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.

Book Review

Bijelo Dugme: Sta Bi Dao Da Si Na Mom Mjestu

by Nenad Georgievski
March 22, 2015

Šta Bi Dao Da Si Na Mom Mjestu Dušan Vesić 352 Pages Laguna, Serbia 2014 These days composer/guitarist Goran Bregovic is revered for his soundtrack work and more than that, he is better known for his explosive cocktail of Balkan Gypsy music and various other folk musics from the region, thus becoming the best known exponent of world music. His concerts are a different affair as he and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra easily ...

Album Review

Nathan Parker Smith Large Ensemble: Not Dark Yet

Read "Not Dark Yet" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
March 22, 2015

Slip Not Dark Yet into your player and STAND BACK! The Intergalactic Big Band of Doom is about to crush everything in its path. Otherwise known as the Nathan Parker Smith Large Ensemble, this absolutely burning group is simply a thrill to listen to. Smith is the composer and director of the group, creating music which evokes the world (or soundtrack) of say, “Adventures of Roddick" (and “Pitch Black"), “Blade Runner," “Battlestar Galactica," “I Robot" with ...

Interview

Glenn Zottola: A Jazz Life - Hollywood, the World and the Stars

by Nicholas F. Mondello
March 21, 2015

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 World-renown trumpeter, saxophonist, musical director, producer and entrepreneur. These are but a mere handful of words that describe the vast talent in Glenn Zottola's bag of musical marvels. There are others: child prodigy, creative genius, “musical natural" and aural savant also percolate rapidly to mind. Now in his sixth decade of playing professionally as a rare and masterful “Triple Threat"--he plays and has recorded on trumpet, alto and tenor saxophones--Zottola's ...

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Project: Lines Of Color

Read "Lines Of Color" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 21, 2015

How do you create a follow-up to an album like Centennial-Newly Discovered Works Of Gil Evans (Artist Share, 2012)? That beauty--the debut from Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Project--was more than a standout record; it was an artistic tour de force and a recording for the ages. In crafting that album, Truesdell married his archeological skills, curatorial instincts, arranger's eyes and ears, organizational savvy, and profound respect for the Gil Evans legacy. All of those aspects are also wedded on this ...

Bailey's Bundles

Memphis Fire – Matt Isbell and the Cigar Box Guitar

by C. Michael Bailey
March 21, 2015

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." --William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun Ghost Town Blues Band Hard Road to Hoe Self Produced 2015 Memphis, Tennessee: The American South's conflicted Mecca. For its size and location, Memphis should be much more than it is. At the very least, it should be the rightful home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland? The reason? Cleveland was ...

Live Review

ZZ Top with special guests the Ben Miller Band at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury

by Mike Perciaccante
March 21, 2015

ZZ Top with special guests the Ben Miller Band NYCB Theatre at Westbury Westbury, NY March 15, 2015 Forty-plus years is a long time for anything. For a rock band it's an eternity. For ZZ Top, the Little Ol' Band From Texas, the past forty-some-odd years have been business as usual. The group had its genesis in Houston, TX in 1969. Originally comprised of Billy Gibbons (guitar and vocals), organist Lanier Greig ...

Album Review

Sweet Defeat: Sweet Defeat

Read "Sweet Defeat" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 21, 2015

If film director Jim Jarmusch had been born in Ghent, Belgium, instead of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, he probably would have used the trio Sweet Defeat to score his early movies instead of John Lurie. This Belgian trio of multi-reed player Tom Wouters (Flat Earth Society), guitarist Bert Dockx, and cellist Lode Vercampt create a sort of chamber jazz that sidesteps conventional routes for back alleys, gin joints, and boxcars. Their eponymous initial release opens with bowed cello, clarinet, ...

Album Review

Colin Vallon Trio: Le Vent

Read "Le Vent" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
March 21, 2015

Swiss pianist Colin Vallon's fourth release as a leader, Le Vent is a truly collaborative effort that eschews individual solos in favor of a haunting, collective sound. The results are atmospheric and exquisitely formalistic. This is not to suggest that, because of its ambient nature, the album is without substance. On the contrary, its structure becomes its essence. The title track, for instance, recreates the phenomenon of its name with supreme lyricism. Vallon's resonant, tranquil bars sing the ...

Album Review

Karl Latham / Ryan Carniaux / Mark Egan: Constellations

Read "Constellations" reviewed by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
March 21, 2015

If you happened to be in vitro fed Isao Tomita during your pre-personage, you're going to recognise Karl Latham's Constellations electronica subliminally--regardless any jazz/Bjork connections. 70's Japanese synth/horn, space music trembling has that tendency to unhinge a certain primeval magic. Space music in the 21st Century has less artefacts than the 70s first steppers, and more of the technician's space time feel of Miles Davis' electric purview. Karl Latham suggests that fundamentally there is an air of Miles ...

Album Review

Tomoko Omura: Roots

by Ian Patterson
March 21, 2015

The roots of the title of violinist Tomoko Omura's second CD as leader refer to traditional and popular melodies familiar to several generations of Japanese. But if the melodies of Omura's childhood have left an indelible stamp on her musical DNA, so too has the past decade spent in America absorbing the roots of jazz. It's been six years since Visions (Self Produced, 2008), Omura's homage to jazz violin greats past and present, but the wait has been worth it; ...