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

Steve Heckman Quintet: Search for Peace

Read "Search for Peace" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 9, 2014

Saxophonist Steve Heckman's Search For Peace serves as something of a companion piece to his previous album--Born To Be Blue (Jazzed Media, 2013). Both albums feature the same band, present (mostly) familiar material, and walk pleasingly straightforward paths. So what's different? Well, for starters, Matt Clark played piano on Heckman's last date, but he's taken to the Hammond B-3 here. Then there's Heckman's choice of horns. The man-in-charge played clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone and tenor saxophone on Born To ...

Album Review

Lloyd Cole: Standards

Read "Standards" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
November 9, 2014

Lloyd Cole and his band the Commotions were one of the few bright spots of rock and roll in the Eighties, his fetching melodies and sly lyrics woven in and out of understated musicianship via semi-detached vocals. Since then, Cole's often moved into realms that belie his arch persona, such as Sinatra-styled orchestration, but Standards carries its title into deep, unsentimental irony. Or so it would seem despite the fact the rhythm section here, Fred Maher on drums ...

Album Review

Diva: A Swingin' Life

Read "A Swingin' Life" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
November 9, 2014

Back in 1967, Buddy Rich was one of the headliners on a summer replacement television broadcast for “The Jackie Gleason Show." If I remember correctly, the show's theme, which Rich and the band did was “Away We Go." It was subsequently released on a Pacific Jazz record The New One. Why is it that the opening track on Diva's most recent recording A Swingin' Life reminds me of that recording? It's not because Sherrie Maricle is in the Buddy Rich ...

Album Review

Alex Pinto & All India Permit: All India Permit

Read "All India Permit" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
November 9, 2014

The recipient of a Fulbright / Nehru Scholarship, guitarist and composer Alex Pinto chose to study and teach for a year at the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) in Tamil Nadu, India. The Seattle native quickly made his way into the burgeoning Indian jazz scene, gathering New Delhi-based drummer Tarun Balani and bassist Abhinav Khokhar to form a potent and limber trio. Their new EP, titled All India Permit fuses jazz-based rhythmic aesthetics with compositional concepts derived from Carnatic music. ...

Live Review

Grand Union at the Hackney Empire

by Duncan Heining
November 9, 2014

Grand Union Orchestra Hackney Empire Undream'd Shores London November 2, 2014 A while ago, I started to suggest to Tony Haynes -Grand Union's artistic director -that he write an opera. I stopped mid-sentence, suddenly realising that he's been doing just that for years. Undream'd Shores is less an opera, more a song cycle but those familiar, recurring GUO themes of migration, exile, loss and ultimate transcendence were all present at this their most recent ...

Extended Analysis

Grand Union Orchestra: The Song of Many Tongues

by Duncan Heining
November 9, 2014

The Song of Many Tongues was the first album of the Grand Union Orchestra. Originally only available on cassette, this marks its first CD release and GUO's thirty-year-long history under the leadership of composer/director Tony Haynes. It's a testament to continuity and musical development but also to the commitment of its members to this unique vision. Of those present here, Claude Deppa, Chris Biscoe, Ros Davies, Andy Grappy, Carlos Fuentes, Gerry Hunt, Dave Adams and, of course, Haynes himself are ...

Extended Analysis

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra: Artificial Life

by Duncan Heining
November 9, 2014

The importance of ensembles such as the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra cannot be underestimated. Their work since their formation defines a distinctive approach to large-scale, free improvisation rooted in a well-defined philosophy of collective music-making. As George Lewis, trombonist and 'composer' of Artificial Life, remarks in the record's sleevenotes: “As with all improvisation, including our everyday-life human efforts, all aspects of the performance are achieved through negotiation and consensus, and the success of the performance is less a question ...

Album Review

Manuel Valera Sr.: Recuerdos

Read "Recuerdos" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 8, 2014

There's quite a bit of Cuban music history in Manuel Valera Sr.'s fingertips. Over the course of his career, he's put his saxophone to good use in the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, Mario Bauza's Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Machito's Orchestra, Paquito D'Rivera's Big Band, and numerous other groups; he's played alongside bassist Israel Cachao" Lopez, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and percussionist Carlos “Patato" Valdez; and he's even been cited as the creator of the first jazz saxophone quintet in Cuba. ...

Extended Analysis

Rory Gallagher - Irish Tour ’74, the 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set

by C. Michael Bailey
November 8, 2014

In the end, music is a personal soundtrack to one's life. It is tied to a specific time and place, circumstances and memories that are so tightly integrated in one's experience that having memory with no music cannot even be imagined, much less considered. In the summer of 1974, I went from Little Rock to Chicago to visit my closest childhood friend. While there I purchased two LPs for our listening pleasure, Eric Clapton's 461 Ocean Boulevard (RSO, 1974) and ...

Live Review

Anna Maria Jopek at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater

by Ernest Barteldes
November 8, 2014

Anna Maria Jopek Joe's Pub at The Public Theater November 5, 2014 New York, NY For the opening of her 2014 North American tour, Polish singer/songwriter Anna Maria Jopek concentrated on reinvented takes on her native country's folk and classical music, as featured on Polanna (Self Produced, 2011). Backed by a pared-down trio rounded out by Marek Napiorkowski on acoustic guitar and Pedro Nazaruk (keyboards, melodica, percussion, acoustic guitar, flutes, zither and ...