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

The Jazz Message: Celebrating the Legacy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at The Nash

by Patricia Myers
April 13, 2015

The Jazz Message The Nash Phoenix, Arizona March 29, 2015 The complexity, the power and the musicianship of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers were celebrated by five band alumni in a sextet anchored by drummer Lewis Nash. Performing in two concerts at the Phoenix-born drummer's namesake jazz club were tenor saxophonist-leader Javon Jackson, alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, pianist Benny Green and bassist Peter Washington, with Nash in the Blakey hot-spot.

Album Review

Harry Allen And Friends: For George, Cole And Duke

Read "For George, Cole And Duke" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 13, 2015

There is no greater paragon of tenor saxophonist taste than Harry Allen. While the fickle winds of prevailing styles continue to blow this or that way, Allen stands tall like the mighty oak, unswayed by fad fashions and firmly rooted to the music of the Great American Songbook. On this appealing date, Allen visits the music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Duke Ellington. It's not a novel concept, and Allen has gone here countless times, both ...

Album Review

Decoy with Joe McPhee: Spontaneous Combustion

Read "Spontaneous Combustion" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 13, 2015

In spite of its relatively recent vintage, Oto (Bo' Weavil, 2010), the first encounter between Joe McPhee and British improvising trio Decoy, has quickly become one of the veteran multi-instrumentalist 's most popular recordings. By way of follow up Spontaneous Combustion first released as a LP, but now reissued as a double CD with added tracks, documents the second and third concerts by the band during a two night residency at Cafe Oto in October 2011. It's not too fanciful ...

Album Review

Marco Bolfelli Trio: Streamflow

Read "Streamflow" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
April 13, 2015

The scintillating “Madiba" (Nelson Mandela's Xhosa clan name) opens up this set with a cascade of fluidly chiming harmonics. Developing at a moderate pace, it's a haunting celebration of a uniquely inspiring leader. “70pic" signals that the nearest equivalent to Bolfelli's playing might be that produced by virtuoso Bill Frisell, both chordally and melodically with characteristic interrogatively bending notes that so nearly describe the glissando of a pedal steel guitar. On “Nekar" the trio is joined by guest Klaus Gesing ...

Album Review

Jack DeJohnette: Made in Chicago

Read "Made in Chicago" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 13, 2015

Drummer Jack DeJohnette reunites with his longtime comrades emanating from Chicago's fabled Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), founded by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams in 1965. This live outing recorded at Millennium Park in 2013 was part of the Chicago Jazz Festival and signifies the musicians' inaugural performance as a quintet, paralleling the AACM's 50th anniversary. The album as a whole contains the anticipated sensitivities, nu-jazz compositional characterizations and improvisational ingenuity documented or inferred within the ...

Album Review

Konstrukt and William Parker: Live At NHKM

Read "Live At NHKM" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 13, 2015

Let me propose the notion that American poet Emily Dickinson was a free jazz fan. Sure, you have to look past the fact that she died in 1886, when Buddy Bolden was but nine years old. But consider her words: “The worthlessness of Earthly things/The Ditty is that Nature Sings -/And then -enforces their delight/Til Synods are inordinate." She wrote about, and lived in a world much like that of a free jazz musician. Stowed away in her little house, ...

Jazz Fiction

Now's the Time: Part 5-5

by Sean Murphy
April 12, 2015

Introduction The life and times of a minor jazz legend are recounted through his narrated memories. In this fictional treatment of jazz music in the mid-to-late 20th century, issues of race, creativity, addiction and, ultimately, redemption, are explored. With a title taken from the immortal Charlie Parker tune, “Now's The Time" is an extended meditation on the artistic life. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 You ...

Album Review

Warren Vache Quintet: Warren Vache Quintet Remembers Benny Carter

Read "Warren Vache Quintet Remembers Benny Carter" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
April 12, 2015

There's lots of life to this recording. Veteran trumpeter Warren Vache knows a thing or two about an old friend, mentor Benny Carter. With The Warren Vache Quintet Remembers Benny Carter we take a step back in time even as we venture forth into the present. A present that finds cornetist Vache's style and personage slightly at odds with that goofy-looking guy with the lid shaking hands with Carter for the cover of this release. It's a remarkable transformation for ...

Album Review

Blaer: Blaer

by Bruce Lindsay
April 12, 2015

Led by pianist and composer Maja Nydegger, Blaer is a jazz quintet from Switzerland. This self-titled album is the band's debut release--a collection that establishes the band as an ensemble of real promise, with early signs of a distinctive and individual sound emerging. Blaer operates on the calmer, more languid end of the jazz spectrum. It's capable of bursts of energy and Nydegger (also a member of Morpheus label-mates AKKU Quintet) isn't shy of composing more aggressive, dramatic, ...

Live Review

ECM Fest at SFJAZZ

by Harry S. Pariser
April 12, 2015

ECM Fest SFJAZZSan Francisco, CA March 26-29, 2015 In 1969, German record producer Manfred Eicher founded ECM, a label which would change music history. Since then his “Edition of Contemporary Music" imprint has more than lived up to its name, issuing well over a thousand albums by classic jazz, experimental, world and classical artists. A small yet brilliant portion of that artistry was brought to San Francisco's SFJAZZ for ...