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.

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

September 2014

by Mr. P.C.
September 1, 2014

Dear Mr. P.C. I play five nights a week in a restaurant, and there's a sign right at the entrance that says “Restrooms are for Customer Use Only." My problem is that it's a four-hour gig, and sometimes I have to go really bad by the end. Would it be out of line for me to ask the management if I could use the restroom once a night? --John Dear John:

Album Review

Mark Jennett: Everybody Says Don't

Read "Everybody Says Don't" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 1, 2014

On Everybody Says Don't, his second album, London-based singer Mark Jennett joins a bunch of top flight instrumentalists, including producer Geoff Gascoyne, on a collection that takes in an impressive array of songs, composers and moods. Great songs, interpreted with style. Jennett opens up with Stephen Sondheim's “Everybody Says Don't," taken at speed. Gascoyne's acoustic bass and Sebastian De Krom's drums move the song forward with swing and precision, Jennett's vocal is suitably emphatic and Rob Barron's swift ...

Album Review

Christian Vuust: Urban Hymn

Read "Urban Hymn" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 31, 2014

Multi-reedist/composer Christian Vuust has been a mainstay of the Danish jazz scene for close to thirty years. A professor at the Royal Academy of Music in his hometown of Aarhus, Vuust has crafted a significant discography as leader, working with some of Denmark's best jazz musicians. Urban Hyms marks a departure for Vuust, being his first CD recorded outside Denmark. Recorded in a single day in New York, Jeff Ballard, Ben Street and Aaron Parks's sophisticated yet subtle support frames ...

Extended Analysis

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: OverTime: Music Of Bob Brookmeyer

by Dan Bilawsky
August 31, 2014

Trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer extraordinaire Mel Lewis may have given birth to the band that's now known as The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, but the late Bob Brookmeyer gave the group artistic independence at a time when it was sorely needed. When Jones left the fold and departed for Europe at the tail end of the '70s, things could've gone a very different way for this storied outfit: it could've simply carried on as a pretty good ...

Album Review

Oren Ambarchi and Eli Keszler: Alps

by John Eyles
August 31, 2014

A release on the Dancing Wayang label is always cause for celebration for several reasons. Firstly, they are few and far between, with Alps being only the label's ninth release since it began issuing records in 2007; rarely do two appear in a year, and never more than two--which makes 2014 a special year as Alps follows the release of Motion by N.E.W. earlier in the year. Secondly, the reason for their scarcity is that each Dancing Wayang release is ...

Album Review

Joel Harrison: Mother Stump

Read "Mother Stump" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
August 31, 2014

Given his proclivity for wildly eclectic, big-concept musical projects featuring improbable combinations of multi-ethnic instrumentalists, Joel Harrison is about the last guitarist I'd expect to record a funky slab of power-trio jazz-rock-funk fusion. Across the board, his guitaristic skills have taken a back seat to compositional concerns and rich, detailed arrangements. Yet, here is Mother Stump, Harrison's paean to 70s-era jazz-rooted, rock-powered, funked-up guitar-centric instrumental music. Moreover, Harrison has pointedly eschewed all of the studio polish and post-production nonsense that ...

Extended Analysis

Julie Kelly: Happy to Be

by Jack Bowers
August 30, 2014

Julie Kelly is a talented singer whose talents are a fairly well-kept secret except on the West Coast, where she makes her home. Happy to Be is Kelly's eighth album, the first on Graham Carter's Colorado-based Jazzed Media label, and as has been her custom in the past, she chooses for the most part interesting songs that aren't heard nearly often enough. Compositions by Dave Frishberg, Bob Dorough, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Richard Rodney Bennett and even Phoebe Snow are here, ...

Film Review

Charles Lloyd: Arrows Into Infinity

by John Kelman
August 30, 2014

Charles Lloyd Arrows Into Infinity ECM Records 2014 It's rare to have an opportunity to see a music film in both the theatre and the comfort of your own home, but a serendipitous invite to the 2013 Jazztopad Festival in Wrocław, Poland not only provided the chance to hear saxophonist Charles Lloyd premiering a new work, commissioned by the festival, with an entirely new group; it also presented, in a movie theatre, Arrows Into ...

Album Review

Mammal Hands: Animalia

Read "Animalia" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 30, 2014

When is a trio with a piano not a piano trio? British outfit Mammal Hands offers one answer to that conundrum with debut album Animalia, released on Gondwana Records, the label run by discerning trumpeter and producer Matthew Halsall. Actually, given the varied nature of the tunes on display--co-written by the band members--it offers eight answers. Nick Smart's piano is certainly a key element of the Mammal Hands sound, but it's by no means the dominant one--brother Jordan ...

New York Beat

More from Clifford Brown

by Nick Catalano
August 30, 2014

Ever since I wrote the biography of Clifford Brown (Oxford University Press, 2000) I've been hoping that someone would come forth with some newly discovered recording, some new photos of Brownie, or some new piece of information about his life that wasn't available at the time the book was published. One of the great bonuses of new-age information technology is the amazing dissemination of material that seems to come forth in dribs and drabs. Any biographer hopes that new discoveries ...