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

Oliver Lake / William Parker: To Roy

by John Sharpe
May 22, 2015

Bassist William Parker has formed productive liaisons with some wonderfully expressive alto saxophone players in the past--Rob Brown and Jemeel Moondoc both spring to mind. But To Roy represents his first time on record with Oliver Lake, best known as a third of Trio 3 and a quarter of the World Saxophone Quartet. They recorded their duo album during the month of dedicatee trumpeter Roy Campbell's unexpected passing at age 61 in January 2014. Each brings a sheaf of compositions ...

Album Review

Manuel Valera Trio: Live at Firehouse 12

Read "Live at Firehouse 12" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 22, 2015

Leader of the Latin jazz-styled group New Cuban Express, New York-based, Cuban-born pianist Manuel Valera, unveils his 10th album as leader and his first recording in a live setting with the untypically non-Latin Live at Firehouse 12, his first trio format release in six years. This, very excellent trio features jazz luminaries Hans Glawischnig on bass and veteran EJ Strickland on the drums--all together forming one solid power threesome. Recorded at the renowned New Haven, CT club, Firehouse 12, a ...

Album Review

The Remote Viewers: Pitfall

Read "Pitfall" reviewed by Alex Franquelli

by Alex Franquelli
May 22, 2015

I love a bit of Remote Viewers in the evening. If it's not in the scarcely busy second to last northbound Victoria Line carriage, I follow their urban drifts while strolling, hands in my pockets, on a straight line: the shortest trajectory from A to home. The things you see while listening to this London-based septet are the stuff you wouldn't notice otherwise. Pitfall closes a circle, one that started back in 2012 when the marvellous City of Nets came ...

Extended Analysis

Love Is A Pendulum

by John Kelman
May 22, 2015

Since signing with Motėma Music a couple years back, vibraphonist Joe Locke has been releasing some of the best and most diverse music in a career now entering its fourth decade. From the near-fusion energy of 2012's Signing--the long overdue studio followup to the Joe Locke / Geoffrey Keezer group's incendiary Live in Seattle (Origin, 2006)--to the expansive beauty of his 2013 quartet collaboration with Lincoln, Nebraska's Symphony Orchestra on Wish Upon a Star and, just a few months later ...

Album Review

Jeff Beck: Jeff Beck: Live +

Read "Jeff Beck: Live +" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
May 22, 2015

Jeff Beck Live+ is a collection of fourteen tracks recorded in concert during August of 2014 with a pair of new originals from recent studio sessions. It effectively whets the appetite for the new studio record reportedly in the works for some months now even as it stands as a fitting companion piece to the DVD Live in Tokyo (Eagle Vision, 2014). Beck's is a perfectly pragmatic approach to to reinvent the panoply of styles he's traversed since ...

Live Review

Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville 2015, Part 2

by Mike Chamberlain
May 21, 2015

Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada May 16-17, 2015 Part 1 | Part 2 The site of the Pavilion Arthabaska, a chalet on a hill above the town, is a popular spot in Victoriaville (think lookout and make out), not a place that is obvious for avant-garde music, but the room featured some of the best shows of the festival. The sound in the room was impeccable, perfect for ...

Album Review

Charles Lloyd: Wild Man Dance

Read "Wild Man Dance" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 21, 2015

Wonders seem to never cease where Charles Lloyd is concerned. In a career spanning more than half a century, Lloyd's well of creativity has never run dry. He remains peerless when it comes to producing transcendent music. While plenty of musicians tend to slow down as they get older, the opposite seems to be happening with this septuagenarian. In the five years prior to the release of this album, Lloyd delivered Mirror (ECM, 2010), a superbly rendered ...

New York Beat

Vince Giordano at Iguana

by Nick Catalano
May 21, 2015

If you go to Iguana on 54th St. and sit down on a Monday or Tuesday evening to dine on some sensible Mexican food you can also do some time traveling. When the Nighthawks hit at 8:00pm you won't have any trouble imagining that it is 1925 and you are in a speakeasy at the musical height of the Jazz Age. Hot tune after hot tune (some titles you won't recognize even if you're a maven) are performed so flawlessly ...

Album Review

Mikko Innanen with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille: Song For A New Decade

Read "Song For A New Decade" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
May 21, 2015

Finnish saxophonist Mikko Innanen has hit upon a sure fire winner with his accompanists on Song For A New Decade. He has enlisted the services of a world class rhythm section in the person of bassist William Parker and drummer Andrew Cyrille, a combination which might show anyone in a good light. But Innanen possesses personality enough to thrive in their company and avoids the common pitfall of being overly reverent. In a sumptuous two disc package, well up to ...

Extended Analysis

-Isq: Too

by Phil Barnes
May 21, 2015

Vocal jazz gets a justifiably hard time these days--endless rehashes of “the Great American Songbook" or other Fifties showtunes, with high production values but little originality and even less to say. Enough to make any self-respecting reviewer power down their laptop you might think, but then out of the blue come gems like this from the improbably monikered -isq. -isq are a quartet who draw inspiration from jazz, taking it as their starting point but allowing other influences ...