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

Gideon Van Gelder: Lighthouse

Read "Lighthouse" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
November 28, 2014

Amsterdam-based pianist Gideon van Gelder filters more bright ideas into his appropriately titled sophomore release Lighthouse, the follow up to the enlightening 2011 debut Perpetual (Kindred Spirits Records). This time the program juxtaposes funky ostinato pieces alongside beautiful tone-poem-like selections drawn from a wellspring of influences that include Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Bjork. Luckily, Van Gelder reenlists the same talented lineup found in the debut with the propulsive Jamire Williams now on drums with versatile bassist Rick ...

Album Review

Danny Green Trio: After the Calm

Read "After the Calm" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 28, 2014

San Diego-based pianist Danny Green's 2012 CD release, A Thousand Ways Home (Tapestry Records) was too much of a good thing. A lot of fine music, but the album as a whole was over the edge on the shuffle in-and-out guest artistic slots for those who prefer a more focused and cohesive recording. After the Calm, Green's debut on OA2 Records doesn't have that problem. It is a straight through trio outing that showcases the pianist's particular skills ...

Album Review

Nils Landgren: Christmas With My Friends IV

Read "Christmas With My Friends IV" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 28, 2014

Christmas is a time for tradition--turkey, mistletoe, reindeer, plum pudding. Since 2006 another fine tradition has been insinuating itself into the Christmases of jazz lovers--the Nils Landgren Christmas With My Friends album. The Swedish trombonist, singer and bandleader is now on volume IV. Packaged in bright, shiny, green and silver, it's a mix of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar. Every track, with a couple of notable exceptions, is a holiday-themed joy and even the exceptions seem, in Landgren's hands, ...

Live Review

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension at The Royal Festival Hall

by Ian Patterson
November 28, 2014

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension Royal Festival Hall EFG London Jazz Festival November 20, 2014 For any artist to be invited to play three years in a row is unusual by the standards of most festivals. Guitarist John McLaughlin, however, is not 'any artist,' having blazed a unique and highly influential trail from his collaborations with Miles Davis and The Tony Williams' Lifetime in the 1960s and with his own groundbreaking bands the Mahavishnu ...

Live Review

Charles Lloyd New Quartet at The National Concert Hall

by Ian Patterson
November 28, 2014

Charles Lloyd New Quartet National Concert Hall Dublin, Ireland November 18, 2014 At seventy six, saxophonist/flutist and composer Charles Lloyd could be forgiven for resting on his considerable laurels. Most musicians, however, are reluctant to trade the buzz of live performance for the free bus pass and Lloyd is no exception. Lloyd still performs in the major concert halls and at the most prestigious jazz festivals around the world to standing ovations and glowing ...

Live Review

Enjoy Jazz Festival 2014

by Adriana Carcu
November 28, 2014

Enjoy Jazz Festival Heidelberg, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Germany October 2 -November 15, 2014 Here are the festival numbers: 80 shows in almost seven weeks on 25 stages, performed by 250 musicians from 35 countries. Beyond the numbers there are many names: quite a few well known, a fair amount of established artists and--in a refreshing proportion-newcomers. True to its motto “festival for jazz and other such things," Enjoy Jazz carried out a gender cross section featuring ...

Album Review

Paul Rogers/Robin Fincker/Fabien Duscombs: Whahay

by Mark Corroto
November 28, 2014

Is playing with a European free jazz sensibility antithetical to the music of Charles Mingus? Absolutely. Does renowned bassist Paul Rogers try his hand at it with his new trio Whahay? Yes. Do they triumph? Without question, yes. Rogers, a veteran of the London scene and bands of Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall, and Elton Dean, called upon two French musicians saxophonist/clarinetist Robin Fincker and drummer Fabien Duscombs to perform this Mingus tribute. The music is built upon Mingus' ...

Album Review

Ferenc Nemeth/Attila Laszlo: Bridges Of Souls

Read "Bridges Of Souls" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 27, 2014

Drummer Ferenc Nemeth's work has always been about building bridges and making connections with a diverse assortment of artists. He's connected styles and cultures through his extensive work with West African guitar phenom Lionel Loueke, supported Israeli bassist Omer Avital, Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca, and other top-shelf artists on record at different times, and built up an impressive body of work under his own name, crossing paths with saxophonist Joshua Redman, bassist John Patitucci, pianist Aaron Parks, and saxophonist Mark ...

Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet & Jon Irabagon: Perpetual Motion (A Celebration of Moondog)

Read "Perpetual Motion (A Celebration of Moondog)" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
November 27, 2014

In 1932, when he was sixteen years old, living in the heartland of depression era America, a farm accident left Louis Thomas Hardin blind. For roughly twenty-five years spanning the 1940s to the mid-1970s, he was often found on some street corner in the vicinity of 52nd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan, sometimes talking philosophically to no one in particular, often standing stock-still and silent and in full Viking regalia. At times, he slept in doorways though he had ...

Album Review

Steven Schoenberg: Christmas Reimagined

Read "Christmas Reimagined" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 27, 2014

Categorization is an anti-entropic effort to describe similar, but not equal, things for comparative reasons. So was my thinking when I began my review of pianist Steven Schoenberg's recording Steven Schoenberg Live: An Improvisational Journey (Quabbin Records, 2009) with: “Like the face of Helen launching a thousand ships, for better or worse, Keith Jarrett's 1975 Koln Concert (ECM) inspired a like number of improvisational piano recitals (half of which were ultimately Jarrett's own) and the entire genre ...