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

David Mengual Free Spirits Big Band: Vertebrats

Read "Vertebrats" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 20, 2015

This is a bit of a monster. The David Mengual Free Spirits Big Band is a big Big Band--27 musicians--with impressive musical scope, mixing improvisation with written charts, original pieces with tunes by some of the best known and most respected composers of the last 300 years. Vertebrats is the band's third album--a richly varied, ambitious recording. There's almost 90 minutes of music across these two CDs. It's organised into a series of six suites each of four ...

Live Review

Matt Haviland, Andy Farber, Steve Berger, Mark Hagan, Andrew Swift at The Old 76 House

by David A. Orthmann
January 20, 2015

Matt Haviland, Andy Farber, Steve Berger, Mark Hagan, Andrew Swift The Old 76 House Mark Hagan's Jazz Salon Tappan, NY January 14, 2015 The personalities of trombonist Matt Haviland and tenor/alto saxophonist Andy Farber emerged, prominently and in glorious detail, during the opening set of Mark Hagan's Jazz Salon. While most jazz musicians relentlessly pursue the holy grail of an individualistic sound and conception, both Haviland and Farber were uncommonly successful in realizing ...

Album Review

Eric Warren: ExpressionandReflection

Read "ExpressionandReflection" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 20, 2015

As you might think, there are rare recordings possibly better experienced sans lights--and ExpressionandReflection certainly might be one of them. That's definitely not to say that hearing this excellent offering loses anything in broad daylight. Far from it; while it's not a concept outing as its title might imply, ExpressionandReflection dishes up a contemplative quality that might waft into one's senses even better when lights are low. With ExpressionandReflectionSt. Louis-based bassist and composer, Eric Warren leads a ...

Album Review

Ashley Daneman: Beauty Indestructible

Read "Beauty Indestructible" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 20, 2015

The most important thing that singers/educators Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckmann impart to their students is the direction to define his or her own vocal trajectory. The lesson was readily honored by Nicky Schrire on her Space and Time (Magenta Label Group, 2013). Vocalist Ashley Daneman also took that message to heart after her study with the pair and released the present and exceptional Beauty Indestructible. Forged from a harrowing “Long Night of the Soul" (apologies to ...

Rediscovery

The Brecker Brothers: Heavy Metal Bebop

by John Kelman
January 20, 2015

The Brecker BrothersHeavy Metal BebopArista1978 While artists more often than not look for an album title that in some way reflects the music contained within, few have come up with a name that, in three simple words, says it all as much as today's Rediscovery: The Brecker Brothers' Heavy Metal Bebop. A positively incendiary live recording (barring bassist Neil Jason's funkified, studio-recorded, set-opening vocal anthem, “East River"), it sports a completely revamped lineup from the ...

Album Review

Tavche Gravche: Our Village

Read "Our Village" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
January 20, 2015

Put Our Village in the player. As the music comes pouring out, you close your eyes and try to envision where you are being transported. This is folk music, and the musical modes imply the Balkans, or somewhere around the Black Sea, as do the odd-beat meters, but there is also a klezmer element mixed with other Middle East sounds, and finally, a sense of flamenco. It turns out that you are nowhere but in Brooklyn, New York ...

Record Label Profile

Schema Rearward: The Reward of Visiting the Past

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 19, 2015

While Davide Rosa's and Luciano Cantone's Schema label has created a contemporary jazz sound with influences from lounge music, soul, electronica and bossa nova, their sublabel Schema Rearward is the place for those seeking a more pure acoustic jazz sound. Emphasis is on re-issues of modern jazz, especially from the sixties, but contemporary releases have also found their way into the catalog to underline the connection between the past and the present. The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big ...

Album Review

UNT Two O'Clock Lab Band: Two Music: It Don't Mean a Thing, If It...

Read "Two Music: It Don't Mean a Thing, If It..." reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 19, 2015

As has been pointed out a number of times before, there's no audible difference between the University of North Texas' One O'Clock and Two O'Clock Lab Bands, which are customarily named for rehearsal times but based on performance alone could well be designated One O'Clock and One-Fifteen. This is not meant to devalue the One O'Clock Band, which is about as proficient as a college-level ensemble can be; the intention is simply to note that UNT is home to a ...

Live Review

Vijay Iyer Trio at Brooks Center for the Performing Arts

by Mark Sullivan
January 19, 2015

Vijay Iyer Trio Brooks Center for the Peforming Arts Utsey Chamber Music Series Clemson, SC 1/15/2015 The Vijay Iyer Trio's performance at Clemson University's Brooks Center for the Perfoming Arts was the first jazz programmed as part of the long-running Utsey Chamber Music Series. As the presenter pointed out in her introduction, most jazz is technically chamber music: one player on a part. When the band took the stage Iyer greeted the crowd ...

Album Review

MONOGLOT: MONOGLOT

Read "MONOGLOT" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
January 19, 2015

MONOGLOT comes by their band name honestly, a Swiss/German/Icelandic jazz/rock quintet based in Basel, Switzerland that speaks with one voice. Their music is all instrumental, and the improvisational elements clearly mark it as jazz, but the rock elements are strong as well. This is a contemporary group with one foot in the jazz tradition and another in the rock music they no doubt all grew up with. While led by Icelandic guitarist and composer Kristinn Smári Kristinsson, in ...