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

Quadraceratops: Quadraceratops

Read "Quadraceratops" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 7, 2014

It's a question that's puzzled and divided jazz fans and critics alike, since before Louis Armstrong left New Orleans. There's been no sign of resolution and the dissent continues as the jazz world wrestles with this thorniest of debates. Just what is the best-est dinosaur ever? The music on this self-titled debut provides the answer--it's the Quadraceratops. This particular Quadraceratops is a London-based septet led by alto saxophonist and composer Cath Roberts, who brought the band together in ...

Album Review

Cynthia Felton: Cynthia Felton Sings The Nancy Wilson Classics: Save Your Love For Me

Read "Cynthia Felton Sings The Nancy Wilson Classics: Save Your Love For Me" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 7, 2014

Dr. Cynthia Felton dots all the i's and crosses all the t's when putting together an album. She's a detail-oriented singer with enough smarts, business savvy, and musical skill to pull off whatever type of project she wants to pursue, be it a salute to a woefully under-appreciated figure like Oscar Brown Jr. or a tribute to jazz's most lauded figure--the great Duke Ellington. For her third tribute album, and fourth album overall, Felton turns her attention to the work ...

Live Review

Wadada Leo Smith Silver Orchestra & Anthony Braxton Trio Live at Zipper Hall

by Robert Bush
October 7, 2014

Wadada Leo Smith Silver Orchestra, Anthony Braxton Trio Zipper Hall 2014 Angel City Jazz Festival Los Angeles, CA September 27, 2014 The 2014 Angel City Jazz Festival, a spectacular non-commercial multi-day event, may well have reached its zenith with the inspired double-bill concert featuring Wadada Leo Smith's Silver Orchestra and the Anthony Braxton Trio. Wadada Leo Smith Silver Orchestra Smith's Silver Orchestra reimagined several ...

Album Review

Dann Zinn: Shangri La

Read "Shangri La" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 6, 2014

Maybe we've had it all wrong about Shangri-La. Instead of viewing it as a fictional utopian locale, as laid out by author James Hilton in his famed Lost Horizon (Macmillan, 1933), it can be alternately viewed as a wide-open musical state of being waiting to be explored. That's what saxophonist Dann Zinn seems to go for on this aptly-titled release. For this project, Zinn put together a flexible trio capable of blurring lines. Atmospherics and solid-state jams ...

Album Review

Emilio Solla Y La Inestable De Brooklyn: Second Half

Read "Second Half" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 6, 2014

The life-as-football-game metaphor is central to this stunning album from pianist Emilio Solla. In 2012, Solla had an epiphany. He awoke to the realities of his existence, the finite nature of things, and the passage of time. He realized that he'd already played the first half of this game called life, working his way up and down the field while executing play after play. Now, in working his way into the second half, he's learned to play ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Kenny Dorham: The Complete ‘Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia – Blue Note 1524

by Marc Davis
October 6, 2014

I think I have a new favorite hard bop record. For many years, I considered Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers the perfect hard bop band--the Beatles of the bop set. I still do. I don't know how Blakey managed to find the very best up-and-coming jazz musicians in America, year after year, but somehow he did. And somehow the various bands he put together, no matter who was in them, produced superlative 5-star records, year after year. ...

Extended Analysis

Nate Birkey: Just a Closer Walk

by Victor L. Schermer
October 6, 2014

Nate Birkey is a fine New York-based trumpeter who traveled a biographical route from childhood in Colorado to Boston's Berklee School of Music, then to various parts of the West Coast, living and working in the Los Angeles area for a while, and finally settling into the big-time jazz scene in NYC a few years ago. His travels are important, for they formed the foundation for an understanding of the American spirit that infuses his playing. He has made nine ...

Album Review

Amanda Ruzza & Mauricio Zottarelli: Glasses, No Glasses

Read "Glasses, No Glasses" reviewed by Ernest Barteldes

by Ernest Barteldes
October 6, 2014

Those familiar with Amanda Ruzza's debut solo This Is What Happened (2012, Pimenta Music) will find no similarities between that project and this collaboration with fellow Brazilian drummer Mauricio Zottarelli. While that first disc went into more of a samba-jazz direction, this one could be classified as an electronic jazz album with funk-blues tendencies. Playing in a trio featuring Leo Genovese on a variety of keyboards and saxophones, the disc kicks off with “Soundcheck," a funk-inspired tune in which the ...

Album Review

Michael Blake: Tiddy Boom

Read "Tiddy Boom" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 6, 2014

Tenor saxophonist Michael Blake has played a prominent factor within the backbone of New York's progressive jazz scene, having performed with big bands, small ensembles and on Tiddy Boom, re-aligning with New York Jazz Collective comrades, pianist Frank Kimbrough and bassist Ben Allison. In-demand session drummer Rudy Royston complements a group that proffers sympathetic support to Blake's line of attack, outlined by classic jazz outings by yesteryear's masters. Essentially, he revisits his origins and pays homage to Coleman Hawkins and ...

Live Review

Jazz Finland Festival / European Jazz Conference 2014

by Ian Patterson
October 6, 2014

Jazz Finland Festival/European Jazz Conference Hotel Crowne Plaza/Various Venues Helsinki, Finland September 18-21, 2014 When the steamship RMS Andania docked in the port of Helsinki in 1926 it unloaded more than just cargo. The American jazz group the Andania Yankees that disembarked stayed for two months and effectively kick-started jazz in the Finnish capital. Today, Finnish jazz is in rude health and it was the mission of the Finnish Jazz Federation to showcase a ...