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.

Interview

Eddie Gomez: The Call of the Wild

by Robin Arends
February 6, 2015

How to survive in jazz music? One of the people who can answer this question is bassist Eddie Gomez. With his 11 year cooperation he was the longest serving sideman of pianist Bill Evans. After interviewing Evans-bassist Chuck Israels in Holland, I called Gomez a few weeks later in his hometown. Twice there was a connection to his voicemail saying: “Here is Eddie. Please leave your message when you hear the call of the wild" (subsequently a cry of a ...

Album Review

Katie Thiroux: Introducing Katie Thiroux

Read "Introducing Katie Thiroux" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 6, 2015

It seems that nearly every jazz album made today comes with ringing endorsements from jazz greats, PR-driven plaudits, and the participation of one or two (or more) heavy hitters. So how do you separate hype from reality? Simply open your ears and listen. That's how you separate the wheat from the chaff, and that's how you discover true talent like Katie Thiroux. This bassist-vocalist-composer is flat out phenomenal. On her Jeff Hamilton-produced debut, Thiroux walks the classy-and-swinging ...

Album Review

Ben Wolfe: The Whisperer

Read "The Whisperer" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 6, 2015

Ben Wolfe is the man responsible for double bass duties for some of the most popular names in jazz. As well as his six previous albums as leader, in a recording career that extends back to the '80s Wolfe can also be heard on a fist-full of recordings by Harry Connick Jr, Diana Krall and Wynton Marsalis among others. What keeps him gainfully employed by some of the jazz world's biggest hitters? The Whisperer, a superb combination of great tunes ...

Album Review

Verneri Pohjola: Bullhorn

Read "Bullhorn" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
February 6, 2015

Trumpeter Verneri Pohjola's third album as leader manages to succeed on several different levels. The opener, “Another Day" captures the listener's attention with plangent piano chords and a soaring trumpet theme. “Girls Of Costa Rica" is a paean to Miles Davis' “Filles De Kilimanjaro," the first few bars echoing (but not entirely copying) the start of that most famous track, but then departing down a different road, underpinned by an obligato bass line and satisfyingly augmented by Jussi ...

Album Review

Jay Smith Group: Too Many Notes

Read "Too Many Notes" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 6, 2015

Based in Bakersfield, CA, keyboardist, composer Jay Smith's second album is titled Too Many Notes via comments by his fan base, alluding to his often blazing phraseology on the 88s. Nonetheless, Smith possesses an active mind as the program boasts a cornucopia of bop, jazz fusion, Latin jazz, rock, pulsating cadences and explosive flights of fancy. At times Smith executes flashy runs while toggling between acoustic and electric keys and props up the interest or listenability factor by alternating tempos ...

Multiple Reviews

Three From Intonema

by John Eyles
February 6, 2015

When the ninth and tenth releases on St. Petersburg's Intonema label were released, it was noteworthy that neither of them featured a Russian musician, despite the label's catalogue previously featuring such notable Russians as saxophonist Ilia Belorukov, bass guitarist Mikhail Ershov and pianist Alexey Lapin alongside a distinguished cast of fine overseas players. Happily, the label's three subsequent releases, below, have not continued that trend, as two of them feature Russians, including one solely by the Russian Andrey Popovskiy. And, ...

Album Review

Vijay Iyer Trio: Break Stuff

Read "Break Stuff" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 6, 2015

From the time of his debut as a leader nearly twenty years ago on Architextures (Asian Improv Records, 1996), pianist and composer Vijay Iyer has been a great experimenter. The Albany, New York native successfully utilized duplicated patterns and phrasing in a variety of settings from solo piano to ensembles. Advanced as his earlier techniques were, Iyer has continued to move forward and challenge himself, incorporating and manipulating decades of learning as his career progresses. At a given time his ...

Multiple Reviews

The Art of the Guitar: Samo Salamon, Christer Fredriksen, Rez Abbasi & Juan Pablo Hernández

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 5, 2015

The guitar is an instrument that continues to inspire musicians around the world and since early pioneers like Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian showed the endless possibilities of the instrument, the guitar has also been an important part of the evolution of jazz. One can certainly speak of a genre called jazz guitar, with characteristic chord shapes and patterns, but the thing that is noticeable about many of the new jazz guitarists is that they break away from standards and ...

Album Review

Chantale Gagné: The Left Side Of The Moon

Read "The Left Side Of The Moon" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 5, 2015

Pianist Chantale Gagné isn't afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve. With each release she's become more demonstrative in the manner in which she presents her music. Silent Strength (Self Produced, 2008) was her first step, and the first look at how she functioned with the high-end rhythm section of drummer Lewis Nash and bassist Peter Washington; The luminous and stunning Wisdom Of The Water (Self Produced, 2010) came next, with Gagné adding vibraphonist Joe Locke to the shimmering ...

Extended Analysis

Vijay Iyer Trio: Break Stuff

by John Kelman
February 5, 2015

When it comes to jazz/improvised music, there are those who, like pianist Keith Jarrett, prefer to approach it with a blank slate, clearing their minds of everything in order to find a way to pull form from the ether. Then there are those who spend considerable time formulating their approach, and coming up with a philosophy, an aesthetic, to apply to the music they make. While he's far from the only musician to take the latter approach, few are as ...