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

Samo Salamon Bassless Trio: Little River

Read "Little River" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 23, 2015

To call guitarist Samo Salamon prolific would be something of an understatement. Over the past decade Salamon has released more than fifteen albums, most of which document different cross-cultural trio and quartet explorations. His discography includes albums like Two Hours (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2006), a rhythm-plus-horn date with left-of-center players like tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby and drummer Tom Rainey; Fall Memories (Splasc(h) Records, 2007), featuring the odd and enthralling combination of tuba, guitar, accordion, and drums; and Duality (Samo ...

Album Review

Lisanne Tremblay: Violinization

Read "Violinization" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 23, 2015

Say “jazz" and the musical instrument that comes to mind might be the saxophone or the trumpet. Say “classical" and it's probably the violin. But there's a long history of players of that have taken that quintessentially classical instrument and moved into the jazz/improvised music world: Stephane Grappelli (1909-1997) and his swinging Quintette du Hot Club de France, Stuff Smith (1909-1067) with his fiery plugged-in approach that pushed swing towards a bebop sound; then there was the fast and hot ...

Album Review

Mano A Mano: Mano a Mano

Read "Mano a Mano" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
March 23, 2015

Mano a mano is Spanish for hand to hand as in unarmed combat. Nowadays it is used in much the same way as the English expression head to head, and doesn't imply anything too serious. This is just as well because the two guitarists going hand to hand here are brothers. Bruno and Andre Santos live on the Portuguese island of Madeira, famous for its fortified wine. Bruno is 39, Andre 10 years his junior. Both play ...

Album Review

Johnny Griffith: Dance With The Lady

Read "Dance With The Lady" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 23, 2015

Canadian saxophonist and composer Johnny Griffith is a multi-JUNO Award nominee and leads a vibrant quintet of first-call musicians on their debut recording entitled Dance With The Lady, comprised of nine stellar originals in the contemporary jazz mold exhibiting influences from the great Joe Henderson, Kenny Wheeler, Andrew Hill and Anton Weber among others. Grounded in a strong jazz tradition, the music seems to flow from a post-bop to a modern main stream direction encompassing a good share of creative ...

Album Review

The Urge Trio: Live in Toledo

Read "Live in Toledo" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 23, 2015

Swiss reedman and noted improviser Christopher Erb performs with likeminded Chicago cohorts, cellist Tomeka Reid and reedman Keefe Jackson, captured during the final gig of their 2013 US tour at the Robinwood Concert House in Toledo, OH. Hence, they vibrantly interact and create a predominately stark or perhaps naked soundscape, devised on minimalism, pathos, probing dialogues and bizarre manipulations of their respective instruments. Reid often operates at the mid-point, as Jackson and Erb toggle between bass clarinet and ...

Album Review

Zhenya Strigalev's Smiling Organizm: Robin Goodie

Read "Robin Goodie" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 22, 2015

Saxophonist Zhenya Strigalev's Smiling Organizm is an outfit that grooves, sputters, stutters, swings, skulks, and slaloms its way through the dark and funky, slick and dangerous, and wholly gripping music presented on Robin Goodie. Strigalev paints striking, rhythmically vivacious canvases here with some help from five American heavyweights--trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, drummer Eric Harland, bass guitarist Tim Lefebvre, bassist Larry Grenadier, and pianist Taylor Eigsti. It would be hard to imagine a better group of modernists to work ...

Album Review

Michelle Lordi: Drive

Read "Drive" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
March 22, 2015

It's difficult to conceive how this wonderful album of restrained and subtly rendered ballads came to be called Drive, a term which leads the listener to expect a package of revved up swing or rock. However, you don't have to be a cryptologist to realize that it comes from the last track, “Drive," which contains the line “Who's gonna drive you home?" This sense of melancholy and hoped for love, like so much of the American Songbook, is the essence ...

Album Review

Manuel Valera Trio: Live at Firehouse 12

Read "Live at Firehouse 12" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 22, 2015

Cuban pianist Manuel Valera readily extends the jazz language of his predecessors Bebo and Chucho Valdes. He is comfortable leading all band formats from septets (In Motion (Criss Cross, 2014) to solo performance (Self Portrait (Self Produced, 2014). Valera may presently be found fronting an exceptional trio performing Live at Firehouse 12. Orchestral or symphonic best describes Valera's pianism. His command of the complete keyboard; his ability to effect emotive arrangements with cogent beginnings, middles, and ends; ...

Multiple Reviews

Three contrasting Bertrand Denzler releases

by John Eyles
March 22, 2015

It seems that Swiss-born tenor saxophonist Bertrand Denzler is already involved in so many contrasting groupings that he would have no need to be joining or creating yet more. Active groupings of which he is a member include Hubbub, Mark Wastell's The Seen, Trio Sowari, Zoor, plus a trio with Eddie Prevost and John Edwards. Some others seem dormant, but not actually extinct, including the saxophone quartet Propagations, his own Bertrand Denzler Cluster, and a duo with Hans Koch. In ...

Live Review

Iiro Rantala at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane

by Ian Patterson
March 22, 2015

Iiro Rantala Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane Dublin March 8, 2015 There's a commonly held belief that anything that is free can't be worth a damn. Not so. Luckily, thanks to Dublin City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland and Improvised Music Company, spring in the Irish capital welcomes not only free music, but music out of the top drawer at that. Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala' solo piano concert at the Dublin ...