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

Alexander Hawkins: Song Singular

Read "Song Singular" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 8, 2014

Pianist Alexander Hawkins shines brightly in the firmament of the UK jazz scene. Already his resume is impressive. As well as leading his own ensemble, he features as part of outstanding collectives like the transatlantic Convergence Quartet with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum and drummer Harris Eisenstadt, and Decoy with fellow countrymen bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble. In addition he's shared the bandstand with the likes of saxophonists Evan Parker, Joe McPhee and Marshall Allen. Richly gifted Hawkins is ...

Album Review

Black Milk Impulses: Manifesto

Read "Manifesto" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
November 8, 2014

We love jazz music because its purveyors wander off-script to make music. That is, they improvise. They do not wing-it or fake it. Step one, obtain a command of your instrument. Step two involves learning compositions. Step three, for a jazz musician, is to reinvent both step one and two.Such is Manifesto by the global consortium known as Black Milk Impulses. The core of BMI is Italian drummer Gianpaolo Camplese and Australian pianist Leo Auri. They have collaborated ...

Live Review

People Band and Friends at Café Oto

by Sammy Stein
November 8, 2014

The People Band and Friends Trbute to Mel Davis Cafe Oto London, England 28th October 2014 I knew when my friend turned to ask me, halfway through the event, “This is a bit extreme isn't it?" that I had baptized him with fire. He had never been to a jazz gig before, let alone a free improv set like this, where most of the People Band and also many of their associates came together in ...

Album Review

Nancy Kelly: B That Way

Read "B That Way" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 8, 2014

Vocalist Nancy Kelly is one of those artists one can always count on for producing muscular and assertive jazz. On B That Way, Kelly is supported by an organ-guitar trio featuring tenor saxophone. Such a format affords an expanse of sound from the intimacy of a piano trio to the full-throated roar of a big band. “Come Back to Me" opens the disc with such a roar, Kelly stretching her alto taut and fine. Kelly-collaborator, organist Dino Losito, keeps the ...

Album Review

Jon Mayer: The Art of the Ballad

Read "The Art of the Ballad" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 7, 2014

Jon Mayer not John Mayer. This particular Mayer is a jazz pianist currently living on the West Coast who has been plying his Jazz trade in one form or another since the mid-1950s. Early on, Mayer played on two notable sessions: alto saxophonist Jackie McLean's Strange Blues (Prestige, 1957) and on the John Coltrane sessions recorded between 1958 and 1960 that eventually became Like Sonny (Roulette, 1990). Mayer did a stretch in Paris in the late '50s where he periodically ...

Catching Up With

John Butcher: So Far

by Sammy Stein
November 7, 2014

Saxophonist John Butcher's career could have taken an academic path. He completed a Ph.D in theoretical physics--Charmed Quarks to be precise--but left the academic world behind shortly thereafter. As a saxophonist, Butcher has played with and collaborated with many musicians. He is not afraid to try completely off the wall musical experimentation. All About Jazz: What is your background? Where did you grow up and how did you come to music? John Butcher: ...

Album Review

Danish Radio Big Band: Spirituals

Read "Spirituals" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
November 7, 2014

There is a curiously old fashioned feel to this, first album of a new era for the Danish Radio Big Band under its freshly appointed leader, Norwegian Birger Carlsen. The white folks sit on the veranda of “the big house" sipping their mint juleps as “their" blacks happily pick cotton and sing about dat wonderful day when they gwine to put on their shoes and walk all over God's heaven...sorry, heb'n. In an age ...

Live Review

Minus the Bear at the Gramercy Theatre

by Christine Connallon
November 7, 2014

Minus the Bear The Gramercy Theatre New York City October 17, 2014 A warm fall night welcomed Minus the Bear into the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. The five man band from Seattle earned a “Sold Out" sign on the marquee outside, on this the third show of their fall tour in support of a new release as well as the 10 year anniversary of another. The Gramercy Theatre has morphed through a long ...

Album Review

Expansions: The Dave Liebman Group: Samsara

by Budd Kopman
November 7, 2014

Dave Liebman is forever restless. An extremely emotional and expressive player, he has formed, after 20 years in a group featuring guitarist Vic Juris, the new group Expansions, purposefully bringing in and connecting with players of the younger generation. Adapting himself to their harmonic language and rhythmic patterns, he continues to expand and grow, resulting in the superb album Samsara. The new group includes bassist Tony Marino, with whom he has a twenty year relationship, and three adept ...

Extended Analysis

Guitar in the Space Age!

by Ian Patterson
November 7, 2014

Though prototype electric guitar first appeared in the early 1930s, the instrument only became a staple of popular music in the 1950s and 1960s. As a musical revolution was evolving, so was a different type altogether -space exploration. Sixty years on, in an age when the challenge is just to keep abreast of technological innovations it takes an effort to imagine the seismic shift that the electric guitar and space travel—and television that brought such adventures into millions of homes—signified ...