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

Michel F. Coté: Mecha Fixes Clocks: Beau comme un aéroport

Read "Mecha Fixes Clocks: Beau comme un aéroport" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
January 23, 2015

The fourth album from innovative Montreal-based drummer Michel F. Côté's ensemble of improvisers Mecha Fixes Clocks is a suite of alternative songs, all referring to air travel (their previous releases were Orbiting With Screwdrivers, Alien8, 2005; À l'inattendu les dieux livrent passage, &records, 2010; and Teoria dell'elasticità di Girolamo Papariello, Ambiances Magnétiques, 2011). As expected from such forward-thinking improvisers, these songs suggest a tense, dark atmosphere that is supposed to be the musical equivalent of an ...

Year in Review

Ken Hohman's Top Jazz Releases of 2014

by Ken Hohman
January 23, 2015

I'd taken a six month hiatus from my radio show, Freedom Jazz Dance, to concentrate on other things. Turns out my timing couldn't have been worse. I was inundated with so many excellent recordings in 2014 that my head was spinning. Fortunately, I now had the time to truly enjoy them! Here are the lucky 13 that struck my fancy: 1. Melissa Aldana—Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord Records) 2. Chris Byars—The Music of Duke Jordan ...

Album Review

Jean-Michel Pilc: What Is This Thing Called?

Read "What Is This Thing Called?" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
January 23, 2015

Jean-Michel Pilc's solo piano recording What Is This Thing Called? might have been titled “Thirty-one Conversations About One Thing." That 'one thing' being his 31 variations on Cole Porter's composition “What Is This Thing Called Love." Why record 31 versions of one song? Maybe ask yourself why Claude Monet created so many paintings of the same haystacks. Pilc, the Paris born, New York based pianist heads up an octet, a few trios, including one with Victor Lewis & ...

Jazz Primer

John Coltrane and the Meaning of Life

by Douglas Groothuis
January 22, 2015

Few jazz musicians inspire more respect or demand more attention than John Coltrane. Elvin Jones, Coltrane's drummer in “The Classic Quartet" (1961-65), said that most people who listen seriously to John Coltrane's music eventually acquire all of his recordings. I find that those who hear Coltrane for who he was want to hear all that he was. I am one of these completists, ever scanning music stores and the Internet to find new releases. The man behind the music fascinates ...

Jazz Primer

How to Listen to Jazz

by Douglas Groothuis
January 22, 2015

All About Jazz readers are usually very hip to the joys and challenges of listening to this uniquely American and endlessly fascinating art form we call jazz. Aficionados of jazz like to talk about jazz, like to recommend jazz to others, and like to listen to how others listen to jazz. This is why strangers can so easily talk jazz. In that spirit, consider how to grow even bigger ears for the music. Obstacles may stand in ...

Album Review

DUCHESS: DUCHESS

by Dan Bilawsky
January 22, 2015

There's a new vocal super group in town, and it proves that bonhomie hasn't been banished from jazz. DUCHESS--the sublime combination of Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner, and Melissa Stylianou--is a serious musical force, but it makes some seriously friendly music. Cervini, Gardner, and Stylianou each delivered superb releases on the Anzic imprint in 2014, but that didn't stop them from making time to work out some “girl-on-girl harmony," as they put it. They spread affability throughout New ...

Album Review

Phil Haynes: Phil Haynes’ “No Fast Food” Trio: In Concert

Read "Phil Haynes’ “No Fast Food” Trio: In Concert" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
January 22, 2015

No Fast Food In Concert is rife with all sorts of footnotes and fascinating jazz lineages. But, one can simply enjoy it without being a fact-obsessed music nerd such as me; the first track, a truly pretty-but-not-precious waltz titled “Dawn on the Gladys Marie" is evidence enough of the simple universality of great music. There's a certain inevitability about the personnel involved here. Phil Haynes and Drew Gress have played together as members of each others' bands for decades. They've ...

Album Review

Kate Lindsey, Evan Rogister, Ensemble LPR, Paul Muldoon: Mohammed Fairouz: Follow, Poet

Read "Mohammed Fairouz: Follow, Poet" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 22, 2015

The sacred German record label, Deutsche Grammophon, is thinking outside the box. Deep in the traditional classical fare, DG is certainly a discographic force to reckon with. But one can only do so much with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Universal Music Classics president and CEO Elizabeth Sobal conceived the idea of a marriage between words and music, which, to most of us, is singing. She envisioned more, the marriage of music, poetry, lyricism and programming into a whole larger than ...

Album Review

Cafêzz: Music & Friends

Read "Music & Friends" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
January 22, 2015

There are as many varieties of jazz composers, as they are styles of the music itself. With innumerable artists converging onto an ever emerging genre, it's interesting to witness how the music is evolving. Pianist Carmen Noemí is a cultured lyrical composer, who organized the band Cafêzz as a vehicle for showcasing melodious metaphors on her first recording, Music & Friends . With a remarkable ear for quality talent, there was a comprehensive effort to record the music exactly as ...

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Album Review

The Stanley Clarke Band: UP

by Walter Atkins
January 22, 2015

UP is the latest CD from the baddest bassist on the planet, Stanley Clarke. This is the first recording by the Stanley Clarke Band since the 2010 eponymous release The Stanley Clarke Band. The acclaimed bassist extraordinaire has handpicked an amazing list of guest musicians to play with The SCB. According to the official Stanley Clarke website, the four-time Grammy award winner is the “Liberator of the Electric and Acoustic Basses." His UP album soundly supports this sobriquet.