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

Pablo Menendez & Mezcla: Pure Mezcla: Direct from Cuba – Live at Yoshi’s Oakland

Read "Pure Mezcla: Direct from Cuba – Live at Yoshi’s Oakland" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 8, 2015

The music of the United States and Cuba are forever comingled in jazz. Rarely have two cultures proven so simpatico than in music, each benefiting from the other. Political normalization of relations between the two neighbors is long overdue and music remains the most potent cultural element than can be shared and exchanged. That is why this live recording by Pablo Menendez and his fine outfit, Mezcla at Oakland's Yoshi's is so special. The symbiotic, indeed, synergistic, relationship between the ...

Live Review

The B-52s at The Space at Westbury

by Mike Perciaccante
February 8, 2015

The B-52s The Space at Westbury Westbury, NY January 30, 2015 Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976, the B-52s have spent the past four decades delivering a fun '60s-drenched quirky, witty, humorous mix of new wave, surf, dance, rock and pop. Its call and response vocals are the band's calling card and trademark. The band's original line-up consisted of Schneider (vocals, percussion, keyboards), Pierson (organ, bass, vocals), Wilson (vocals, bongos, tambourine, guitar), ...

Album Review

Ben Wolfe: The Whisperer

Read "The Whisperer" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 8, 2015

You can always gauge a bassist-led recording by the players he attracts on the bandstand or in the studio. Proof of this premise is Ben Wolfe's latest, The Whisperer. Just like Charles Mingus had his Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, and Dannie Richmond, and Dave Holland his Craig Taborn, Kevin Eubanks, and Eric Harland, Wolfe is also a magnet for talent. His past recordings featured Ned Goold and Joe Magnarelli on Murray's Cadillac (Amosaya Music, 2000), Branford Marsalis and Terell Stafford ...

Book Review

100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own by Edward Komara & Greg Johnson

by C. Michael Bailey
February 7, 2015

100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own Edward Komara and Greg Johnson 299 Pages ISBN: #9780810889217 Rowman & Littlefield 2014 The length of time between a cultural trend developing and its introduction into the academy has grown ever shorter in the last 50 years. Authors Edward Komara and Greg Johnson, past and present blues archivist/music librarian at the University of Mississippi, respectively, say as much regarding blues music in the introduction of ...

Album Review

Akua Dixon: Akua Dixon

Read "Akua Dixon" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 7, 2015

Cellist Akua Dixon has been at it for decades: She's performed with jazz royalty like Duke Ellington, penned arrangements for non-jazz giants like Lauryn Hill and Aretha Franklin, and recorded with everybody from trumpet titan Dizzy Gillespie to trombonist Steve Turre to David Byrne, the beyond-category former frontman of the Talking Heads. Unfortunately, all of that support work has given Dixon little time to focus on putting music out under her own name. Akua Dixon, believe it or not, is ...

Album Review

Carolyn Sampson, Marianne Beate Kielland, Makoto Sakurada, Christian Immler; Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem

Read "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 7, 2015

For some listeners and critics Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan is an acquired taste. I have found no quibble with Maestro Suzuki and his fine band and chorus. They have recently completed a complete survey of Bach Cantatas, as well as a majority of Bach's major orchestral works. Suzuki himself has recorded the buck of Bach's keyboard music (on harpsichord, of course) and all of these endeavors bear an undeniable stamp of Ton Koopman, with whom Suzuki studied. ...

Live Review

A Tribute to Sly and the Family Stone's Stand! at the Fox Theater

by Harry S. Pariser
February 7, 2015

A Tribute to Sly and the Family Stone's Stand! Fox Theater Oakland, CA January 24, 2015 Jazz aficionados might not think that funk, soul, R&B and rock combo Sly and the Family Stone would have links to contemporary jazz, but the connections are, in fact, surprisingly strong. Sly and the Family Stone was groundbreaking in so many ways: it was the first band of its kind to include both male and female performers; ...

Album Review

Angelo Hart: Intrepid

Read "Intrepid" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 7, 2015

Pianist and composer Angelo Hart describes the music on his debut album Intrepid as an amalgam of avant-garde jazz, classicism, modernism and impressionism. Throw in the occasional touches of free jazz and the description is accurate--though daunting on paper--and fairly successful upon listening. The Phoenix, Arizona native cites John Coltrane as an early influence but his creative method isn't allocated to any one source. Hart developed the pieces on this CD as he prepared to record them and they developed ...

Extended Analysis

The Basement Tapes Raw: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11

by Doug Collette
February 7, 2015

Shorn of the overdubs and remixes that adorned the selected collection of tracks released in 1975 under the supervision of Robbie Robertson, the quick succession of thirty-eight cuts comprising The Basement Tapes Raw: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 juxtaposes traditional songs, contemporary roots material and originals of greater or less significance to achieve a masterful recreation of the ambiance that must've arisen from those hallowed sessions Bob Dylan and the band conducted in Woodstock, NY in the summer of 1967. ...

Album Review

Pray For Brain: None Of The Above

Read "None Of The Above" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 7, 2015

New Mexico is known for its picturesque landscape, arts & crafts and Mother Earth type activities, but not cited for harvesting diverse progressive rock power trios. In addition, the band's marketing pitch asks, “What happens when two Buddhists and a Muslim meet to make music?" Evidently, a whole lot is going on, as the musicians' incorporate an electro-organic feast, enveloping a 3D outlook, spanning Middle Eastern oud-based rock, Indofunk, jazz fusion and hearty doses of improvisation. Here, exceptionally versatile guitarist ...