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

Welch / Chazav / Israeli Trio: Jazz from the Middle to the East: Songs from Tel Aviv

Read "Jazz from the Middle to the East: Songs from Tel Aviv" reviewed by Nathalie Tamara Freson

by Nathalie Tamara Freson
September 21, 2014

Gilad Chatsav's third album, Jazz from the Middle to the East--Songs from Tel Aviv, grabs you from the start. Not necessarily because of its musical ingenuity, but because of its diversity of styles and rhythms. The album features ten pieces, all original compositions by Chatsav, saving two by Welch as well as two arrangements ("Caravan" and “Ode to the Bay"). Gilad Chatsav teams up again with old friend and bassist Stewart Welch and is joined this time by ...

Album Review

Fred Marty: Ondes Primitives: Improvised Solo Pieces for Double Bass

Read "Ondes Primitives: Improvised Solo Pieces for Double Bass" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 21, 2014

The debut album of French double bassist Fred Marty summarizes his musical experience and exploration through an entire spectrum, from classical interpretation to collaborative free improvisation. Marty employs the bass as an organic extension of his body, searching for an array of extended techniques that expand the instrument's timbral range. Each of nine pieces focuses on a distinct sonic property and acoustic palette, developing ideas in an intimate and usually patient manner, like a researcher who ...

Live Review

Charlie Daniels Band at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury

by Mike Perciaccante
September 20, 2014

Charlie Daniels Band, Molly Hatchet and the New Riders of the Purple Sage NYCB Theatre at Westbury Westbury, NY September 13, 2014 Charlie Daniels is an American treasure. The 77-year-old singer/guitarist/violinist, who will celebrate his 78th birthday in late October 2014, has been writing and performing since the '50s. In 1964, Daniels co-wrote Elvis Presley's “It Hurts Me." During the early part of his career, he was a working Nashville session musician, playing on albums ...

Album Review

Diva: A Swingin' Life

Read "A Swingin' Life" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 20, 2014

What do you get when you have fifteen talented and swinging female jazz musicians in an orchestral setting? The answer, drummer Sherrie Maricle and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra offering A Swingin' Life as proof that hard-charging big band music is not the exclusivity of the male gender. Building upon the work of more than a dozen previous albums, DIVA presents music from the Great American Songbook and more, capturing eleven audacious tracks recorded live by Jazz at Lincoln Center at ...

Book Review

Jan Granlie: My Favorite Things - Jazz Photos 2004-2014

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 20, 2014

My Favorite Things--Jazz Photos 2004 -2014 Jan Granlie 182 Jazz og Sånn 2014 Norwegian photographer, writer and editor Jan Granilie has an intimate and through knowledge of the history and almost everyone that is involved in the Nordic and European jazz scenes. He edited the Norwegian jazz magazine Jazznytt for several years and is now the editor of the jazz website Salt Peanuts. Granlie wrote countless reviews on albums, gigs and European ...

Album Review

The Old 97s: Most Messed Up

Read "Most Messed Up" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 20, 2014

How great is it to discover a band that has been here all along? The Old 97s are nothing new. Coming together in Dallas in 1993, the popular quartet led by the aptly-named Rhett Butler has recorded 15 studio CDs since 1994's Hitchhike to Rhome (Idol Records). The band emerged as part of a larger resurgence in alternate-Americana/Country music that included Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt and The Bottle Rockets. Imagine my surprise ...

Album Review

Luke Paulo And The Grapefruit: Mirrors

by Chris Mosey
September 20, 2014

The lights dim. A figure steps onto the stage holding a guitar. He wears a dark suit and a fedora hat and sings his own melancholy lyrics in a deep, lugubrious voice. Could it be...? Well, of course not. This is a small club in the vastly unhip English city of Reading, in turn part of the appropriately named county of Berkshire. Leonard Cohen wouldn't be seen dead in a place like this. But, as he turns ...

Bailey's Bundles

The Led Zeppelin Papers: Led Zeppelin III, Deluxe Edition

by C. Michael Bailey
September 20, 2014

Led Zeppelin II was the second element of the musical binary epoxy that hardened the reputation of the band after the release of Led Zeppelin. “Sonic crunch" is an apt description of II while Led Zeppelin III takes a hard right into new (and, perhaps, unwelcome) territory. Led Zeppelin Led Zepplin III, Deluxe Edition (Atlantic Records) 1970/2014 I keep nursing this love-hate attitude toward Led Zeppelin. Partly from genuine interest and ...

Live Review

Live From Birmingham: Benjamin Booker, Grey Wolf & Blondie

by Martin Longley
September 19, 2014

Benjamin Booker O2 Academy September 6, 2014 Usually, audience demographics are spread closely in line with the age of a performer, but such things were not predictable at Stateside bluesman Benjamin Booker's gig. Although born in Virginia, this 25-year-old singer/guitarist now dwells deep down in New Orleans, adopting many of the traits commonly exhibited by gnarled oldsters three times his age. The crowd in the venue's smallest room (Academy 3) looked to be ...

Live Review

The Meter Men at the Ogden Theater, Denver

by Geoff Anderson
September 19, 2014

The Meter Men Ogden Theater Denver, CO September 11, 2014 Funkify your life Get on down You can be the funkiest one In your town That pretty much sums up the philosophy of the Meters and now the Meter Men. In the song “Funkify Your Life," they seem to be offering a suggestion for a lifestyle, or at least an attitude. And a noble suggestion it is. Certainly, we ...