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

Gerry Gibbs Thrasher Dream Trio: We're Back

Read "We're Back" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 15, 2014

Drummer Gerry Gibbs must be in a “strike while the iron is hot" mode. Less than a year after his very successful Gerry Gibbs Thrasher Dream Trio (Whaling City Sound, 2013), featuring Ron Carter on bass and Kenny Barron on piano, he has reconvened with those jazz legends for a second go around. This time, with We're Back, the trio moves away from the jazz standard format and goes after some of the classic R& B hits from the 60s ...

Album Review

Andy Milne & Dapp Theory: Forward In All Directions

Read "Forward In All Directions" reviewed by Ernest Barteldes

by Ernest Barteldes
September 15, 2014

On Forward in All Directions, pianist and bandleader Andy Milne brings various musical elements to play, including electronics and spoken word alongside some masterful playing and chemistry from his bandmates. The album kicks off with “Hopscotch," an up-tempo number centered on Aaron Kruziki's saxophone with a smart backbeat from the rhythm section. “Photograph" introduces electronics in the background. The groove breaks for some spoken word from John Moon about looking at old pictures, and then the dynamic lowers for great ...

Album Review

Brian Groder Trio: Reflexology

Read "Reflexology" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 15, 2014

The cover of trumpeter Brian Groder new trio tells much about his aesthetics. He is well-versed with the compositional ideas of the great American jazz masters and their improvisation strategies--Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, including trumpeters as Woody Shaw and Freddie Hubbard. But in the same manner that these innovative and creative muscians marked their sonic footprint in the rich legacy of the genre, Groder not only reflects on past achievments but wants to take this genre a step ...

Album Review

Bobby Wellins and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: Culloden Moor Suite

Read "Culloden Moor Suite" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 15, 2014

It's over 268 years since the Battle of Culloden and yet the event continues to resonate in contemporary Scotland (which votes on independence just a few days after this album is released). Tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins wrote his Culloden Moor Suite in 1961, inspired by John Prebble's book, Culloden, released in the same year. The composition gets a new lease of life with this big band recording, from May 2013, which brings Wellins together with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Ray Clemens

by AAJ Staff
September 14, 2014

Meet Ray Clemens: Born in Oklahoma. High school at the Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, CA. College and briefly at the New School for Social Research in NYC. Been playing for what seems ages....and yet I can't come up with suitable material for the bio. Instrument(s): Bass -upright & electric, piano Teachers and/or influences? I've had the pleasure of studying with some amazing musical minds. It all started at the Idyllwild Arts Academy ...

Album Review

Kelley Suttenfield: Among The Stars

Read "Among The Stars" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 14, 2014

Voice and nylon-string guitar. That's it. Nothing else to hear on this one, but nothing else is really needed. Vocalist Kelley Suttenfield's first album--Where Is Love (Rhombus Records, 2009)--was a well-crafted, full band affair that reimagined the works of everybody from Wes Montgomery ("West Coast Blues") to Caetano Veloso ("Coraçao Vagabundo") to The Platters ("Twilight Time"). On her sophomore date, she strips away the band, leaving only guitarist Tony Romano in the picture to help her explore ...

Album Review

Renaud Garcia-Fons: Beyond The Double Bass

Read "Beyond The Double Bass" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 14, 2014

The double bass. Everyone knows the double bass--it goes “boom, boom, boom." Sometimes, to paraphrase Sophia Loren, it goes “boom, boody, boom." In the hands of a virtuoso it does so much more than that: it has passion, dynamism, emotion and the power to move the soul. Renaud Garcia-Fons is such a virtuoso and Beyond The Double Bass--a compilation drawn from ten previous albums, with an accompanying DVD documentary--is absolutely superb. Garcia-Fons--who favors a five-string double bass on ...

Live Review

Chris Isaak at NYCB Theatre at Westbury

by Christine Connallon
September 14, 2014

Chris Isaak NYCB Theatre at Westbury Long Island, NY September 7, 2014 Chris Isaak likes to make a splash. The perpetually youthful musician burst onto the stage the way he burst onto the music scene 30 years ago, when he signed to Warner Brothers and subsequently released the CD Silvertone (Warner Brothers, 1985). The crowd at the NYCB Theatre in Westbury spanned multiple generations and was clearly there for a rock and roll ...

Album Review

Christian Pabst Trio + 7: Song of Opposites

Read "Song of Opposites" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 14, 2014

German-born pianist Christian Pabst has been the leader of an award-winning trio since before the debut of their critically-acclaimed Days of Infinity (Challenge Records, 2010), however on Song of Opposites, the trio is augmented by seven additional instrumental voices adding a new chapter to this versatile artist's resume. Recorded in Amsterdam--where Pabst is currently based--the pianist presents an all-European cast of players offering an album of new modern classical jazz material that includes a three-piece string section on five tunes ...

Album Review

Colin Webster/Mark Holub: Viscera

by Sammy Stein
September 14, 2014

To be able to say you have heard something unique is rare these days. Of course, every musician's recordings are unique but occasionally there arrives an album which is truly 'stand alone' and Viscera (New Atlantic),the third album by saxophonist Colin Webster and drummer Mark Holub is one such album. The album consists of track after track of incisive, aggressive, full-on free jazz played at a rate and with such alacrity it defies any attempt at categorization. This is no ...