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

Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: Swing Zing!

Read "Swing Zing!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 6, 2015

When a press release accompanying a new album conveys more information than is found on the album itself, the supposition must be that it was recorded hurriedly with an eye toward a similarly expeditious release. Swing Zing! pairs the estimable guitarists Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo, who've been working together for more than five years, with half a dozen guests who are identified on the album (and in the press release) by name but not by instrument. Three of them--Bucky ...

Album Review

Ivo Perelman/Whit Dickey: Tenorhood

Read "Tenorhood" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 6, 2015

For this meditation session, we ask you not to think about the legends of the tenor saxophone. Just listen to the interplay between Ivo Perelman and drummer Whit Dickey. Press play, and ignore the track titles dedicated to Hank Mobley, Ben Webster, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Sonny Rollins. Why? Because, the saxophonist did just that when he created Tenorhood, a totally improvised collection of pieces the pair recorded in 2014. The Brazilian-born, New York resident has released ...

Extended Analysis

Masabumi Kikuchi / Ben Street / Thomas Morgan / Kresten Osgood

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 6, 2015

The German poet, philosopher and literary critic Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) had an affinity for the fragment as an art form and in his Athenaeumsfragment 206, he wrote about it, saying that: “[a] fragment, like a small work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog." Like a true Romantic poet, Schlegel saw the unique potential of the fragment as something that could point ...

Extended Analysis

zBug: Splitting Glass / Twilight Sunrise

by Tyran Grillo
June 5, 2015

The sacred geometry of zBug is no small thing. So enormous, in fact, that it's invisible. It's in service of just such a contradiction--which really isn't one--that the band pushes sound-walls to the very edges of the third dimension. The brainchild of David Leikam, zBug has a piecemeal history. While getting his MFA in the composer-performer program at CalArts, where he studied under the legendary Wadada Leo Smith, Leikam met drummer Zachary Morris, with whom an early incarnation of the ...

Album Review

Jerry Granelli: What I Hear Now

Read "What I Hear Now" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 5, 2015

This is what master drummer Jerry Granelli hears now: a wide variety of left-of-center music that circumvents strict harmonic corralling, thanks to the absence of guitar or piano, and makes good use of multiple horns. Of course, if you catch Granelli a few months down the road, he might hear something completely different. Over the past half a century, Jerry Granelli has been making his mark by being his own man. Who else but a staunch individualist ...

Album Review

Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra: Galactic Parables: Volume 1

Read "Galactic Parables: Volume 1" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
June 5, 2015

In the past twelve-month period, composer, electronic artist and cornet virtuoso Rob Mazurek has lead on a half-dozen or so different releases. For the most part, each has featured different line ups and formations from solo efforts to large ensembles and each has garnered enough superlatives to tax the thesaurus. And yet again, Mazurek has raised the bar with his most impressive, far reaching and unique collection with the astounding Galactic Parables: Volume 1. Backed by the revolving cohort that ...

Album Review

Anthony Braxton: Trio and Duet

Read "Trio and Duet" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 5, 2015

Multi reed player and composer Anthony Braxton has been called a genius by some and for very good reason. He is one of the most restlessly innovative and intelligently idiosyncratic contemporary musicians. He seamlessly erases the boundaries between the composed and the improvised and his works brim equally with fresh and progressive ideas as well as concepts rooted in both the modern classical and the early free jazz traditions.Delmark Records has reissued on CD his Trio and Duet ...

Profile

A Modern Day Appreciation of the Allman Brothers Band

by Doug Collette
June 5, 2015

Any music lover who's come to relish the Allman Brothers Band, particularly in the last ten to fifteen years, must be feeling more than a little melancholy as 2015 evolves. And if following the iconic Southern rock band has become a cyclical rite of passage all its own, that poignant sensation is probably not going to wane as the seasons come and go: in years (not so recently) past, before the glow of a new year by the calendar had ...

Album Review

Ron Thompson: Son of Boogie Woogie

Read "Son of Boogie Woogie" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
June 5, 2015

The Little Village Foundation is a non-profit record label started up under the direction of keyboardist Jim Pugh, who recently retired after twenty-five years with Robert Cray. The mission of this organization is to seek and record obscure yet prodigious musicians who have not received proper recognition and respect. Oakland guitarist Ron Thompson certainly falls into this category, and Son of Boogie Woogie hopes to give him nudge into the much deserved spotlight. Ron Thompson is the rare ...

Album Review

Jeff Beck: Jeff Beck Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott's - Deluxe Edition

Read "Jeff Beck Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott's - Deluxe Edition" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
June 5, 2015

The two CD 'Deluxe Edition' of Jeff Beck Performing This Week Live at Ronnie Scott's is a title to be treasured even though it doesn't contain any unreleased content from the previously issued CD and DVD/Blu-Ray pieces. It's a pragmatic musiclover's delight in that it collects within one jewel case all the performances stretched over those configurations, but more importantly, it documents the iconoclastic British guitarist not just with one of the most distinctive ensembles he's ever worked with, but ...