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

Wadada Leo Smith: Great Lakes Suites

Read "Great Lakes Suites" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 27, 2014

Two of the most enduring voices avant-garde jazz belong to trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and reedman Henry Threadgill. Smith's The Great Lakes Suites, six of his distinctive compositions on a two CD set, teams the two icons inside the equilateral quartet that includes drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist John Lindberg. It sounds like a dream team, and it is. DeJohnette has played on Smith's Golden Quartet, Lindberg has joined the trumpeter in a variety of contexts, groups large and small. ...

Album Review

Karl Seglem: NyeSongar.no

Read "NyeSongar.no" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 27, 2014

Looking at the cover of the album NyeSongar.no, there's no doubt that the Norwegian saxophonist and goat horn-player Karl Seglem is still exploring the Nordic aesthetic that he perfected on his album NORSKjazz.no (Ozella, 2009). The resemblance between the titles is striking and it is underlined by a Nordic iconography. NORSKjazz.no had an image of tall Norwegian trees and NyeSongar.no is graced by a photograph of an endless landscape covered by snow. In the foreground there is a stone and ...

Album Review

Stefano Bollani: Joy in Spite of Everything

Read "Joy in Spite of Everything" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 26, 2014

Like a kind of musical contortionist, Stefano Bollani keeps repositioning himself with eye-popping ease. The diversity and eclecticism of Bollani's projects are reflected in the sweeping breadth of his vocabulary; his output as leader on ECM alone, since his debut Piano Solo (ECM, 2006), is indicative of his adventurous spirit. That solo outing was followed by Orvieto (ECM, 2011), a joyous duologue with Chick Corea, whereas the exhilarating O Que Sera (ECM, 2013) coupled the Italian with Brazilian bandolim player ...

Interview

Eric Revis: Trajectory From The Tradition

by R.J. DeLuke
August 26, 2014

The development of an individual voice on the contrabass is important to Eric Revis, one of the strongest players on the scene. His power and musicianship has endeared him to some of the finer musicians, and bands, in jazz. But Revis isn't content to let things lie there. Not that he has to be out front flexing his considerable bass muscles. That's not the point. Through bands that he forms, his compositions, his collaborations, he wants to grow ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Jimmy Smith: A New Sound, A New Star, Vol. 1 and 2 – Blue Note 1512 and 1514

by Marc Davis
August 26, 2014

Listening to Jimmy Smith's early recordings is like listening to Chuck Berry play “Johnny B. Goode." Today, every rock guitarist from junior high school on knows the riff and can play it by heart. But Chuck Berry did it first, and arguably best. There were no great rock guitar licks before Chuck Berry. He created the template. It's the same with Jimmy Smith. Today, there are dozens of jazz organists who can play bop, blues and beyond. They're ...

Album Review

Gjertrud Lunde: Hjemklang

Read "Hjemklang" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 26, 2014

Music is a language that speaks in several tongues. This statement is taken quite literally on Norwegian songstress Gjertrud Lunde's album Hjemklang where she sings in her own native language, as well as English, Norwegian, French and Portuguese. Each language is a new instrument for Lunde, a range of vocal possibilities, shades and accents, but the thing that binds it all together is a depth of feeling and delicacy. Hjemklang can loosely be translated as “the sound ...

Album Review

Pharoah & The Underground: Spiral Mercury

Read "Spiral Mercury" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
August 26, 2014

The formation of the Chicago Underground collective in the late '90s provided cornetist Rob Mazurek with an unrestrictive setting to explore the endless possibilities of creative improvised music with his Windy City peers. A lengthy sojourn in Brazil followed, resulting in a similar project--the São Paulo Underground. Mazurek's international activities subsequently established him as a prolific composer and industrious bandleader.It was the release of Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra (Thrill Jockey, 2008), Mazurek's fortuitous collaboration with vanguard ...

Album Review

Abbey Rader: The Message

Read "The Message" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
August 26, 2014

Drummer Abbey Rader's four decades long career has been one of intrepid innovation and creative ingenuity. His unique approach to his instrument brims with unconventional virtuosity and a deep spiritual sense. His The Message on his own Abray label, is a three part, entirely improvised suite recorded live in Miami in January of 2014. Sort of a musical allegory about the various phases of life the harmonically multi-textured performance has an undercurrent of wise serenity even during its wildest most ...

Album Review

Null: Null

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 26, 2014

Young Norwegian fusion trio Null--guitarist Viktor Wilhelmsen, bassist Aksel Jensen and drummer Stian Lundberg--speculates on what would have happened if the Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix plans to record an album together were realized. And how it would have sounded if influenced by the work of seminal Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal, mainly in his seventies bands, when playing in dance clubs. Null aesthetics encompasses all aspects of the often disregarded genre of fusion, with all its ...

In the Studio

Jazz on the Screen: A Jazz and Blues Filmography

by AAJ Staff
August 25, 2014

This article appears courtesy of David Meeker and the Library of Congress. Learn more about Jazz on Screen. Overview of Jazz on the Screen By David Meeker The cultural, sociological and technical histories of jazz and motion pictures have run in parallel, sometimes intersecting, lines ever since both forms emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Neither found it easy to be accepted as a legitimate form of personal or artistic expression. The ...