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.

106

Interview

Bill Laswell: No Boundaries

by Nenad Georgievski
March 30, 2015

For some people music is a mere entertainment product, a pastime amusement. For others music is a powerful force and the act of its creation carries within itself a sense of discovery. Bill Laswell's music, production and remixes have always carried that sense of discovery and riskiness. Multifariously creative and independent, he has always been revered by avant-gardists, jazz and improv and electronic music fans with equal zeal. In the last 30 years, this incontrovertibly cool producer has ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Stephen Prutsman

by AAJ Staff
March 30, 2015

Meet Stephen Prutsman Active as classical, world and jazz pianist, and composer and music event/festival curator, Stephen Prutsman continues to explore and seek common ground in music of all cultures and languages. On April 8, he performs his album Passengers for the first time in its entirety at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York. The music on the album was inspired by a revelatory time for Prutsman, as he came to terms with his son's autism. “The most important ...

Album Review

Andy Milne & Dapp Theory: Forward In All Directions

Read "Forward In All Directions" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 30, 2015

Can music be both sprawling and focused in nature? The aptly-titled Forward In All Directions says it can, and it says so in convincing fashion. Andy Milne, a distinguished M-Base alumnus who's worked with everybody from saxophonist Ravi Coltrane to harmonica heavy Gregoire Maret to singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, doesn't draw borders in his music, but there's no questioning the presence of structure in his work. He's a shrewd sound painter who produces astounding patchwork canvases that speak ...

Album Review

Eyal Vilner Big Band: Almost Sunrise

Read "Almost Sunrise" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 30, 2015

Suddenly, it seems, the state of Israel has become a focal point and incubator for contemporary jazz. A new wave of world-class musicians led by the three Cohens (not to be confused with Broadway's three Cohans) has crossed the ocean to plant the Israeli flag firmly in the midst of what was once considered an unassailable American stronghold. Among the more recent and impressive arrivals is Eyal Vilner, a composer / arranger / saxophonist from Tel Aviv who came here ...

Live Review

Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock at Zellerbach Hall

by Harry S. Pariser
March 30, 2015

Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock Duet Zellerbach Hall Berkeley, CA March 19, 2015 The two pianists needed no introduction. Taking the stage at Cal Performances, they turned to each other, old friends reuniting, and bantered about their various past visits to Berkeley, California. This was the fourth date in a tour which would culminate with four European engagements, but it was by no means their first onstage duet. The two first toured together as a ...

Album Review

Roil: Raft of the Meadows

Read "Raft of the Meadows" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 30, 2015

Established in 2007, Roil comprises three Australians from the Sydney jazz scene, sharing pianist Chris Abrahams with that other better known Antipodean combo The Necks. Like that last outfit Roil manifests as an egalitarian concern, continuing in the lineage trailblazed by Bill Evans in the 1960s via Howard Riley's trio with Barry Guy a decade later. But in contrast to this template, on their third release Raft of the Meadows (as was also the case with its predecessors) all the ...

Album Review

Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord: Jeremiah

Read "Jeremiah" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 30, 2015

The seventh album by guitarist Jon Lundbom and his septet Big Five Chord leaves little room for fence sitters. His music, like fellow band members Jon Irabagon and Moppa Elliott of Mostly Other People Do The Killing, walks the razor's edge between clamorous and cultured. It's comfort is often the discombobulation. That said, isn't that what jazz (real jazz) has always been about? Jeremiah his latest release, follows a 2-disc live recording Liverevil (Hot Cup, 2013). While six ...

Album Review

Beat Funktion: Mandy's Secret

Read "Mandy's Secret" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
March 30, 2015

Beat Funktion; what is its funktion? Daniel Lantz is the man behind Beat Funktion's unique sound that blends '70s funk, groove, soul, disco and afro-beat with the language and sensibilities of jazz. Beat Funktion pays close attention to getting across the more danceable and familiar binary rhythm, that is felt as the “groove." That is what seems to be the funktion of Lantz's beat; its association with funk, a genre that created the “groove" rhythm, which was spear-headed by James ...

Building a Jazz Library

Rare and Unusual Instruments in Jazz

by Hrayr Attarian
March 29, 2015

Historically the cornet was the quintessential jazz instrument but over a century of its evolution other instruments have also become part of the regular jazz armamentarium. These include common ones such as the piano, saxophone, bass and drums to the more occasionally appearing violin, clarinet and other percussion instruments. There are few, however, that exhibit unique sounds and though infrequently utilized within the jazz mainstream, represent a fresh and delightfully unusual approach to the music by its ingenious practitioners.

756

Interview

Michael Brecker: He Can Groove Any Way You Want

by Mike Brannon
March 29, 2015

This article was originally published at All About Jazz in August 1998. Once one half of the world renown Brecker Brothers and full time studio legend, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker relinquished that throne to form a group and deliver his own material. Though the Coltrane influence is present in spirit, its simultaneously transcended, skewered even, by the sheer strength and personality of Brecker's tone and seemingly infinite permutations of major seventh laden linear expressions. Although he might disagree, it no ...