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

Yuma Jazz Company: Intuition

Read "Intuition" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 5, 2015

Intuition is the fourth album by the Yuma Jazz Company, a well-groomed post-bop quintet that has been gigging in southwestern Arizona since it was formed around a dozen years ago. As one would expect from a group whose home base lies a few miles from the Mexican border, the Latin influence is strong, especially on “Late Night Taco Stand," “Cozy Samba" and “(She Is) Everything Plus," all of which were written and arranged by trumpeter Steven Hennig. ...

Album Review

Don Pullen: Richard's Tune

Read "Richard's Tune" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
January 5, 2015

Idiosyncratic pianist Don Pullen's debut as a leader, Richard's Tune (Sackville, 1974) already bore marks of his unique style and singular improvisational approach. Delmark reissued this superb solo outing in 2014 augmenting it with previously unreleased material from the same session making it all the more satisfying.Pullen peppers “KaDiJi," one of the bonus works on the CD, with his signature circular phrases. Edgy dissonance and dulcet spirituality coexist as the tightly woven harmonic lines flow towards the ringing, ...

Album Review

The Chad Eby Quartet: The Sweet Shel Suite

Read "The Sweet Shel Suite" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 5, 2015

For those who might not know him from his most famous written works, “The Giving Tree" and “Light in the Attic," or from his music, Johnny Cash's hit, “A Boy Named Sue," poet, cartoonist, playwright and Grammy®-winning musician, Shel Silverstein was about as unique and talented an artist as they come. Ironically, some of his best work was first published in a magazine definitely not for kids--Playboy. With The Sweet Shel Suite, saxophonist Chad Eby pays artist-to-artist tribute, leading a ...

Album Review

Blaise Siwula / Dom Minasi: The Sunshine Don't Mind My Singing

Read "The Sunshine Don't Mind My Singing" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 5, 2015

Good music does not come out of nowhere. It grows from tradition and experience. This is especially evident in a genre like jazz where the use of improvisation is crucial. Improvisation, at least the interesting kind, has echoes of the past. The exciting thing as a listener is to hear how the musical knowledge of the past is transformed into new sounds in the moment. In the best of all worlds, the joy of creating through improvisation ...

Rediscovery

Ralph Towner Solstice: Sound and Shadows

by John Kelman
January 5, 2015

Ralph Towner SolsticeSound and ShadowsECM Records1977 While it took the label a year or so to define its raison d'être, by 1970/71 Germany's ECM Records had already garnered significant attention for its pristine, transparent sound, and for beginning to redefine the possibilities of what improvised music could be. A group that seemed ideal for Manfred Eicher's nascent label was Oregon, the American group that was already pushing every envelope by bringing in elements of Indian, ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Brad Myers

by AAJ Staff
January 5, 2015

Meet Brad Myers: Brad Myers has spent his life in the pursuit of making music that is tasteful and driven by a deep connection to the soul, regardless of stylish trends or prognosis for financial success. Currently residing in Cincinnati, Ohio, he is an ever evolving improvising musician who has played the guitar since he was 10 years old. Along the way he has picked up considerable skills on electric bass, mandolin and vocals to help diversify his palate ...

Album Review

Walking Distance: Neighborhood

Read "Neighborhood" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 4, 2015

If any group can turn the concept of ebb and flow into a fully realized art form, it's Walking Distance. This New York-based foursome thrives on architectural schemes connected to the expansion and contraction of musical materials, presenting sounds that can appear disjointed, yet demonstrating congruence in their expression(s) all the while. Different players push and pull, ideas coalesce and collapse, and struggles give way to solidarity as Walking Distance trolls the Neighborhood. By operating as a ...

Album Review

Morton Feldman: Two Pianos and other pieces, 1953-1969

Read "Two Pianos and other pieces, 1953-1969" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
January 4, 2015

It has become a truism that AMM pianist John Tilbury is an interpreter of Morton Feldman's music par excellence--one of the very best, if not the best. Such opinions are backed up by his Feldman recordings such as Morton Feldman: All Piano (LondonHALL, 1999), Triadic Memories--Notti Stellate A Vagli (Atopos, 2008) and For Philip Guston (Atopos, 2013). Developed over decades, his touch, timing and note placement make Tilbury's readings of Feldman fresh and alive--as close to definitive as one could ...

Film Review

The Doors: Feast of Friends

by Doug Collette
January 4, 2015

The Doors Feast of Friends Eagle Vision 2014 As with the previously-released archive titles of the Doors, Feast of Friends elevates the standard for such vault projects to another level by including pertinent content from the time period in which the band's self-financed and produced film was made. current group manager Jeffrey Jampol and sound engineer Bruce Botnick, as well as essayist Len Sousa and the filmmaker himself Paul Ferrara, place the piece in the ...

Rediscovery

Paul McCandless: All the Mornings Bring

by John Kelman
January 4, 2015

Paul McCandlessAll the Mornings BringElektra1979 Today's Rediscovery comes from Oregon's reed and woodwind multi-instrumentalist, Paul McCandless: All the Mornings Bring, his 1979 leader debut. When Oregon was signed to Elektra in 1978 for Out of the Woods, it afforded the two members of the group who did not already have recording arrangements with Germany's ECM Records to release solo albums. And so, while guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner and percussionist/sitarist Collin Walcott released albums like ...