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

Satoko Fujii Tobira: Yamiyo Ni Karasu

Read "Yamiyo Ni Karasu" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 17, 2015

Pianist Satoko Fujii, based now in Berlin, makes uniquely tumultuous music, intersecting a rolling and tumbling near chaos with moments of pastoral beauty and fierce, pounding grooves. Ever restless, she forms new groups filled with fearless musicians with always interesting results. She debuted her Satoko Fujii New Trio in 2013 with Spring Storm, (Libra Records), and now adds to that stew the provocative spice of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, to make Satoko Fujii Tobira. Yamiyo Ni Karasu is the very successful ...

Album Review

John Yao and His 17-Piece Instrument: Flip-Flop

Read "Flip-Flop" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 17, 2015

Music aside, you have to love the name of this band: John Yao and His 17-Piece Instrument. Now there's confidence with a capital C! Yao, a New York City-based trombonist who arrived there from his native Chicago more than a decade ago, has more recently turned his hand to composing and arranging. Yao writes with the group dynamic in mind, one result of which is Flip-Flop, an adventurous big-band debut on which Yao's all-star “Instrument" performs his elaborate charts with ...

Album Review

Michael Kocour: Wherever You Go, There You Are

Read "Wherever You Go, There You Are" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 17, 2015

Solo piano recitals have a refreshing quality about them. The instrument's and by proxy, the performer's, thoughts are undiluted and benefit from the lack of competition with other voices. Pianist, composer, and educator Michael Kocour offers a collection of standards and originals that provide a case-in-point. In an even ten selections, Kocour carves a collection of finely crafted pieces, each with an individual musical personality and expression. Starting with Dizzy Gillespie's tender “Con Alma," Kocour shapes an ...

Album Review

Laura Dickinson: One for My Baby: To Frank Sinatra with Love

Read "One for My Baby: To Frank Sinatra with Love" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
June 17, 2015

Paying homage to the Chairman of the Board is never quite an easy thing to do, but vocalist Laura Dickinson takes on this challenge and delivers one of the best tributes to the crooner on her astonishing debut album One for My Baby, To Frank Sinatra with Love. Influenced by the sound early on in her life as a teenager and falling in love with Sinatra every time her parents played his music, the native Southern California songstress vowed to ...

Album Review

Daniel Cacija: Lifeline

Read "Lifeline" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 16, 2015

Vocalist Daniel Čačija is a snappy, if somewhat retro, dresser--the cover images on Lifeline show him sporting, variously, a dinner suit and a cravat. A quick glance at the track list reveals jazz standards such as “Detour Ahead," “Lush Life" and “Exactly Like You." The band is the classic piano trio, with added trumpet. It looks pretty much like a routine, if stylish, vocal jazz album... But appearances can deceive. On Lifeline, in the company of some excellent musicians, Čačija ...

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Live Review

Tiffany Austin at SFJAZZ

by Walter Atkins
June 16, 2015

Tiffany Austin SFJAZZ, Joe Henderson Lab CD Release Party-Nothing But Soul (Con Alma Music) San Francisco CA June 12, 2015 Vocalist Tiffany Austin and her skilled band took the stage at SFJAZZ's Joe Henderson Lab to celebrate her debut Nothing But Soul (Con Alma Music). With an introduction by tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley, Austin walked out in a beaded, sleeveless full-length gown. The ivory toned, form-fitting dress created a classic look for her album ...

Album Review

Billy Jenkins: Death, Ritual & Resonation: Eight Improvised Studies On Low Strung Guitar

Read "Death, Ritual & Resonation: Eight Improvised Studies On Low Strung Guitar" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
June 16, 2015

Having semi-retired from the music business in 2008 in favour of conducting Humanist (non-religious) funerals, Billy Jenkins returned to recording in 2014, releasing the highly acclaimed solo album Semi-Detached Suburban Home (Music For Low Strung Guitar). So its follow-up Death, Ritual & Resonation: Eight improvised studies on low strung guitar follows similar lines and compared to the considerably longer previous album is a mere extended play, weighing in at just under twenty minutes. However, as someone probably once said, quantity ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin: Ichigo Ichie

Read "Ichigo Ichie" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 16, 2015

I'm going to propose a computer “app" called Big Band World Domination. With this software players would be able to go forward and backward in time to have big bands compete against each other. Spin back to the territory bands of the 1920s, 30s, all the way to the 1960s, and then up to today. We could face off Walter Page's Blue Devils against Jimmie Lunceford's Orchestra, or match Count Basie's band against the Lincoln City Jazz Orchestra. With certainty, ...

Album Review

Bryan Bowman: Like Minds

Read "Like Minds" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
June 16, 2015

A fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene for some time, drummer and composer Bryan Bowman makes his recording debut as leader on Like Minds, a well-crafted eleven-piece musical statement of original contemporary jazz containing a touch of bop, blues and some burning accessible material delivered with a lot of spirit. Hailing from a family of musicians--where father Robert is a classical pianist and Professor Emeritus at Chico State University and mom plays the cello when not practicing ...

Live Review

Tribute to Carla Bley: Mandala Octet and Mandala Orchestra

by Harry S. Pariser
June 16, 2015

Mandala Octet and Mandala Orchestra SFJAZZ San Francisco, CA June 5, 2015 Steve McQuarry had an epiphany last December. While on the phone with Karen Mantler, daughter of eminent avant-garde jazz composer Carla Bley, McQuarry realized that he would like to play some of her tunes onstage, and Mantler offered to send him the charts. A package containing the charts duly arrived, and McQuarry went about assembling a big band. The results ...