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

Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts: Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts

Read "Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
September 23, 2014

The eponymously titled debut album by this trio of Berklee College of Music alumni is led by tenor saxophonist Chris Weller and was recorded between December 2013 and January 2014. The lack of bass in this band doesn't inhibit its ability to engage with rock infused dynamics. Comparisons with other groups are not easy since this one is unique, maybe Sex Mob, possibly Acoustic Ladyland but these guys carve out their own territory.The angular keyboard style of Cole ...

Album Review

Ginger Berglund & Scott Whitfield: Solitary Moon

Read "Solitary Moon" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 22, 2014

The unabridged subtitle of this endlessly charming album is “Ginger Berglund & Scott Whitfield Sing the Johnny Mandel Songbook." For those who were unaware that there is a Johnny Mandel Songbook apart from “Emily," “The Shadow of Your Smile" and “Close Enough for Love," this scintillating summary is a guaranteed eye-(and ear-) opener, lovingly packaged and earnestly delivered by Berglund and her multi-talented husband, trombonist / arranger / singer Whitfield. That “memorable trio" of songs are here, ...

Interview

Jon Armstrong: Limitless Enthusiasm

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
September 22, 2014

Of those jazz men who are still left (of course today is a new day and jazz is dying again), the Jon Armstrong Jazz Orchestra's debut album Farewell, is something new to say hello to. The end is the beginning you know. Jon Armstrong has a (so-far) limitless enthusiasm for being in the thick of music, he is both mature experience and child psyche, surrounded by the vibrant Los Angeles music scene, gifted with Daniel Rosenboom as his inspirational label ...

Album Review

Theron Shaw: Gumbo Caribe

Read "Gumbo Caribe" reviewed by Nigel Campbell

by Nigel Campbell
September 22, 2014

Theron Shaw is well known in local music circles as the go-to man for guitar support ranging from jazz to calypso. His two previous releases signalled a willingness to engage with native cultural mores and tackle Caribbean Jazz not only as a way to “tropicalise" harmonically complex original music, but as a way to validate and valorise calypsoes, ethnic music and folk songs in a surprisingly new context. With his third release on CD, Gumbo Caribe, Shaw almost exclusively utilises ...

Album Review

Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts: Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts

Read "Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
September 22, 2014

Composer and saxophonist Chris Weller was born and raised in Oak Park, IL. Weller sites his passion for music happened in eighth grade after hearing Charlie Parker. Weller attend Berklee College of Music on a scholarship from 2007-2010, where he received his bachelor's degree in Music Performance. While at Berklee, Weller studied with: George Garzone, Dave Santoro, drum master Rakalam Bob Moses, Ed Tomassi, Jim Odgren, Shannon LeClaire,Greg Hopkins, Benny Golson and Mark Turner. Weller perfected his studies while performing ...

Album Review

The Sticks: The Sticks

Read "The Sticks" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 22, 2014

The Sticks is a new, young Norwegian trio, another product of the acclaimed jazz conservatory in Trondheim--pianist Oscar Grönberg, (who was born in Sweden and plays in saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg quartet), double bassist Aksel Jensen and drummer Håkon Mjåset Johansen (who plays in violinist Ola Kvernberg trio and in the modern jazz quintet Motif). The trio's name has two meanings for Norwegians and both may describe the spirit of its music: wasteland or middle-of-nowhere, but locals use it to describe ...

Profile

Drago Gajo: Jazz Internationalist

by Fred W. Gretsch
September 21, 2014

It's said that music is the universal language. And even though it's considered an American creation, jazz music in particular is performed and enjoyed all over the world--including in the central European nation of Slovenia. For anyone who might be unfamiliar with Slovenia, it's one of the countries formed after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Located at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia is bordered on the west by Italy, on the north by Austria, ...

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Album Review

Jack Cooper: Mists - Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra

Read "Mists - Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 21, 2014

American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) was an arts iconoclast in the vein of his contemporary poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Both men were successful business executives who profoundly changed American art as an avocation. Ive's music brimmed with an Americana that sounds slightly sepia-toned today, but that has not prevented it's subjugation as subject for jazz interpretation, another piece of Americana. Theo Bleckmann and Kneebody's Twelve Songs by Charles Ives (Winter & Winter, 2008) set the patrician insurance executive's sound on ...

Album Review

Wayne Horvitz: 55: Music and Dance In Concrete

Read "55: Music and Dance In Concrete" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 21, 2014

Reviewed on LP, the only other option for this release is a digital download, but with the latter you won't get the sharp colorful booklet that includes photos of the corresponding dance moves, choreographed by Yukio Suzuki and Wayne Horvitz' detailed album notes. The album was recorded at an old military base, Fort Worden that is situated in a state park outside of Seattle. In fact, the Fort serves as an additional instrument, especially heightened by the inherent analog vinyl ...

Album Review

U2: Songs of Innocence

Read "Songs of Innocence" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 21, 2014

These days there is no other band that can polarize both critics and audiences alike than Irish band U2. Most of the time that's because of non-musical reasons that have accumulated through the years and the internet never forgets. The band always seems to cause heated debates that swell into fever pitch. Having reinvented themselves several times during their career the most constant thing about it is the constant change. And with each new record U2 seems to be taking ...