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

Brian Charette: Alphabet City

Read "Alphabet City" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 21, 2015

Alphabet City is organist Brian Charette's ninth album, titled for the part of Manhattan where he lives (in the building which featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, apparently). He's alongside guitarist Will Bernard and drummer Rudy Royston, both familiar names on numerous other releases for Posi-tone Records: a standard, though high quality, organ trio, but the leader's compositions give it a far-from-standard repertoire.The 12 tunes, all originals, are all pretty short, pretty snappy and, in ...

Interview

Joanna Pascale: To Tell a Story in Song

by Victor L. Schermer
May 20, 2015

Among jazz vocalists, there are two main categories: those who belt out a tune with flourish, ornamentation, punctuation, and improvising known as “scat." Ella Fitzgerald is the prime representative of that approach. Then there are those who omit the superfluous, carefully crafting every word and note, bringing out the underlying emotions. Think of Billie Holiday. Joanna Pascale is a vocalist who has honed the latter approach into a way of literally being with the song in an I-Thou relationship. An ...

Live Review

Helen Sung at the Howard Brubeck Theatre

by Jim Trageser
May 20, 2015

Helen SungHoward Brubeck Theatre, Palomar Community College Steinway Series San Marcos, CA May 17, 2015 Helen Sung closed out Palomar College's first annual Steinway Series in the newly remodeled Howard Brubeck Theatre with a stunning display of solo jazz piano that not only provided a resounding close to the new musical series in northern San Diego County, but showed why Sung is among the most highly regarded young jazz pianists. (Sung's performance followed those ...

972

Interview

Bruce Lundvall, CEO Of Blue Note Records

by Victor L. Schermer
May 20, 2015

This interview was originally conducted in May 2003. When we learned of the U.S. release of Richard Cook's Blue Note Records: the Biography , and decided to do the book review and to interview Mr. Cook, we thought it would also be timely and interesting to get the perspective of the current CEO of the label, Bruce Lundvall. Bruce was a fledgling jazz fan when Blue Note came on the scene, loved Blue Note from the beginning, and ...

Album Review

Keith Jarrett: Keith Jarrett: Creation

Read "Keith Jarrett: Creation" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
May 20, 2015

With the simultaneous release of his latest classical album Barber/ Bartók /Jarrett, the forty-plus year ECM mainstay, Keith Jarrett issues an unusually conceived solo piano compilation, Creation. During his first twenty years of solo releases on Manfred Eicher's iconic label--beginning with Facing You (1971)--Jarrett's solo output had been prodigious and has secured his place as the best and most creative pianist/composer of the age. While the releases kept coming, health problems in the 90s curtailed his output of live solo ...

Album Review

Ran Blake: Ghost Tones: Portraits of George Russell

Read "Ghost Tones: Portraits of George Russell" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 20, 2015

At eighty years of age, pianist Ran Blake has shaped an impressive and multifaceted legacy: four decades of mentoring students at the New England Conservatory; helping shape a new genre of music, Third Stream, the marriage of the jazz and classical worlds; his teaming with the lady vocalists--Jeanne Lee, Christine Correa, Sara Serpa, Dominque Eade; numerous solo piano recordings, and a handful-plus of tribute sets, honoring icons like Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn. Ghost Tones ...

Album Review

Giancarlo Tossani Synapser + Alessi: Newswok

by Dave Wayne
May 20, 2015

Wonders never cease. When Newswok first arrived in the mail, my first question was not “What the hell does 'Newswok' mean?" It was “Who is Giancarlo Tossani, and why is Ralph Alessi playing with him?" I was also alarmed that I had never heard of the record label, Auand Records, before. This despite the fact that the Auand catalog lists approximately 50 releases featuring dates led (or co-led) by the likes of Bill Frisell, Cuong Vu, David Binney, Steve Swallow, ...

Album Review

Joe Locke: Love Is A Pendulum

Read "Love Is A Pendulum" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
May 19, 2015

Since the late '80s vibraphonist Joe Locke, an artist who defies categorization, has performed and recorded with a diverse array of musicians, including Eddie Henderson, Cecil Taylor, and The Beastie Boys. Love Is A Pendulum, his fourth release on the Harlem-based Motema label, features some of Locke's most compelling music to date, the centerpiece of which is a five movement suite based on a poem by musician and writer Barbara Sfraga. Culled from Sfraga's Subway Series, Locke explains ...

Live Review

Jazz and Theatre: A Review of “Miles & Coltrane: Blue”

by K. Shackelford
May 19, 2015

When trying to understand the rise and phenomenon of jazz music in the 1950's and 1960's, understanding the life of the jazz musician is equally important. Many of their stories illuminated heroic musical genius birthed out of pain, hope, and a charged political ethos. The play Miles & Coltrane: Blue delivered a snapshot of this experience through the lens of jazz icons Miles Davis and John Coltrane. It was recently performed at The International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North ...

Live Review

Art of Cool Jazz Festival: Gretchen Parlato and Alan Hampton

by K. Shackelford
May 19, 2015

Art of Cool Jazz Festival Gretchen Parlato and Alan Hampton PSI Theater Durham, NC April 25, 2015 It was a cool, whistful, and breezy Saturday evening. Sounds of improvisation and ingenuity seeped out of the edifices of multiple, cozy and packed venues---and into the air of the night. It was the final night of The Art of Cool Jazz Festival and one of several closing acts featured Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato and ...