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

Anna Webber's Percussive Mechanics: Refraction

$Read "Refraction" reviewed by Glenn Astarita$

by Glenn Astarita
June 3, 2015

Percussive Mechanics seems to be a fitting moniker for New York City- based saxophonist, composer Anna Webber's band, since the core building blocks of her intricately fabricated compositions are huddled within knotty flows and odd-metered rhythms. She doesn't operate within a narrow modus operandi, as each piece poses variable persuasions. A rising star in the avant-jazz community, Webber's group-centric focus and compositional acumen radiates here on her second album for Pirouet Records. Featuring a horde of changeable pulses and atmospherics, ...

Live Review

John Tendy Quartet at Phoenix Musicians Hall

by Patricia Myers
June 3, 2015

John Tendy Quartet Phoenix Musicians Hall Phoenix, Arizona Nay 16, 2015 Once again, New York City tenor saxophonist John Tendy brought his energy and style to the stage of the Musicians Hall in Phoenix, performing with Phoenix pianist Armand Boatman and acoustic bassist Jack Radavich, plus Los Angeles drummer Dick Weller. The repertoire was audience-friendly, from “Work Song" and “Sweet Georgia Brown" to “Tea for Two" and “Under Paris Skies." The quartet's synergy ...

Album Review

Dafnis Prieto Sextet: Triangles and Circles

Read "Triangles and Circles" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
June 3, 2015

The thing that sets Latin jazz apart from other forms of jazz is that it's fundamentally a music for dance. The artists who create this music are expected to move gracefully back and forth between the worlds of jazz and salsa, sometimes in a single tune. Though it's overtly intended to get our bodies moving, Latin music richly deserves our respect. No one's crying “sellout" when the dance floor fills. Always rhythmically sophisticated, full of unexpected syncopations and crowd-pleasing acrobatics, ...

Album Review

Greg Nagy: Stranded

Read "Stranded" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 3, 2015

First, of course, is the voice. Tonally-even voices are boring. That explains the appeal of voices like Louis Armstrong's (pitch-perfect gravel in a coffee can); Richard Manuel's (pleading voice of a dying man); Levon Helm's (Scotch-Irish Delta dirt) and Neil Young's (dry ice on the range). Greg Nagy has a voice like that. It is beautifully shaped out of Detroit grit, tobacco, and haze. Nagy's voice is informed equally by every Motown act he heard in his 1960's youth as ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields

Read "The Thompson Fields" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 2, 2015

There's a wealth of information to be found inside the beautiful packaging that accompanies this release, but a brief Theodore Roosevelt quote may be the most telling piece of text to be found there. It reads: “There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind." That really says it all about this artist and her work, for there is nobody more capable of ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Laid-Back Jazz Guitar: Kenny Burrell and Grant Green

by Marc Davis
June 2, 2015

When I'm in the mood for jazz guitar, I have two go-to albums: Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue and Grant Green's Idle Moments. It always surprises me. Growing up in the 1960s and '70s, I was a big fan of hard and fast rock guitars. Who wasn't? Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend. The Clash. The Pretenders. Joan Jett. Prince. Chuck Berry and George Harrison. It's got a backbeat you can't lose it. So when ...

Album Review

Ivo Neame: Strata

by Roger Farbey
June 2, 2015

Taking a busman's holiday from his work with the award-winning Phronesis and the Kairos 4Tet, Strata is Ivo Neame's fourth innovative album released under his own name. Strident piano chords introduce “Personality Clash" where, following the opening ensemble theme and a piano solo combining both angularity and warmth,Jim Hart gives a masterclass in frenetic vibraphone soloing. Opening with two repeated piano notes, oscillating between C and F, synth-laden effects embellish the quietly fluid title track, underpinned by a ...

Album Review

The Rodriguez Brothers: Impromptu

Read "Impromptu" reviewed by Andrew Luhn

by Andrew Luhn
June 2, 2015

Those of us who have siblings know the special bond that brothers and sisters share. From being able to quote the same movies, to sharing memories of childhood and growing up, it's hard to deny that siblings have a unique connection. It should come as no surprise then, that this unique connection gives siblings a certain advantage when playing music together, especially music as intimate and conversational as jazz. Indeed, there is a rich history of brothers collaborating in jazz; ...

Album Review

Nuno Costa: Detox

by Mark Sullivan
June 2, 2015

Portuguese guitarist Nuno Costa is heavily involved in music for film--his Berklee College of Music major was Film Scoring--so it's not surprising that his music often has a cinematic quality. This includes dramatic episodic compositional structures as well as programmatic song titles. Detox is his third album, following (...) -Reticências entre Parênteses (2009) and All Must Go (2012). The opener “Hum...?" contains the most electronic sounds on the album (courtesy of guitar effects), which contrasts with the mostly ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

June 2015

by Mr. P.C.
June 1, 2015

Dear Mr. P.C.: Is there a correlation between the better a person can play an accordion and the lower the economic scale he is in? Do skinny people ever play the tuba? I'll hang up and listen. --Kenneth Heard Dear Kenneth: I haven't heard the term “economic scale" before, but I assume it's some kind of scale with very few notes. The law of supply and demand tells us that each of ...