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.

Extended Analysis

Various Artists: Real World 25

by Nenad Georgievski
September 28, 2014

Probably there is no other popular artist in this shrinking world that has promoted various musics and cultures outside the Western world than singer Peter Gabriel. In the beginning, his solo records were influenced more and more by African music, especially its rhythms until those influences became an important and dominant trademark on his records. Then, in 1982, he got involved in World of Music and Dance festival (or WOMAD), a platform for cross-pollination of world music, which recently celebrated ...

Album Review

Daniel Schlaeppi: Voices Live

Read "Voices Live" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
September 28, 2014

For what more could one ask? A live gig, excellently recorded; an appreciative audience; a band which is sharp as a tack that comes charging out of the gate smoking, playing music to which one cannot help but move. The previous live album of bassist Daniel Schlaeppi, was Dimensions Live, and he brings us this time a set from Jazzfestival Schaffhausen with a band that has no harmony instrument. Consisting of two saxophones/bass clarinets, Jurg Bucher ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Malonie Carre

by AAJ Staff
September 28, 2014

Meet Malonie Carre: Malonie Carre is a Canadian contemporary jazz singer currently residing in Cancun, Riviera Maya, Mexico. Performing with jazz artists from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Cuba, including Gianny Laredo, Mario Patron and Esteban Herrera, corporate private events, international jazz festivals and jazz sessions in Mayan Palace, Wine Bar. Her current album, her debut, Forever (2014) features the Malonie Carre Quartet with Gianny Laredo. “Our main objective is to bring vocal jazz back into the modern ...

Album Review

Mark Meadows: Somethin’ Good

Read "Somethin’ Good" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
September 28, 2014

Mark Meadows is a multifaceted jazz pianist, composer and jazz educator. Besides regularly performing across the U.S, Meadows also teaches four courses as an adjunct instructor at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. During the 2014-2015 season, Meadows is appearing alongside world-renowned musicians such as: Warren Wolf, Cyrus Chestnut, Dontae Winslow, Kris Funn, Todd Marcus, Eric Kennedy, Chad Lefkowitz Brown, Elijah Balbed, Quincy Phillips, Gary Thomas, Paul Bollenback, and Dr. Alex Norris. Meadows is ...

Live Review

Monterey Jazz Festival 2014

by Josef Woodard
September 27, 2014

Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey County Fairgrounds Monterey, CA September 19-21, 2014 Working the Numbers, and Young People Going Deep Numbers worked in mysterious, seemingly synchronistic ways at this year's Monterey Jazz Festival, which celebrated its 57th anniversary year partly by also respectfully toasting the 75th anniversary of the mighty Blue Note Records label. Of course, music and numbers enjoy a tight relationship, along with a certain numerological fixation, and that tidy numerical ...

Extended Analysis

At Fillmore East: The 1971 Fillmore Recordings

by Doug Collette
September 27, 2014

At least initially, the announcement of the release of additional recordings of the Allman Brothers Band at the famed (and now defunct) New York venue Fillmore East was cause for celebration. Upon closer inspection of the content and, in turn, its accurate placement in the context of the seminal Southern rock band's history, the joy dissipates considerably and, ultimately, leads the musiclover back to the original title At Fillmore East (Capricorn, 1971). Safe to say, it's invaluable for that reason ...

Album Review

Patrick Hall: Time Remembered: The Music Of Bill Evans

Read "Time Remembered: The Music Of Bill Evans" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
September 27, 2014

The unconventional inside a conventional skin. That's what we have here with trombonist Pat Hall's offering Time Remembered: The Music of Bill Evans. Playing it from the bottom up, so to speak, Hall's approach to the Evans corpus (along with two standards associated with the late pianist, Rodgers and Hart's “Spring Is Here" and Earl Zindars' “Elsa") is also unconventional due the presence of organist Greg “Organ Monk" Lewis laying down the chordal framework. Along with guitarist Martin Sewell and ...

Album Review

Blue-Eyed Hawk: Under the Moon

Read "Under the Moon" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
September 27, 2014

"Oyster Trails" opens this fascinating potpourri of new talent with Lauren Kinsella's ethereal vocals at times eerily channelling the late Sandy Denny. The darker “Somewhere" is an acid-tripped version of the Arlen and Harburg classic “Over the Rainbow" and is frenetic and astoundingly effective with Laura Jurd's scintillating trumpet to the fore. A dawn chorus appropriately accompanies the quieter “Aurora 5AM" begging the question, what is this music? Jazz, folk, rock, blues, it's none and all of this and more ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Karen Lane

by AAJ Staff
September 27, 2014

Meet Karen Lane: Originally from Perth then Sydney and Singapore and has been resident in London for the last 14 years. She has released five albums to rave reviews and played London's most prestigious jazz clubs including Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho and Ronnie Scotts with musicians including Jamie Cullum, Geoff Gascogne, Enzo Zirilli, Renato D'Aiello and Alec Dankworth. She's found herself singing in exotic places she'd never imagined she'd see including Sicily, Portafino, Nice, Monte Carlo, Berlin, Cape ...

Album Review

Lara Solnicki: Whose Shadow?

Read "Whose Shadow?" reviewed by Everett R. Davis

by Everett R. Davis
September 27, 2014

Canadian contemporary jazz vocalist, published poet and composer, Lara Solnicki originally intended a career in opera but turned to jazz in 2008 following a brief collaboration with a classical composer, in a conscious attempt to marry her two arts, music and poetry. She has emerged from the Canadian scene with a spellbinding voice and is highly sough after on the Toronto jazz circuit. Solnicki has been rightfully labeled a vocal purist with tremendous tonal control and naturally sings any jazz ...