder, i.e. entropy? The liner notes give us a hint. Laurence Donohue-Greene writes, this trio of Hocevar, pianist Bram De Looze and cellist St.Louis, “develop each improvisation compositionally and with tenacious unity." I suspect, when there is human involvement, all improvised music finds some order and yes, eventuality can be coded. Philosophic and thermodynamic discussions aside, the seven pieces presented ...

Album Review

Yaniv Taubenhouse Trio: Here from There

Read "Here from There" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
June 24, 2015

Here From There announces a major new mainstream talent, the Yaniv Taubenhouse, led by pianist Yaniv Taubenhouse, from the perspective of both his performance and composition.The album was recorded during Taubenhouse's stay at Fayetteville, Arkansas in the University of Arkansas piano performance program. Since arriving there in 2010, the current trio which includes drummer Darren Novotny and bassist Garrett Jones, had rehearsed and played for a year before recording this album.While his personal charisma cannot be ...

Live Review

Brisbane International Jazz Festival 2015

by Ian Patterson
June 23, 2015

Brisbane International Jazz Festival Various locations Brisbane, Australia June 3-8, 2015 Celebrating its third edition, the Brisbane International Jazz Festival may be one of Australia's youngest jazz festivals but the state of Queensland is no stranger to jazz. The non-profit organisation Jazz Queensland has been curating concerts, developing audiences and working with media and promotors to develop a sustainable jazz community in Australia's second largest state since the early 1980s. The BIJF, which ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Aaron Akins

by AAJ Staff
June 23, 2015

Aaron Akins' music is something out of the ordinary. After all, a voice strongly reminiscent of Nat “King" Cole wrapped up in a sophisticated urban beat is not something heard every day. Stir the ingredients, jazz it up a little, and Aaron Akins might be it. Produced by Darryl Swann (Macy Gray), the singer's second studio album Love is All Around combines the tradition of Great American Songbook. Songs like “Mona Lisa," “Let There be Love" and “Nature Boy" were absolutely ...

In Pictures

DOEK Festival Amsterdam 2015: Doek Meets Tri-Centric

by Frank Rubolino
June 23, 2015

Doek is a collective of stellar musicians based in the Amsterdam area dedicated to furthering the creative possibilities in improvised music. In June 2015, they broadened their horizons by inviting Anthony Braxton and his cadre of nine hand-picked younger USA talents to play with ten of their musicians for a week-long adventure in spontaneity using mixed and matched groupings. This transatlantic exchange resulted in an astonishing mix of instantly composed, pre-composed, and conduction music resounding from over 30 mini or ...

Album Review

Milford Graves/Bill Laswell: Space / Time - Redemption

Read "Space / Time - Redemption" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
June 23, 2015

An unlikely duo, yet-somehow-also the perfect duo, electric bassist Bill Laswell and multi-percussionist Milford Graves generate all sorts of musical fire on Space -Time: Redemption. Once again, TUM Records' lush packaging includes numerous photos, copious liner notes, and some uncannily prescient poetry by longtime Laswell associate Umar Bin Hassan. One of the photos shows Graves adjusting his well-worn, hand-painted, single-headed drum kit as Laswell warms up in front of a small stack of amps with a dozen-plus effects pedals, loopers, ...

Album Review

Yells at Eels: In Quiet Waters

Read "In Quiet Waters" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
June 23, 2015

It would seem that trumpeter Dennis González could easily find a place among the better-known artists in jazz were it not for a deep commitment to making generally undefinable music and priorities that include putting his academic and literary responsibilities out front. From the time of his first release as a leader, Air Light (Sleep Sailor) (Daagnim, 1979), González began toying with unusual amalgams like free improvisation and quasi-big band augmented with global dynamics. Much of the way González communicates ...