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.

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

Best of Mr. P.C. 2014

by Mr. P.C.
December 1, 2014

Dear Mr. P.C.: Why is it that whenever I go to a jam session, the best players are the meanest? Does that mean that I have to become a jerk if I want to get good? --Still A Nice Guy Dear SANG: Sounds like you're buying into some very common but misguided notions of “best." Just what is it that you admire about these “jerks"? That they play comfortably and melodically at ...

Album Review

Ambit: The Cellar and Point

Read "The Cellar and Point" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 1, 2014

Childhood buddies, drummer Joseph Branciforte and guitarist Christopher Botta should easily heighten their nascent reputations in the jazz community with this classy gem, marking their collaborative debut. Call it garage-chamber with doses of jazz and progressive rock amid some Americana infused treatments, this seamless program also includes members of contemporary classical ensembles, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, TRANSIT and Signal Ensemble. The musicians interlace a hodgepodge of crossover applications, whether it's a thrusting King Crimson style like vamp with ...

Live Review

Asian Jazz All-Stars Power Quartet at Ronnie Scott's

by Ian Patterson
December 1, 2014

Asian Jazz All-Stars Power Quartet Ronnie Scott's EFG London Jazz festival November 20, 2014 One of the most pleasing aspects of the EFG London Jazz Festival is its reach into the many jazz clubs dotted around the capital. Whilst the concert halls host the big names and draw the tourists it's smaller venues like Pizza Express, The Bull's Head, Café OTO, the Polish Jazz Café, the Vortex and the 606 Club that champion jazz ...

Bailey's Bundles

Holiday 2014: A David Ian Christmas

by C. Michael Bailey
December 1, 2014

Canadian David Ian is a space oddity. Embodied in a single musical psyche is one, a speed-metal guitarist shredding the Marshalls and two, a sensitive jazz pianist finely crafting holiday music circa 1960. Necessarily, Ian channels Vince Guaraldi, that quasar about which all holiday jazz music orbits. But he is no mere imitator, using his considerable talent for arranging to contemporize his performance. David Ian Vintage Christmas Prescott Records 2011

Album Review

Joey DeFrancesco: Home for the Holidays

Read "Home for the Holidays" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
December 1, 2014

In a year when the best-selling holiday music will likely be represented by the whorehouse that is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra--specifically The Christmas Attic, chocked full of Keith Emerson's left over arrangements from 45 years ago merged with 1980s Steve Vai and called “art"--there is credible and well-crafted holiday music being made. Multi-instrumentalist and singer Joey DeFrancesco serves up a tasty holiday dish from that most venerated of soul-jazz instruments, the Hammond B3 Organ. Holiday music has been ...

Live Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra at Jazz Standard

by Dan Bilawsky
November 30, 2014

Maria Schneider Orchestra Jazz Standard New York, NY November 25, 2014 Thanksgiving is a time to reflect, rejoice, regroup, and remember all that we have to be thankful for. In the jazz world, the Maria Schneider Orchestra always ranks at the top of that last category. For the past decade, the most important large ensemble in jazz has held court at New York's Jazz Standard during Thanksgiving week, delivering the powerful ...

Album Review

Nels Cline and Julian Lage: Room

by Paul Naser
November 30, 2014

Serious fans of guitar may have heard of both Nels Cline and Julian Lage, but many listeners more likely know only one or the other of these guitar giants. The two innovators have very different styles and sounds. Cline is known primarily for his work with Wilco and The Nels Cline Singers, where his compositions function as experimental explorations and push boundaries in many ways; even more so his solo improvisations, which heavily incorporate electronic sounds and unconventional uses of ...

Album Review

MoFrancesco Quintetto: Piedra Solar

Read "Piedra Solar" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
November 30, 2014

Time was when jazz flirtations with the Iberian Peninsula were limited to the gentle rattle of castanets followed by Rodrigo's “Concierto De Aranjuez" and a feeling you were doing something intellectual. No more. Francesco Valente cites as a major source of inspiration for this album--a homage to his adopted homeland--Portuguese author Jose Saramago's novel “The Stone Raft," in which a crack appears in the Pyrenees and Spain and Portugal start to drift out into the Atlantic, away ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Suzanne Cloud

by AAJ Staff
November 30, 2014

Meet Suzanne Cloud: Jazz singer-songwriter, educator, writer, and executive director of Jazz Bridge, a nonprofit that helps professional jazz and blues musicians in crisis. Instrument(s): vocals, piano Teachers and/or influences? My influences were wide and varied from the Broadway singer Mary Martin to jazz icon Sarah Vaughan to songwriter Randy Newman. When I was singing musical theater my voice coaches were Carol and Ed Locke. They were the best and when I couldn't ...

Album Review

Søren Bebe / Jakob Buchanan / Kasper Tagel: Gone

Read "Gone" reviewed by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
November 30, 2014

It would be good if more non-jazzers under the age of 90 could also appreciate how little hardship there is in being totally absorbed by original music from a group like BeBuTa. Gone , from pianist Søren Bebe's trio plus guests is a real swell of reactions and contemplations that makes life feel a little less shallow than the virtual love we're all drowning under with selfie obsession. Gone would also make a surprise score for the next Aldi (or ...