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.

One LP

Jack Bruce: L'ascension, Olivier Messiaen

by William Ellis
November 5, 2014

"It's called L'ascension by Olivier Messiaen who was a French composer I have loved for most of my life. Why I love his compositions is he shows that music has always existed. Humans only stole it. We borrowed it -but it's in nature. It holds the universe together, ask any skylark or ask any blackbird, they'll tell you." Jack Bruce: Band on the Wall, Manchester, 24th March, 2011 This One LP appears ...

Album Review

Linda Cole and Joshua Bowlus: What a Wonderful World

Read "What a Wonderful World" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 5, 2014

Yes...that Cole Family. The same talent pool that gave us Nat King Cole and Freddy Cole has also given us Linda Cole (a daughter of the brothers Cole's cousin). Linda Cole teams with pianist/arranger Joshua Bowlus and his quartet for a breezy stroll through 13 pieces from the Cole Family songbook and beyond. Globally, Bowlus supplies fresh arrangements, making these chestnuts new again without polishing away their nostalgic sepia tone. Bowlus favors a relaxed slow-tempo swing that ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Barbara Lusch

by AAJ Staff
November 5, 2014

Meet Barbara Lusch: Barbara Lusch has a unique and compelling way with a song that goes straight to your heart. Her new recording, Rock Me Sweet (Slimstyle Records), is a surprising and magnetic reinterpretation of some of the best loved rock anthems of the 80's. Well-known hits of male rock icons such as Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Bono have been transformed by Barbara into sophisticated, sexy, and soulful songs. You can hear “Dancin' in the Dark" sparkling with ...

Album Review

Miguel Zenon: Identities Are Changeable

Read "Identities Are Changeable" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
November 4, 2014

It would simply be enough to just hear Miguel Zenón's saxophone; its fluid, darting, humming bird-like maneuvers, soulful and piercing. Yet as one of the most distinctive altos in jazz, the Grammy nominated and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow is also a gifted composer who continues to deliver insights into his culture as vividly expressed in 2011's Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook and 2009's Esta Plena, both released on Marsalis Music. His ninth recording as a leader, ...

Multiple Reviews

Konstruct rules the world

by Mark Corroto
November 4, 2014

KonstruKt with Marshall Allen, Barlas Tan Özemek, and Hüseyin Ertunç Vibrations Of The Day Holidays Records 2014 If you are old enough, you might remember when four lads from Liverpool conquered America with rock-and-roll, or how the Rolling Stones redefined the blues tradition. The American blues tradition, that is. Add to that short list, the Turkish band Konstrukt. This quartet of saxophonist Korhan Futacı, guitarist Umut Çağlar, drummer Korhan Argüden and percussionist Özün Usta ...

Album Review

Greg Abate Quartet: Motif

by Edward Blanco
November 4, 2014

A traveling jazz master with an international reputation as one of the top-tier saxophonist in the business today, Greg Abate and his distinguished quartet unveils a new Motif of splendid bebop sounds which, for this artist, is natural recurring theme. An expert of the bebop/post-bop sound he has performed for most of his career, Abate is recognized one of the finest proponents and interpreter of the style in the jazz world today. An Educator as well as ...

Album Review

Steve Heckman Quintet: Search for Peace

Read "Search for Peace" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 4, 2014

Steve Heckman is a meat 'n potatoes saxophonist whose previous recording, Born to be Blue (Jazzed Media, 2013) was a trip through the heart of the jazz mainstream, circa 1960 (with better sonics). Heckman follows Born to be Blue with a right turn into hard bop atop of an organ-guitar quartet. For the present recording, Heckman employs his same band as Born to be Blue with Matt Clark switching to the Hammond B-3. The result is a ...

Album Review

Nicole Mitchell's Sonic Projections: The Secret Escapades of Velvet Anderson

Read "The Secret Escapades of Velvet Anderson" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 4, 2014

Sonic Projections must be flautist Nicole Mitchell's hardest blowing band. For their second outing after Emerald Hills (Rogue Art, 2010) she draws inspiration from another hard blowing source in Chicago legend Fred Anderson. Not only a mentor to many young musicians in the Windy City, the saxophonist also ran the renowned Velvet Lounge tavern. That required a whole different order of skills to keep it going for so long: negotiation, organization, graft and resourcefulness in the face of gangsters and ...

Jazzin' Around Europe

The 606 Jazz Club in London

by Rob Adams
November 4, 2014

Ronnie Scott used to joke that the food his jazz club in Soho, London served was delicious because “fifty thousand flies can't be wrong." Four miles west, at the 606 Club in Chelsea where Steve Rubie oversees a business that's one of the biggest employers of jazz musicians in the UK, with a programme that features ten bands a week, a gastronomic theme also emerges. Rubie and “the Six," as it's affectionately known, have a working history that ...

Multiple Reviews

Robert Fripp: Across Four Decades with Brian Eno and Theo Travis

by John Kelman
November 4, 2014

In a professional career now approaching 50 years, guitarist Robert Fripp may be at his most visible when he's finding that “way of doing things" that necessitates the return of his flagship King Crimson--its recently revived and revitalized seven-piece, three-drummer lineup completing its 20-date American debut tour in early October 2014, including two exhilarating nights at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre. It was so successful--and, perhaps most importantly, so enjoyable--for the 68 year-old co-founder of the group that shook the world ...