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.

Film Review

Jazz on Film: Caveat Emptor

by S.G Provizer
March 6, 2015

There are good documentaries about jazz. A person can see the films listed on this site and walk away without reaching for the gas pipe. But, as the furor around the film Whiplash (well, to jazz people it was furor) reminds us, it's wise to keep the bar low. When Hollywood does jazz, it should stick to hagiography and cheesy romance: The Benny Goodman Story, The Fabulous Dorseys, The Glenn Miller Story; these are really just the Lindbergh, Curie and Young ...

Live Review

The Fred Hersch Trio at FlynnSpace

by Doug Collette
March 6, 2015

The Fred Hersch Trio FlynnSpace Burlington, Vermont February 27, 2015 Even when FlynnSpace is completely sold out, as it was February 27th for The Fred Hersch Trio, this downstairs venue never feels crowded. The audience is usually seated, as it was for this frigid Friday night, on three sides of a stage only slightly elevated, so that the performer and the attendees are all on the same level. During Hersch & Co's show, everyone in ...

Album Review

Yoosun Nam: Light Of the City

Read "Light Of the City" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 6, 2015

It's a love story in essence: South Korean classical piano and vocal protégé with multiple competition wins, hears jazz in high school; picks up saxophone at nineteen and swaps university computer studies for music; then, as straight and true as Cupid's arrow, heads for Berklee College of Music; New York and a Master's degree in jazz studies duly beckons at NYU Steinhardt, under the tutelage of Kenny Werner, Joe Lovano and Ralph Alessi, among others. The first fruit of Yoonsum ...

Album Review

The Ted Howe Jazz Orchestra: Pinnacle

Read "Pinnacle" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 6, 2015

Pianist Ted Howe offered up one of the finest of Duke Ellington tributes, the piano trio set titled simply Ellington (Summit Records, 2005). It was a heartfelt ride through some of The Duke's most familiar tunes, swinging mightily. He now steps up into Ellington-ian ensemble territory with Pinnacle, by his thirteen piece Ted Howe Jazz Orchestra. In the old “is it classical, is it jazz?" discussion, Pinnacle definitely leans classical--but it does swing. Opening with “Presto for Two ...

Album Review

Abdullah Ibrahim: The Song Is My Story

Read "The Song Is My Story" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
March 6, 2015

Blessed is the artist who has reached the zenith of his craft, and endured to reap the rewards, becoming the wise elder reflecting upon a lifetime of creative accomplishment. Having left an impressive body of work, he still greets the dawn with exuberance and optimism. Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim is such an artist. As a consummate and dedicated musician, he blazed a trail from the tumultuous townships of Capetown, South Africa to the premier concert halls of the world, and remains ...

Album Review

Les McCann: Invitation to Openness

Read "Invitation to Openness" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 6, 2015

It is a simple matter of acid-base stoichiometry like that learned in any quantitative chemical analysis or medicinal chemistry course. If one treats the acid element of Parliament Funkadelic's Maggot Brain (Westbound, 1971) with the sweet bass of Leroy Vinnegar, then infuse as with juniper with gin, with honey and morphine: Les McCann's monumental Invitation to Openness would result. Ornette Coleman may have detonated a nuclear music device with Free Jazz; A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1961), but it was McCann ...

Album Review

simakDialog: Live at Orion

Read "Live at Orion" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 6, 2015

There's a lot to be said for possessing a signature sound and style these days, regardless of genre. But the cunning Indonesian jazz fusion outfit simakDialog have gradually imprinted a deep-rooted mark of authenticity on the global fusion and progressive rock circuits. Recorded during the band's 2013 US tour which concluded at Orion Studios in Baltimore, a distinguishing factor pertains to percussionists Endang Ramdan and Erlan Suwardana's use of the Sundanese kendang drums, which are conventional staples employed in Southeast ...

Album Review

Charles Ruggiero: Boom Bang, Boom Bang!

Read "Boom Bang, Boom Bang!" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 5, 2015

Though jazz drummer Charles Ruggiero has made many recordings as a sideman over the last twenty-five years, he makes his long-awaited debut with Boom Bang, Boom Bang!, paying a tribute of sorts to Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, two of his favorite jazz artists. Growing up with the sounds of the flute and the Fender Rhodes, it was only natural that he decides to make his first recording effort using these voices and not make an album with a “drummy" ...

Album Review

Laura Dickinson: One for My Baby: To Frank Sinatra with Love

Read "One for My Baby: To Frank Sinatra with Love" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 5, 2015

Invoking the name Frank Sinatra, even in adulation, always presents a challenge, as Ol' Blue Eyes is considered by many aficionados to be the best-ever interpreter of American popular song. Singer Laura Dickinson writes that she “fell in love" with Sinatra as a teen-ager and resolved then to help keep his music and that of the Great American Songbook alive. One for My Baby thus represents Dickinson's admirable attempt to breathe new life into “a select few" of the many ...

Album Review

Oren Ambarchi: Live Knots

Read "Live Knots" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
March 5, 2015

"Knots" was originally a thirty-three minute track that was the centrepiece of Oren Ambarchi's album Audience of One (Touch, 2012). On the elaborate production, Ambarchi's own guitars, autoharp and percussion were joined by strings and French horn arranged by Eyvind Kang, plus drummer Joe Talia and vocalist Stephen Fandrich. Being full of drama and variety, the piece was an obvious choice for Ambarchi to take on the road, which he duly did in 2013. Now come the recordings that resulted ...