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

Lage Lund: Idlewild

by Andrew Luhn
March 14, 2015

Guitarist Lage Lund's previous two albums as a leader for the Criss Cross label utilized the quartet setting with Ben Street on bass, Bill Stewart on drums, and Aaron Parks on piano for 2013's Foolhardy and Edward Simon in the piano chair for 2009's Unlikely Stories. For 2015's release “Idlewild" Lund brings back his familiar rhythm section of Street and Stewart but omits the piano, opting for a guitar trio approach on twelve tunes, a mixture of originals and standards. ...

Album Review

Mikko Innanen with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille: Song For A New Decade

Read "Song For A New Decade" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 14, 2015

Finnish multi-reedman Mikko Innanen (Delirium, TUMO) is not short on ideas, here on this bracing 2-CD set recorded in New York with the all-universe rhythm section of bassist William Parker (CD-1 only) and drummer Andrew Cyrille. A fresh voice on the Euro progressive jazz scene, Innanen has imparted his skills amid collaborations with jazz and improvising stalwarts, drummer Han Bennink, saxophonist Frank Gratkowski and a horde of other notables. But young artists often rise to the occasion when performing with ...

Rediscovery

Haken: The Mountain

by John Kelman
March 14, 2015

Haken The MountainInside Out Records2013 For a group as young as Britain's Haken to find The Mountain selected by Prog Magazine's readers as one of “The 100 Greatest Prog Albums Albums of All Time"--and at an über-respectable position of #54--is a remarkable enough feat for a group with only two albums prior to this, its third record following its 2010 debut, Aquarius and 2011's Vision (all on Inside Out Records). That this hour-long (plus two ...

Album Review

Ma: Live

by Bruce Lindsay
March 14, 2015

Ma is part of London's endlessly intriguing Loop Collective, a grouping of younger-generation musicians and bands that includes pianist Ivo Neame, vibes player and drummer Jim Hart, trumpeter Rory Simmons and many others. Saxophonist Tom Challenger leads Ma: he's joined in the core trio by Matt Calvert on synths and laptop and by Dave Smith on drums. A quick check of the three musicians' resumés gives a hint of the breadth and extent of their careers. Challenger is ...

Interview

Band Ambition: Sherrie Maricle and Diva

by Richard J Salvucci
March 13, 2015

In the iconic photo A Great Day in Harlem (1958), bandleader and pianist Count Basie has taken a seat on the curb. Eleven neighborhood kids and one ringer, Taft Jordan Jr, are seated single file to Basie's right. Marian McPartland and Mary Lou Williams stand behind the kids, chatting. They are bookended, appropriately, by Oscar Pettiford and Monk. The only other woman is Maxine Sullivan. I never noticed her until now--a telling oversight. Fifty years later, the ...

Live Review

Live From Birmingham: The Mavericks, Hawkwind, Focus & The Handsome Family

by Martin Longley
March 13, 2015

The Mavericks Symphony Hall March 1, 2015 Perhaps The Mavericks should be worried about their audience demographic. At least when they're hitting Birmingham. It's unusual for most of a band's followers to be older than the players themselves, but this seemed to be the case at their almost-sold out Symphony Hall gig. It's a shame that Mavericks music doesn't pull in folks who are in their twenties, thirties, or even too many in ...

Multiple Reviews

Two INSUB releases

by John Eyles
March 13, 2015

When Switzerland's INSUB records issued its first two releases in a new format in early 2014, that innovative format got nearly as much attention as the music itself. Solving the download vs. physical object debate, its combination of attractive packaging (including A3 poster-size artwork) with a download code gave customers the best of both worlds. That solution was also compatible with the Insubordinations label's history; since 2006 its netlabel for improvised music has issued a steady stream of impressive downloads, ...

Album Review

The Susan Krebs Chamber Band: Simple Gifts

Read "Simple Gifts" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 13, 2015

Vocalist Susan Krebs and her musical friends have been putting together thematically-programmed salon concerts in living rooms and small venues for a number of years. Out of that experience comes Simple Gifts, a salon sampler of sorts that gives the at-home listener a taste of the ideas and arrangements that came about through these performances. The first two pieces on the album--"Let's Call A Heart A Heart" and “Looking Back"--originally fell under the banner of Cardiology: Heart ...

Album Review

Paul Kane and Katie O’Looney: Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements

Read "Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
March 13, 2015

Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements continues the distinguished and eclectic history of collaborations combining poetry with jazz or improvised music. It is a meeting between US poet Paul Kane (also Professor of English at Vassar College) and the Irish improvising sonic & visual artist Katie O'Looney. When the two met at a poetry reading in the south of France, they casually spoke about working together. After agreeing to work on a project centred on the number seven, they began experimenting ...

Album Review

Kevin Fort: Red Gold

Read "Red Gold" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 13, 2015

Chicago-based educator and jazz pianist, Kevin Fort unveils his debut and first solo album on Red Gold, where he presents an exciting session of light contemporary jazz employing a standard piano trio to document fresh new arrangements of several standards and three original compositions. An active musician in Chicago's vibrant jazz scene for the past fifteen-years, Fort has performed with some of the best jazz players in the world including Wayne Bergeron, John Clayton, Ramsey Lewis and Bill Watrous among ...