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

Jaga Jazzist: Starfire

Read "Starfire" reviewed by Alex Franquelli

by Alex Franquelli
June 23, 2015

First things first: let's leave the definition of Jaga Jazzist music for last. Or, better, let's not even consider using labels. Let's not rush to conclusions, let's not fall in the sweet traps of music criticism where one plunges in forced by adjectives, hyperboles, comparisons, clever rhetoric and assorted namedropping. First things first, we said, as if it were easy to define an ensemble which has rewritten the history of European contemporary jazz by adding progressive, noise, classical and electronic ...

Album Review

Paul Dietrich: We Always Get There

Read "We Always Get There" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 23, 2015

Chicago based trumpeter and composer Paul Dietrich's debut album We Always Get There is a vibrant and explorative work of modern music that inhabits the border zone between the mainstream and the Avant-Garde. The record's intricately constructed originals, with dramatic ambiences, are provocative while remaining intensely melodic, simultaneously accessible and pleasantly challenging.The intimate theme of “House On Willard" undulates within the tune's intriguing harmonic framework. Saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi's lyrical, serpentine improvisation ebbs and flows with a melancholic touch. ...

The Big Question

Which jazz musicians produce consistently good music on records or in concert?

by Michael Ricci
June 22, 2015

We all have our favorites, but I'm wondering which of your favorites rarely, if ever, disappoint you on records or in concert? For me, it seems anything Joe Locke releases or plays on, sounds great. His latest, Love is a Pendulum (Motema, 2015), already has a seat assignment on my best of 2015 list and I still occasionally dip into his older recordings like Mutual Admiration Society (Sharp Nine, 1999) and Sound Tracks (Milestone, 1997). Thanks for all ...

Album Review

Bob Mintzer Big Band: Get Up!

by Jack Bowers
June 22, 2015

Even after more than three decades as a big-band leader, and with twenty well-received albums under his belt, Grammy winner Bob Mintzer keeps pushing the envelope, tweaking his recipe and exploring new ways in which to challenge himself and his sidemen while seducing the listener's ear. Known among other things for his fondness for Latin music, Mintzer has chosen instead on Get Up!, recorded live in October 2014 at Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, to plunge headlong into the pulsating realm ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Riding the Moment

Read "Riding the Moment" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 22, 2015

The album Switched-On Bach (Columbia Records, 1968), by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos was a seminal introduction to synthesized music. Carlos used the then new MOOG Synthesizer to painstakingly construct the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Love it or hate it seemed to be the reaction, without much opinion in between. But one thing for certain, the synthesizer genie was out of the bottle. Times have changed. The once cumbersome MOOG has given way to smaller and much more ...

Album Review

The Greg Foat Group: The Dancers at the End of Time

Read "The Dancers at the End of Time" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
June 22, 2015

This is the fourth album by pianist/organist/composer Greg Foat and has been released both on CD and LP (this review concerns the latter format) and is unquestionably his most accomplished and satisfying to date. The stately strains of a church organ (a real one, since this album was recorded in a church), herald the opening to the title track on Side A, giving way to Rob Mach's tenor before the movement of a door is heard introducing the ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Stanley Turrentine and The 3 Sounds: Blue Hour – 1960

by Marc Davis
June 21, 2015

Every good record collection has music for many moods. Feeling frantic? Try Dizzy Gillespie or the Ramones. Feel like dancing? Definitely the big bands. Feeling wistful? Maybe Ben Webster or Frank Sinatra. But if you're feeling blue, you need Stanley Turrentine, and Blue Hour is exactly the right prescription. Stanley Turrentine is the very definition of jazzy blues, in almost any setting, with almost any backing band. His soulful sax features heavily on two of my ...

Album Review

Bob Mintzer Big Band: Get Up!

by Dan Bilawsky
June 21, 2015

Funk and R&B are the dominant sonic strains on Get Up!--saxophonist-composer Bob Mintzer's twentieth big band release overall and his fifth for the MCG Jazz imprint. In October of 2014, Mintzer took to the stage for two nights at Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, armed with some of his grooving big band arrangements and accompanied by a group of his heavy hitter musician friends--Yellowjackets, big band mainstays, and studio greats among them. The music they made, captured here ...

Album Review

Quiet Music Ensemble: The Mysteries Beyond Matter

Read "The Mysteries Beyond Matter" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
June 21, 2015

The latest release from the redoubtable Farpoint Recordings is the debut recording from Cork-based experimental music group Quiet Music Ensemble (QME)--what a great group name, eh? The group consists of double bassist Dan Bodwell, cellist Ilse De Ziah, clarinetist Seán Mac Erlaine, trombonist Roddy O'Keeffe with ensemble founder and musical director John Godfrey on electric guitar. QME was launched in 2008 at the Quiet Music Festival where they premiered works they had commissioned by Alvin Lucier, David Toop ("Night leaves ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields

Read "The Thompson Fields" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 21, 2015

Composer and band leader Maria Schneider has only a single peer... Carla Bley. Both women are direct descendants of Duke Ellington and the spiritual children of Hector Berlioz. They are not masters of a single instrument, but of collections of instruments and their achievement is realized from directing those instruments in a given direction dictated by their composition and arrangement...just like Ellington. Their compositions are often intricate and expansive, conceived with precision and performed with warmth and organic intelligence. Schneider's ...