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

Eddie Henderson: Collective Portrait

Read "Collective Portrait" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
April 22, 2015

One of the nice surprises of 2014 was the formation of the Smoke Sessions label. Their first several issues were actual performances recorded at the club. However, they seemed to have focused their efforts lately on live studio sessions cut at the wonderful Sear Sound studio in New York. The overall sound of these releases continues to be impressive, with an analog smoothness and clarity that is akin to a vintage Prestige or Blue Note. For his Smoke ...

Album Review

Nate Radley: Morphoses

Read "Morphoses" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
April 22, 2015

Jazz keeps taking twists and turns, and the joy of hearing something completely new can instead turn into surprise. For Morphoses, guitarist Nate Radley has brought together his band mates from Bad Touch-- saxophonist Loren Stillman and drummer Ted Poor, along with bassist Matt Pavolka to produce an album of Americana filtered through a jazz mindset. The result is enjoyably enticing, with a sense of depth and intensity produced more through its emotional content rather than the intellect. ...

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Album Review

Ray Obiedo: There Goes That

Read "There Goes That" reviewed by Walter Atkins

by Walter Atkins
April 22, 2015

Noted guitarist Ray Obiedo's There Goes That (Rhythmus Records) is his first album since 1999's Modern World (Domo Records). Over his 4 decades plus career, Obeido has worked with an impressive Who's Who List of musicians including: Herbie Hancock, Bobbi Humphrey, George Duke, The Whispers, Brenda Russell, Pete Escovedo, Grover Washington, Jr., The Rippingtons and Lou Rawls; along with San Francisco Bay Area favorites Tower of Power and Grammy winner Pacific Mambo Orchestra. Band leader Obiedo has traveled ...

Album Review

The Pitch: Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam)

Read "Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam)" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 22, 2015

Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam) is an appropriate moniker for these two works performed live at an Amsterdam venue by the core Berlin-based quartet The Pitch, with assistance from a combination of six woodwinds and strings performers. With inadvertent semblances to minimalist composer Morton Feldman, the music is largely about ever-so-subtle shifts in sound design and pitch. As a whole, the program is difficult to pigeonhole. Yet the trancelike and undulating attributes tender curiously interesting timbres, abetted by Boris Baltschun's reverberating electric ...

Live Review

Cape Town International Jazz Festival 2015

by Mark Sullivan
April 21, 2015

Cape Town International Jazz Festival Cape Town International Convention Centre Cape Town, South Africa March 27 & 28, 2015 The Cape Town International Jazz Festival takes place over two jam-packed nights, on five simultaneous stages. Now in its sixteenth year, it also includes a number of ancillary events during festival week: workshops, a photo exhibition, master classes, and an outdoor free concert in Greenmarket Square (on Wednesday night). The free concert offers a taste of ...

Extended Analysis

Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth by Day

by C. Michael Bailey
April 21, 2015

Cassandra Wilson is the most important jazz vocalist of the past thirty years. There. I said it. I meant it. It is out in the open (not that this was any secret). After an impressive jazz debut with Point of View (JMT, 1985), Wilson would release seven more well- received, if not underrated, recordings before she changed the entire jazz vocals setting with Blue Light 'til Dawn (Blue Note, 1993). Wilson's ...

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Building a Jazz Library

Vocal Jazz: 1917-1950

by Mathew Bahl
April 21, 2015

There have been as many variations on the definition of vocal jazz as there have been people with opinions. Over the years, the consensus within the jazz community has shifted frequently as critics and fans have wrestled with the often-competing imperatives of improvisation and interpretation. For some people, vocal jazz should be exactly that -voices improvising solos in the manner of jazz instrumentalists. For others, that view disregards a singer's unique relationship to lyrics. At the turn of ...

Album Review

José James: Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday

Read "Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
April 21, 2015

There are many reasons why singer Billie Holiday is so admired--her captivating beauty, crafted phrasing, and the singular way she imbued emotion through each note. Yet the jazz legend known as “Lady Day" not only sung the blues, she lived it. In a storied life filled with heartaches, hardships and personal demons that included a long struggle with substance abuse, she eloquently articulated and expressed many of those sentiments in albums such as Lady Sings the Blues (1956, Verve) and ...

Album Review

Steve Turre: Spiritman

Read "Spiritman" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
April 21, 2015

There seems to be two schools among the current generation of jazz trombonists. On the one hand you have those who favor the lush and melodic voices of Frank Rosolino, Lawrence Brown, Carl Fontana, and those of a similar ilk. By contrast are the bop inflected approaches of J.J. Johnson and Curtis Fuller. Turre has gone on record that he doesn't much care for those in his peer group that eschew tone for speed and dexterity. As for Turre himself, ...

Album Review

Barney McClure: Show Me!

by Jack Bowers
April 21, 2015

While organist Barney McClure receives top billing on this exhilarating new album, he is happy to share it, for good reason, with the superlative Central Washington University Jazz Band from Ellensburg. As McClure asserts in the liner notes, “I was no more than a lucky rider on the bus." Well, a bit more than that, Barney, as your dynamic Hammond B3 is as pivotal to its auspicious outcome as the band's inspired performance or Phil Kelly's sharp and resourceful charts. ...