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

Kalle Kalima and K-18: Buñuel de Jour

Read "Buñuel de Jour" reviewed by Anthony Shaw

by Anthony Shaw
December 7, 2014

This third album featuring K-18's original line-up doesn't stray very far from the content of the previous two. But in combination with vaguely remembered images from Buñuel's films the music readily transports the listener to far corners of the aural universe with its exotic and compelling mixtures of timbre and intensity. The players are all masters of the exceptional and the unexpected and along with the sumptuous packaging, featuring on the cover and inside TUM's standard selected piece of Finnish ...

Album Review

MoFrancesco Quintetto: Piedra Solar

Read "Piedra Solar" reviewed by Mehdi El Mouden

by Mehdi El Mouden
December 7, 2014

Piedra Solar--the second album of the MoFrancesco Quintetto--is deeply rooted in Mediterranean and latin influences. Highly structured yet with a pint of improvisation, the songs reveal deep consideration of past influences, familiar themes, and novel straight ahead jazz. In the Quintet's words, the album pays homage to the Iberian Peninsula where Italian bass lead player and composer Francesco Valente has dwelled for eighteen years. An ethnomusicology graduate and currently a Ph.D candidate, Valente along with a group of ...

Live Review

Herbie Hancock at Sava Centar in Belgrade

by Nenad Georgievski
December 6, 2014

Herbie Hancock Sava Centar Belgrade, Serbia November 27, 2014 Pianist Herbie Hancock's name alone might sell tickets as a symbol of integrity and innovation. His curious and ever innovative spirit for pushing boundaries and new technology has not only pushed jazz forward, but contemporary music as well. And it was the sounds of the rich pool of music that greeted the crowd gathered at the prestigious Sava Centar hall to see Herbie Hancock ...

Album Review

Nucleus with Leon Thomas: Live 1970

Read "Live 1970" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
December 6, 2014

Combine a British jazz-rock outfit with an American vocalist. Put them on stage at the 1970 Montreux Jazz Festival. Record the gig, pop the tapes in a safe place for over 40 years, then give them to the talented team at Gearbox Records. The result is Live 1970, by Nucleus With Leon Thomas, a beautifully produced, lavishly packaged, vinyl double album that invokes feelings of nostalgia and puzzlement alike. Nostalgia? For those who were there--not necessarily at Montreux, ...

Album Review

Olie Brice Quintet: Immune to Clockwork

Read "Immune to Clockwork" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
December 6, 2014

For some time, bassist Olie Brice has been a highly-regarded member of the London improvising community, so it is a genuine pleasure to welcome Immune to Clockwork, his debut album as a leader. Many ingredients combine to mark out effective band leaders from the less successful ones; on this showing, Brice ticks enough boxes to indicate that he is well suited to the role. Firstly, a leader must have the knack of selecting band personnel who combine together effectively; that ...

Bailey's Bundles

Holiday 2014: Mostly A Cappella

by C. Michael Bailey
December 6, 2014

Choral Christmas is here in spades. The Boys of St. Paul's Choir School pits itself with Noel Edison and his Festival Elora Singers in similar programs while Capriccio Records offers a Baroque embarrassment of wealth from the time of Bach. John Robinson, Director; The Boys of St. Paul's Choir School Christmas in Harvard Square Decca Records 2014 The Boys of St. Paul's Choir School of Boston are looking to ...

Album Review

Rachel Therrien: Home Inspiration

Read "Home Inspiration" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 6, 2014

Canadian trumpeter Rachel Therrien's second release as a leader Home Inspiration, clearly establishes the Montreal native, even at this early stage of her career, as an accomplished composer and improviser. She contributes six of the ten originals on this cinematically inspired album, all of which have intricately constructed and memorable thematic frameworks. The delightfully eccentric “Lost" opens with Therrien's unaccompanied preface to the stimulatingly chaotic but subtly orchestrated ensemble play that follows. Angular rhythmic flourishes underscore Therrien and ...

Multiple Reviews

Led Zeppelin Remastered: The Second Batch (IV & Houses of the Holy)

by John Kelman
December 6, 2014

I, II, III | IV, Houses of the Holy Following the 1-2-3 punch of its first three albums--first released between January 1969 and October 1970 and reissued in June, 2014 as the first batch of a year-long series of overdue (and expanded) remasters of its entire nine-album catalog--Led Zeppelin continued on an upward trajectory, touring extensively and beginning to introduce songs that would ultimately appear on the British rock band's fourth album, one that bucked all marketing conventions ...

Album Review

Luís Lopes Lisbon Berlin Trio: The Line

Read "The Line" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 6, 2014

Guitarist Luís Lopes posted the following quote on his Facebook page, “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." With that as his mission statement, the question arises: can one listen to his music with a sympathetic ear? Or more importantly, is discomfort the motivation and ultimately the goal? Lopes' approach, like that of Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock, is a sort of unbalancing take on the electric guitar. Like Bailey, he has written ...

Album Review

Nu-Roots: Nu Tunes & Old Tunes

Read "Nu Tunes & Old Tunes" reviewed by Marta Ramon

by Marta Ramon
December 6, 2014

Nu-Roots multiplies itself with the potent Nu Tunes & Old Tunes. After six years working together, this acclaimed band has launched its third album, one of the most powerful recordings in the current Spanish jazz scene, and one that has definitely established the personality of the band. The record is, in itself, an explosion of the knowledge and control that has accompanied the lives of the three great musicians in this influential group. Nu Roots has focused in ...