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.

Extended Analysis

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Bird Calls

by Victor L. Schermer
January 13, 2015

In this innovative album, Rudresh Mahanthappa is to “Yardbird" Charlie Parker what Albert Einstein was to Isaac Newton. He revises Parker's legacy to his own advanced understanding, yet preserves the essential truth of Parker's contribution to jazz. One genius says “hello" to another and then goes his own way. The result is an exciting “leaning in" to Bird's bebop while retaining Mahanhtappa's unique synthesis of the jazz idiom with the music of India and other parts of the world. This ...

Album Review

Tommy Halferty Trio: Burkina

Read "Burkina" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
January 13, 2015

Veteran Irish guitarist Tommy Halferty has played in numerous settings over the past four decades, from duos with Stephane Grappelli, John Abercrombie and John Etheridge to small ensemble forays with the likes of George Mraz, Lee Konitz and Benny Golson. Perhaps it's in a trio format, however, where Halferty feels most at home, crafting notable collaborations with John Wadham and Ronan Guilfoyle in the early 1980s, with Guilfoyle and Keith Copeland in the 1990s and with Jean Philippe and Christophe ...

Album Review

UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2014

by Jack Bowers
January 13, 2015

Another year, another anthology of stellar big-band jazz from the University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, which carries on a tradition of annual recordings that was begun more than four decades ago. It's a custom that has not only served the university well but has produced a long and unbroken series of splendid large-ensemble albums, and Lab 2014 is clearly no exception to that rule. To declare that Lab 2014 is superior ...

Album Review

Louis Sclavis Quartet: Silk and Salt Melodies

Read "Silk and Salt Melodies" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 13, 2015

Iranian zarb (diagonally positioned drum)performer Kevyan Chemirani adds a worldly and exotic aspect to prominent French clarinetist, composer Louis Scalvis' band, featuring guitarist Gilles Coronado and keyboardist Benjamin Moussay who have performed with the leader on his Atlas Trio album, Sources (ECM Records, 2011). Sclavis' highly praised and disparate body of work for ECM Records is essentially unclassifiable, via his uniquely articulated jazz components, also framed on classical, free-improvisation, jazz fusion and world music persuasions. As a soloist, his resonant ...

Album Review

MoFrancesco Quintetto: Piedra Solar (MoFrancesco Quintetto)

Read "Piedra Solar (MoFrancesco Quintetto)" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
January 13, 2015

The MoFrancesco Quintetto, led by super-bassist Francesco Valente is one powerhouse group that will blow your socks off playing originals anchored in hard-bop with an Iberian twist, but who also can show a softer, more melodic side. Piedra Solar features the core group (Valente, drummer/percussionist Miguel Moreira, pianist Iuri Gaspar, Johannes Krieger on trumpet with Joao Capinha on tenor sax and flute or multi-instrumentalist (saxophones and flutes) Guto Lucena, and here with guest vocalists Jaco Loredo and Aline ...

Rediscovery

Pat Martino: Joyous Lake

by John Kelman
January 13, 2015

Pat MartinoJoyous LakeWarner Bros.1977 Seemingly a hardcore mainstreamer at heart--though one with no shortage of experimental élan, proven over a series of ten albums from 1967's El Hombre (Prestige) to 1976's wonderful duo with pianist Gil Goldstein, We'll Be Together Again (Muse, 1976)--guitarist Pat Martino came relatively late to the jazz-rock fusion game. His first album to truly plug in, his 1976 Warner Bros. debut, Starbright, was an eclectic affair that mixed synth and electric ...

Multiple Reviews

Dave Rempis: Zen Master

by Mark Corroto
January 13, 2015

The best application of philosophy to improvised music is the Chinese concept of “wu-wei." The best translation of this is “no trying." Many listeners have the false impression that it takes a sophisticated ear or at least years of listening to “get" improvised music. Actually, the opposite is true. The key is wu-wei or the art of trying not to try. That's why children effortlessly absorb and assimilate free jazz; they simply have no blocks to the spontaneity of the ...

Catching Up With

Nick Hempton's Catch & Release

by Eric J. Iannelli
January 12, 2015

Ever since the advent of Napster, musicians and commentators have been sounding the knell for the music industry model that had existed for the better part of the twentieth century. More than fifteen years on, it's clear that the old model lurches on, haggard and zombielike, but no clear and lasting successor has emerged. The à la carte model of iTunes, the 500-pound gorilla of the digital music era, is now losing ground to ad-supported or subscription streaming services such ...

Album Review

Tim Langedijk Trio: Acenja

by Jack Bowers
January 12, 2015

One appraisal that can be rendered without a moment's pause is that guitarist Tim Langedijk, bassist Udo Pannekeet and drummer Hans van Oosterhout from The Netherlands are splendid musicians. When the trio decide to adopt a harmonious and plain-spoken groove, as is most often the case on Acenja, the album is delightful to hear and appreciate. There are, luckily, only a couple of departures from established protocol, one of which ("The Woods") the trio has chosen as its opening number. ...

Album Review

Lisa Thorson: Lisa Thorson Quartet - Live

Read "Lisa Thorson Quartet - Live" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 12, 2015

Lisa Thorson is a Boston-based vocalist and educator (she is a professor of voice at Berklee College of Music). She has release three recordings: From This Moment On (Brownstone, 1994), Resonance (GM Recordings, 1999) and Out to Sea (Self Produced, 2002). Even a dedicated teacher must spread her creative wings from time to time, and Thorson does so the present Lisa Thorson Quartet Live recorded at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston (a favorite haunt for fellow Boston vocalists Rebecca Parris ...