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

Albert Beger Trio: The Way To Go

Read "The Way To Go" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 14, 2014

Israeli sax hero Albert Beger's new album presents this restless composer and ambitious improviser in two, schizophrenic forms. On one hand, The Way to Go features some of Beger's most impressive compositions, mostly written after his beloved mother's death, showing Beger as a restless musician who seeks to expand his compositional ideas and vocabulary as an improviser. On the other hand, he opts for the classic trio format he used on Hevel Havalim (Earsay's Jazz, 2003), and later with the ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Delandria Mills

by AAJ Staff
November 14, 2014

Meet Delandria Mills: A flutist and educator, I am a native of Houston, Texas. I began playing the flute at age seven and graduated from Houston's High School for the Performing Arts. Both my Masters in Classical Flute and Graduate Performance Diploma in Jazz Studies were earned from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where I now teach in the Preparatory Department. I also teach flute at The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Mike Pope

by AAJ Staff
November 14, 2014

Meet Mike Pope: Mike Pope is a virtuoso acoustic and electric bassist who has toured extensively with Chick Corea, David Sanborn, Al Di Meola and Bill Bruford, and more recently, Joe Locke and Eldar Djangirov. Raised in Ohio by two parents who were both classical musicians and educated at the University of North Texas, Pope came under the influence of legendary saxophonist Michael Brecker and eventually played with him in New York City, as well as with Blood Sweat and ...

Album Review

David Ricard Big Band: Holidays with a Bang!

Read "Holidays with a Bang!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 14, 2014

Bang! is an apt description of David Ricard's approach to big-band endeavors in general and holiday music in particular. The bassist / arranger's talented ensemble comes out swinging hard on Holidays with a Bang! and keeps its collective foot on the accelerator throughout this charming laundry list of well-worn seasonal favorites given a fresh new appearance thanks to Ricard's burnished arrangements. Ricard, a seasoned composer for such cartoons as Tom and Jerry, the Pink Panther and Pals ...

Album Review

Mary Halvorson: Reverse Blue

Read "Reverse Blue" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
November 13, 2014

In the past few years, Mary Halvorson, already an acclaimed member of New York's Downtown improv scene, has been earning widespread recognition as a bandleader and composer of note. Her writing displays an increasing sophistication with each new effort, revealing a compositional maturity as distinctive as her idiosyncratic guitar technique.Her latest ensemble, Reverse Blue, first performed at NYC's Blue Note as part of Search and Restore's “Spontaneous Constructions" series. The group's name was inspired by her father's curious ...

Album Review

Mason Razavi: Quartet Plus

Read "Quartet Plus" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
November 13, 2014

With the release of Quartet Plus, San Francisco Bay Area-based jazzman Mason Razavi joins ranks with a talented crop of guitarists spearheaded by Hristo Vitchev on First Orbit Sounds. His debut for the label fronts all-original compositions and contextualizes his tactile playing in a plush band setting.Half of the album features Razavi in quartet with Bennett Roth-Newell on piano and keyboards, Dan Robbins on bass, and Cody Rhodes on drums. Together they take on the night with thoughtful ...

Album Review

Stan Kenton Orchestra: Kenton Roars! At the Golden Lion

Read "Kenton Roars! At the Golden Lion" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 13, 2014

1969 was a year of transition for Stan Kenton and his orchestra, one in which Kenton's long-term contract with Capitol Records was ended, which led in turn to the establishment of his own label, Creative World. The orchestra itself remained active, motoring back and forth to one-night stands and brief engagements in various locales. What it did not do was enter a studio to produce a lasting narrative of its prowess. Luckily, a blemish-free tape of one of the orchestra's ...

Album Review

Andrew Raffo Dewar: Interactions Quartet

Read "Interactions Quartet" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 13, 2014

Composer, ethnomusicologist, educator and saxophonist Andrew Raffo Dewar studied and worked with some of the most forward-thinking and innovative musicians and composers such as Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon and Alvin Lucier. So it is only natural that his work expands on their compositional ideas and focuses on invented forms, experimenting with new sounds and an expansion of a tradition of experimentalism bridging the worlds of free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary music. Raffo's Interactions ...

Live Review

Barcelona Voll-Damm Internacional Jazz Festival 2014

by Bruce Lindsay
November 13, 2014

Barcelona Voll-Damm Internacional Jazz Festival Barcelona October 31-November 6, 2014 The 46th Barcelona Voll-Damm Internacional Jazz Festival proved once again that jazz is a crucial contemporary art form--one that encourages us to think; one that engages with many, many cultures around the world; one that can create surprise; one that can still be cool and stylish; one that can make us get up and dance and to hell with being cool and stylish. In the ...

Catching Up With

Freddie Jones: Game On!

by Nicholas F. Mondello
November 13, 2014

Dallas-based trumpeter, composer, producer and educator/clinician, Freddie Jones is one busy musician--especially on certain Sundays. He has the honor of performing our National Anthem before every Dallas Cowboys home game. In addition to actively freelancing and recording, he teaches and devotes countless hours with his efforts for a wonderful music education charity he founded, Trumpets4Kids. All About Jazz: Freddie, on behalf of All About Jazz.com, thanks for taking time. Freddie Jones: Thanks, Nick