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.

Live Review

Rob Mazurek's São Paulo Underground at Jazz Gallery

by Karl Ackermann
April 15, 2015

Rob Mazurek's São Paulo Underground and Black Cube SP Jazz Gallery New York, NY April 11, 2015 The Jazz Gallery, in NYC's Flatiron District, provided an intimate and unassuming setting for Rob Mazurek's São Paulo Underground and Black Cube SP performance on April 11. The SPU trio, featuring Mazurek on cornet, percussion and electronics, Mauricio Takara on drums, electronics and cavaquinho (a small Portuguese guitar instrument) and Guilherme Granado on keyboard, synthesizer ...

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Building a Jazz Library

Bossa Nova

by AAJ Staff
April 15, 2015

In 1959, an unassuming guitarist/vocalist named João Gilberto from the Brazilian state of Bahia started a quiet revolution with his recordings “Chega de Saudade (No More Blues)" and “Desafinado (Off Key)" on the Odeon label. They featured arrangements by a young native of Rio de Janeiro, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Gilberto's whisper-toned, Afro-Indian-influenced Portuguese vocals complemented his unique guitar style, which ingeniously reduced and resyncopated the samba's intricate polyrhythms down to the most essential beats. Jobim expanded Gilberto's harmonies with French ...

Live Review

Eliane Elias at Birdland Jazz Club

by Ernest Barteldes
April 15, 2015

Eliane Elias Birdland Jazz Club New York, NY April 11, 2015 On the last night of her residence at New York City's Birdland Jazz Club, pianist/vocalist Eliane Elias focused on Brazilian music and tunes from Made in Brazil (Concord, 2015), released earlier that week. The set opened with an instrumental take on “Ladeira da Preguiça," a Gilberto Gil composition popularized by Elis Regina in the early 1970s. Elias' take was fast-paced, with flurries of notes ...

Album Review

Roberta Donnay & The Prohibition Mob Band: Bathtub Gin

Read "Bathtub Gin" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 15, 2015

Roberta Donnay is a Jazz Age preservationist, guardian of Depression-era sounds, and extender of traditions, but her music isn't covered with cobwebs or dated in any way. On Bathtub Gin, this singer-composer puts a new coat of paint on the songs of the '20s and '30s, contributes originals sympathetic to the sounds of those times, and conjures thoughts of life during prohibition. Across fifteen tracks, Donnay and her group--the aptly-titled Prohibition Mob Band--deliver snappy statements, sly songs, ...

Album Review

Manden Express: Manden Express

Read "Manden Express" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 15, 2015

The name Manden Express derives from the ancient Manden Empire--better known today as Mali--and its music is an intoxicating fusion of traditional and contemporary West African sounds, Afrobeat and grooving jazz-rock. This EP, its debut release, successfully captures the essence of the Dublin-based septet's thrilling live shows -dance-fests that have made Manden Express a crowd favorite at all manner of Irish music festivals, including Bray Jazz Festival and Down With Jazz. The story really began in 2001 when ...

Album Review

The Greg Foat Group: The Greg Foat Group Live at The Playboy Club, London

Read "The Greg Foat Group Live at The Playboy Club, London" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
April 15, 2015

Compare and contrast the cascade of notes from Greg Foat's electric piano with albums featuring keyboardists such as Dave MacRae or Keith Tippett. This set's opener, Erni Clark's obscure minor classic “By The Grace Of God, I Am" recalls a feeling, intentionally similar, to the heady days of the late 1960s and early 1970s which Foat finds most appealing. The short bridging track “Exodus Interlude" with its famous theme and barely a minute in length leads into “Mr Minor" introduced ...

Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell Trio: Angel City

Read "Angel City" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 15, 2015

Throughout his career Chicago multi instrumentalist and composer Roscoe Mitchell has forensically examined two key polarities. More than most he has focused on the tensions between sound and silence and composition and improvisation. On Angel City, a continuous 55-minute opus recorded over two days in 2012 at Mills College in Oakland where Mitchell is professor of music, the interaction between those opposites defines the new work. Alongside Mitchell, fellow faculty members reedman James Fei and percussionist William Winant prove able ...

Album Review

The Electric Peanut Butter Company: Trans-Atlantic Psych Classics Vol 1

Read "Trans-Atlantic Psych Classics Vol 1" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 15, 2015

Helping to establish the progressive Latin-salsa Grupo Fantastico and Latin funk legends Brownout is apparently not enough for Adrian Quesada, a multi-instrumentalist who specializes in guitars and production. So he teamed up and began working with one of Ubiquity Records' most unique compositional and instrumental wizards, Shawn Lee, who leads the Ping-Pong Orchestra and specializes in keyboards and production. As The Electric Peanut Butter Company, Quesada and Lee spread thick and crunchy collaborative jams all over Trans-Atlantic Psych Classics Vol ...

Live Review

Dave Burrell at Rosenbach Museum

by Victor L. Schermer
April 14, 2015

Dave Burrell's Civil War Concerts Ode to a Prairie Lawyer Rosenbach Museum and Library Philadelphia, PA April 9, 2015 Dave Burrell is an iconic jazz pianist and composer with long time connections to the avant-garde. Ohio born and bred, he started performing in the 1960s and has been going strong ever since, pushing the envelope of jazz expression and piano technique, inspired by his collaborations with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Cliff Jordan and John Gilmore: Blowing in From Chicago – 1957

by Marc Davis
April 14, 2015

Imagine if Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, at the height of their popularity in 1957, invited a couple of sax guys you've never heard of to play with them. The result would be Blowing in From Chicago--a lively, wonderful record firmly in the Blue Note bop tradition. The rhythm section is extremely familiar: Art Blakey on drums, Horace Silver on piano and Curly Russell on bass. It's the same rhythm section that powered the Jazz ...