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

Irek Wojtczak & The Fonda-Stevens Group: Folk Five

Read "Folk Five" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
April 26, 2015

Polish jazz has a long history, and includes many more players than the widely known Tomasz Stanko or Krzysztof Komeda. A deeper, and much earlier influence than American jazz coming to Poland is that of the folk music indigenous to Poland itself. Reedman (saxophones and bass clarinet) Irek Wojtczak, arguably a free player, relates in the liner notes how, in his thirties (when else?), he wanted to reconnect to his musical roots. He found folk violinist Tadeusz Kubiak ...

Live Review

Jeff Beck at the Paramount

by Mike Perciaccante
April 26, 2015

Jeff Beck The Paramount Huntington, NY April 15, 2015 Jeff Beck is rock royalty. He has twice been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame—as a member of the Yardbirds (in 1992) and as a solo performer (in 2009). His career has spanned over 50 years (first appearing on a record in 1964 playing guitar on the Fitz and Startz single “I'm Not Running Away." In 1965, he ...

Interview

Sarah Riedel: Living Up To Expectations

by James Pearse
April 26, 2015

The world of jazz is no stranger to the sound of the Swedish language. Alice Babs and Monica Zetterlund--and more recently, Rigmor Gustafsson--are just a few of the names of jazz vocalists hailing from this cold northern country that have reached the ears of US and UK audiences. Some people believe that spoken Swedish sounds “song-like," melodic even, with high and low tones. Unlike English, Swedish has more than one two types of emphasis for different words, which ...

Album Review

Nilson Matta: EastSideRioDrive

Read "EastSideRioDrive" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 25, 2015

Many a bassist is renowned or applauded for the way they serve as ballast in a band, but what of the bassists who go the other way, providing lift instead of weight? There are precious few of them out there, but Nilson Matta is one one of them. Matta, whether working with the collectively-operated Trio Da Paz, backing cellist Yo-Yo Ma, playing with any number of legendary jazz figures, or working his own projects, tends to do something that few ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Garden 1st Set

Read "Garden 1st Set" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 25, 2015

I dare you to put a Cecil Taylor record on the turntable (or press play on that download) and leave the room. You can't. His energy, mojo, or maybe voodoo is so strong, that your escape is impossible. It's as simple as that.Taylor is a force of nature. An irrepressible pianist, poet, philosopher jazzman. His performances are legendary, and this 1981 concert in Basel Switzerland is a gem. First released by Hat Hut Records (now hatOLOGY) in a ...

Album Review

Federico Britos: Hot Club of the Americas

Read "Hot Club of the Americas" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 25, 2015

Violinist extraordinaire Federico Britos originally from Montevideo, Uruguay and affectionately referred to by his close friends as “Federico the Uruguayan"--state's one of his closest colleagues, Paquito D'Rivera--has always had a particular affinity for the music of Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and the renowned Hot Club of France. Britos pays tribute to the music of that era with one major cultural twist, he designs a unique interpretation of the rhythm-based music with the stylish Latin-flavored Hot Club of the Americas billed ...

Album Review

Sarah Partridge: I Never Thought I’d Be Here

Read "I Never Thought I’d Be Here" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 25, 2015

Boston-born singer Sarah Partridge didn't start out a singer. She started out as an actor (you can see her opposite of Tom Cruise in Risky Business (Warner Brothers, 1983)) who took the Karaoke stage one night and got noticed by the right ears and five recordings later the rest is history. Where her previous recording, Perspective (Self Produced, 2010) was an intimate, piano-voice affair of standards, the present I Never Thought I'd Be Here is a full sextet band reading ...

Album Review

Philip Glass: Glassworks

Read "Glassworks" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
April 25, 2015

In composer Philip Glass' storied career, Glassworks ranks among his best known and most beloved releases. Published at the start of the '80s it also signaled the more refined style characterized by a more refined intensity than the rough dynamic rush of his swirling melodies executed at breakneck speed. The decade before was characterized by long and loud pieces augmented by the bright edged sounds achieved on keyboards that in turn gave that fierce energy for which his early ensembles ...

My Blue Note Obsession

John Coltrane: Blue Train – Blue Note 1577

by Marc Davis
April 25, 2015

John Coltrane was arguably the greatest jazz musician of the 1950s and '60s. Blue Note Records was arguably the greatest jazz label of the same period. And yet they had almost nothing to do with each other. Except for one album--and it's a classic. Blue Train is one of a handful of Coltrane's best-known and best-loved works. It came in 1957, just as Coltrane was making his name with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and it ...

Extended Analysis

Steve Hackett: Wolflight (Extended Edition)

by John Kelman
April 25, 2015

After spending the better part of three years recording, releasing and touring Genesis Revisted 2 (Inside Out, 2012), and not one but two resultant live documents--Genesis Revisited -Live at Hammersmith (Inside Out, 2013) and Genesis Revisited -Live at the Royal Albert Hall (Inside Out, 2014)--it's frankly remarkable that ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett actually found the time to record a new solo album. But with the sweepingly ambitious Wolflight, it's even more so; an album that seamlessly marries a plethora of ...