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

The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Cash And Carry

Read "Cash And Carry" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 9, 2015

Besides his regular duo performances with fellow Chicagoans drummer Tim Daisy or Frank Rosaly, The Rempis Percussion Quartet is saxophonist Dave Rempis' longest standing active group. To mark their tenth anniversary in 2014, they met at Chicago's Hungry Brain and recorded two lengthy pieces of music.Success for each of these players has limited their time together. While Rempis, Daisy and Rosaly all hail from the Windy City, Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten lives in Austin, Texas, and is ...

Album Review

Tim Gill & the Tim Gill All-Stars: Small Batch Bourbon

Read "Small Batch Bourbon" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
June 9, 2015

The second album from trumpeter, vocalist and big band leader Tim Gill & the Tim Gill All-Stars, Small Batch Bourbon features spirited arrangements of fifteen tunes from the American Songbook, the pop idiom and other classic standards in showcasing good old-fashioned straight ahead, traditional big band music at its best. One thing is for sure, the swinging music on this recording was produced having one fun-filled frolicking good time with some pieces highlighted by some shouting and comedic interchange between ...

Album Review

Benny Lackner Trio: Siskiyou

Read "Siskiyou" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 9, 2015

The photo on the main page of Benny Lackner's website shows the pianist with one hand on an acoustic piano, the other plying the keys of a laptop computer. That's where his muse has taken him-into a very contemporary electro/acoustic piano trio mix with drummer Matthieu Chazarec and bassist Jerome Regard. Siskiyou is Lackner's fifth trio outing, and his second with this particular line-up, after 2012's Cachuma (BMH Productions). It is his best and most focused outing. The ...

Interview

Steve Gadd: Consummate Drummer

by R.J. DeLuke
June 8, 2015

It might be easier to list who drummer Steve Gadd hasn't played with since he got a pair of drum sticks at the age of three at his home near Rochester, NY, right up to the age of 70, where this year his tour of duty includes Eric Clapton, James Taylor and his own band. Gadd is one of the great maintainers of the groove and one who can also play his ass off with jazz musicians like Chick Corea, ...

Album Review

George Crowley: Can Of Worms

Read "Can Of Worms" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 8, 2015

A tin full of slimy, wriggly, things bursts open, scaring the oddly mismatched young couple. It's not your usual jazz album cover art, but it suits the title of the second album from young UK saxophonist George Crowley--Can Of Worms--and Crowley carries on the motif with further creepy-crawlies on the inside of the sleeve. Not that such visuals give too much away about the music--Crowley keeps that as a (pleasant) surprise. Crowley's band (which also seems to be ...

Live Review

John Zoltek Stirs Up Jazz Fusion Storm in Montana

by Mark Holston
June 8, 2015

The John Zoltek Quartet O'Shaughnessey Center Jazz Night with the Maestro Whitefish, Montana May 16, 2015 Watching guitarist John Zoltek bound ecstatically around the stage like one of his rock guitar heroes from the '70s, it was perhaps difficult for some in the audience of about 200 to reconcile that only two weeks earlier, his other, dark-side- of-the-moon music persona had commanded a local stage in a radically different fashion. That's when the 57-year ...

Album Review

Sam Trapchak: Land Grab

Read "Land Grab" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
June 8, 2015

Sam Trapchak's debut as a leader, Lollipopocalypse (Raw Toast Records, 2011) highlighted a double-bassist with formidable abilities and forward thinking music performed by an exceptional crew of like-minded musicians. Land Grab furthers his exploits of jazz off-the-beaten-path. This time around, the music delves into freer and more adventurous designs with plenty of room for the band to explore Trapchak's left-of-center arrangements. Tom Chang's gnarly electric guitar brings that jazz/rock edge whereas saxophonist Greg Ward's fluid alto brings ...

Album Review

Hildegard: Hildegard

Read "Hildegard" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 8, 2015

If audio releases were ships following one another and I was standing on the deck of Sasha Masakowski's debut recording, Wishes (Hypersoul, 2011), I don't think I could have seen as far away as needed to spy her follow-up Hildegard. Certainly not without a telescope. Like Wishes which Masakowski made with her ensemble, the Musical Playground, the artist inaugurates a new ensemble, Hildegard. The ensemble name is potent with meaning to the singer, whose middle name is Hildegard, and that ...

Jazz Near Me

Jazz Cruising: A Recipe For Joy

by Gloria Krolak
June 8, 2015

Blend well: One mid-sized cruise ship with crew 100 or more jazz legends, go-to guys and young lions About 2,000 diverse jazz fans Assorted performance venues, about half a dozen One big band A small army of piano tuners Ports of call (optional) Top with musician interviews and jam sessions Best enjoyed hot Destinations hardly mattered on the annual Jazz Cruise hosted by Entertainment Cruise Productions this past January. In ...

Album Review

Last Exit: Iron Path

Read "Iron Path" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 8, 2015

In saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's interview memoir We Thought We Could Change The World (Wolke Verlag Hofheim, 2014) he spoke about meeting Sonny Sharrock in Berlin 1969, when the guitarist was working for Herbie Mann. Brotzmann never forgot the meeting, and when bassist Bill Laswell conceived the idea of Last Exit in the mid-1980s, Sharrock was on the wish list. So, too, was Ronald Shannon Jackson, the former drummer for Albert Ayler in the 1960s, he “had some kind of voodoo," ...