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

NYTC New York - Tokyo Connection: Precious Live at the B-flat

Read "Precious Live at the B-flat" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
November 7, 2014

It might be awkward and “punful" wordplay, but pianist and longtime Tokyo, Japan resident, Jonathan Katz--a scion of legendary Long Island music educator, Bill Katz--is and certainly will be by nature of this terrific recording--recognized as a very rising son. Fronting a swinging and well-communicating rhythm section and adding the superb talents of saxophonist Dave Pietro, Katz and his jammer kids make their own statements (while being admirably reminiscent of the legendary Dave Brubeck Quartet) and blaze ...

Album Review

Gabriel Espinosa/Hendrik Meurkens: Samba Little Samba

Read "Samba Little Samba" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 6, 2014

The hundredth release on the Zoho imprint was the aptly-titled Celebrando (Zoho Music, 2012)--the debut collaboration between Gabriel Espinosa and Hendrik Meurkens. This follow-up date, arriving a little more than two years later, is cut from the same musical cloth, though a few minor personnel changes and role adjustments give this one its own identity. The personnel constants across both albums are pianist Misha Tsiganov, drummer Antonio Sanchez, multi-reedist Anat Cohen, and vocalist Alison Wedding. Cohen, appearing ...

Album Review

Rachel Therrien: Home Inspiration

Read "Home Inspiration" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 6, 2014

The big challenge for the young musician is developing a distinctive voice. This goes not just for the instrumental side of the equation, but maybe even more so in the band they put together. Competence and even virtuosic flare are fairly common, but without the voice, the sound can come out bland, pasteurized. Trumpeter Rachel Therrien, out of Montreal, lacks a deep resume at this point. She's young. But she makes, in one of the toughest formats--the standard ...

Album Review

Nucleus with Leon Thomas: Live 1970

Read "Live 1970" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
November 6, 2014

Almost forty five years after it was thankfully captured on tape, this first official release of the June 1970 Montreux Jazz Festival concert by British jazz rock pioneers Nucleus performing with American jazz vocalist Leon Thomas features a truly fascinating set of Thomas' repertoire and blindingly good performances all round. This seemingly unlikely pairing of jazz rockers with jazz singer was explained in the album's sleeve notes written by Ian Carr's biographer Alyn Shipton. Nucleus had ...

Album Review

Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet: Afterimage

Read "Afterimage" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 6, 2014

Boston, MA area pianist, composer Pandelis Karayorgis brandishes his magic at a Chicago venue with some of the Windy City's finest improvisers. He shifts many concepts with odd-metered progressions while straddling the avant-garde spectrum amid a manifesto based on cohesive discourses, where the hornists may purposely lag behind the beat or bust out into commodious movements. Karayorgis is a perceptive composer, whether he ingrains a smoky blues motif with sinuous phrasings or positions the band into a manifold gait where ...

Live Review

Dave's Eight Track Mind

by John Ephland
November 6, 2014

Dave Stryker Crystal Run and Luna Stage Middletown, NY and West Orange, NJ November 2, 2014 It was a tale of two cities. Or two bands, to be more specific. Or two variations on a theme, to come that much closer to describing what went down on this first Sunday in November in the towns of Middletown, New York, and West Orange, New Jersey. It was a tale of one band following the ...

Live Review

Louis Moholo Moholo Quartet At The Crescent Arts Centre

by Ian Patterson
November 5, 2014

Louis Moholo-Moholo The Crescent Arts Centre Belfast October 30, 2014 Ireland has been graced by the presence of two South African musical icons in October. First, the brilliant, seventy-five-year-old trumpeter Hugh Masekela played Dublin and then a little over a week later Louis Moholo-Moholo--younger by a year--kicked up a storm in Belfast. That Masekela was playing the 1,200 seater National Concert Hall while Moholo-Moholo played to about sixty people in an intimate club setting ...

Album Review

Renaud Garcia-Fons: Beyond The Double Bass

Read "Beyond The Double Bass" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 5, 2014

It's often tempting for musicians to project limitations onto an instrument, but in truth, the instrument rarely deserves blame; an instrument, after all, is simply an inanimate object, so it's up to the player to further, extend, and broaden its reach. Musicians looking to do so must master and move beyond standard technique and the stylistic status quo, but anybody who's ever picked up an instrument knows that that's no easy feat. It takes creativity, patience, skill, inspiration, and a ...

Album Review

Wildbirds and Peacedrums: Rhythm

by Bruce Lindsay
November 5, 2014

As well as possessing one of the finest band names in contemporary music, Wildbirds And Peacedrums--Swedish husband and wife duo Andreas Werliin and Mariam Wallentin--has also produced some of the most intense, atmospheric and emotive songs. The trend continues on Rhythm, which the band describes as its “going back to our roots" album. Written, performed, produced, recorded and mixed by the duo, the album is the result of some intense creative effort. The result is impressive: it seems almost impossible ...

Album Review

Lars Greve: Breidablik

Read "Breidablik" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
November 5, 2014

The beautiful cover of Danish saxophonist Lars Greve's album Breidablik has a secret that only reveals itself when looking closely at the surface. The name of the artist is hidden in the corner, printed with almost invisible letters, while all attention is directed towards an abstract sublime image. Is it nature or not? The same question could be asked about the music. Greve disappears into a world of sound and together with producer Aske Zidore he has ...