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

Danielle Reich: While We Were Dancing

Read "While We Were Dancing" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
May 26, 2015

The Austin Texas satellite of the Houston Jazz Mafia, vocalist Danielle Reich, follows her debut recording This Year's Kisses (Self Produced, 2011) with a stripped-down recital right out of the heart of the Great American Songbook. Reich pares down her piano-led standard hard bop quintet to a guitar-driven (capably played by Mitch Watkins) trio. “Less is More" cannot be more true than it is here. The present While We were Dancing displays a curiously fresh evolution listening ...

Album Review

Hugo Fernandez: Cosmogram

Read "Cosmogram" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 26, 2015

Mexican-born Hugo Fernandez is a modern jazz guitarist who follows up his well-received debut album Origenes (CDbaby, 2012) with the new modern-styled Cosmogram featuring eight sophisticated original compositions in a generally warm-natured set of light and engaging modern jazz. A graduate of the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston, Fernandez decided to move to Madrid, Spain where he is now based where he draws from an international pool of musicians to perform with and record. Fernandez, who ...

Album Review

Joe McPhee: Solos : The Lost Tapes (1980 – 1981 – 1984)

Read "Solos : The Lost Tapes (1980 – 1981 – 1984)" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 26, 2015

The young cats (players thirty years his junior) know Joe. Players who have immersed themselves in free improvisation, like Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Evans, Martin Kuchen, and Mikołaj Trzaska, learned the possibilities of creating a new music from, not thin air, but from listening. They model their approach after Joe McPhee. Born in 1939, he has been a musician's musician since his experiments in solo performance in the 1970s. For years, copies of his infamous Tenor (Hat ...

Interview

Dave Douglas: There's Wisdom Everywhere in the Universe

by Dave Wayne
May 25, 2015

We're republishing this June 2013 in celebration of the 10 year anniversary of Dave Douglas's Greenleaf Music record label. When All About Jazz last spoke with trumpeter, multi-bandleader, teacher, composer, marathon runner, podcaster, and record label head honcho Dave Douglas in November, 2011, he was in the Ukraine on the last leg of a tour with the French accordionist Richard Galliano. We spoke about his newest musical project, Sound Prints, a quintet with saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer ...

Album Review

Laurent Coq / Walter Smith III: The LaFayette Suite

Read "The LaFayette Suite" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
May 25, 2015

In The LaFayette Suite, two exceptional musicians--French pianist Laurent Coq and American saxophonist Walter Smith III--continue the spirit of collaboration which interestingly enough began around 1777 between French nobleman / military officer Marquis de Lafayette and President George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In a suite funded by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the French American Jazz Exchange program, the project's historical inspiration brings to life the adventures of LaFayette, an aristocrat, decorated soldier, and ardent abolitionist whose ...

Album Review

Angelo Santelli: Angelo Santelli

Read "Angelo Santelli" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
May 25, 2015

Floridian Angelo Santelli's debut eponymous recording is a richly mixed bag. An accomplished slide guitarist with associations within the Allman Brothers Band family, Santelli might be taken for granted as a jam-band blues knock off. This is before a first listen something else altogether. On nine disparate original compositions, Santelli reveals a much broader and deeper vision for his music. In fact, the most jam-band song is the opening “Mr. Road Man" on which Santelli reveals is acoustic and electric ...

Album Review

Nuno Costa: Detox

by Edward Blanco
May 25, 2015

Young Lisbon-based, Portuguese guitarist Nuno Costa, delivers his third album as leader with the airy and very modern-like Detox boasting seven intricate originals performed by an all-European crew in a sextet format. This is not your typical straight-ahead material having discernable melodies and rhythms of the bebop or other traditional jazz nature. Costa designs compositions that are provocative and intelligent, leaning towards the fusion or edgy modern jazz style with a bit of the free-style flavor in the mix.

Album Review

Fred Lonberg-Holm/Ken Vandermark: Resistance

Read "Resistance" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 25, 2015

When you consider all the musicians that have recorded duos with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, it sounds kind of like the SPAM Monty Python sketch comedy piece. “Yes, I'll have some Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark." What, you don't want Fred Lonberg-Holm and Axel Dörner, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Mats Gustafsson, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Peter Brotzmann, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Paal Nilssen-Love, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Frode Gjerstad or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Nick Stephans, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and David Stackenäs, ...

Talking 2 Musicians

Oteil Burbridge

by Alan Bryson
May 24, 2015

Oteil Burbridge's name has come up often during my interviews, and it was a treat to finally speak with him. He is one of the most respected musicians on the Southern music scene, probably best known as the Grammy Award-winning bassist of the Allman Brothers Band--a position he held for 17 years until the band's recent retirement. His roots in the Southern scene go deep, he is also an original member the Aquarium Rescue Unit, a band with a cult ...

Album Review

Interactivo: Que Lindo Es El Amor

Read "Que Lindo Es El Amor" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
May 24, 2015

With all the hoopla surrounding the lifting of the ridiculous Cuban embargo, some might think that the Cuban people, especially musicians, are sitting around waiting for this to happen. Well, think again. Though many of the premier musicians have gone into exile for a myriad of reasons, those who remain on the island are continuing to produce novel and exuberant music. A case in point is the band Interactivo, which might be better entitled a free-form collective of experimental concepts. ...