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

Annie Ross: To Lady with Love

Read "To Lady with Love" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 21, 2014

London-born, Scottish-bred singer Annie Ross, who is perhaps best known (with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks) as part of the hip vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (LHR) in the 1950s and '60s, was eighty-three years old when this earnest tribute to Billie Holiday, To Lady with Love, was recorded in 2013. At her advanced age, Ross is far more stylist than singer, a fact that is further amplified by the slender backing of only two guitarists, father Bucky and ...

Live Review

Earl Klugh at the Blue Note Jazz Club

by Mike Perciaccante
August 20, 2014

Earl Klugh Blue Note Jazz Club New York, NY August 14, 2014 On a pleasant, Thursday evening in mid-August, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Earl Klugh treated the packed and very enthusiastic audience at New York City's Blue Note Jazz Club to a spectacular night of silky smooth jazz. The slightly muggy venue was packed, but not overcrowded. The anticipation was high as Klugh and his quartet started his show (the first of two separately scheduled sets) ...

Album Review

Myriad3: The Where

Read "The Where" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 20, 2014

Myriad3--the Toronto-based trio of pianist Chris Donnelly, bassist Dan Fortin, and drummer Ernesto Cervini--may be the most noteworthy small group to emerge from Canada in years. Tell (Alma, 2013) introduced the band to the world, marking Myriad3 as an outfit with a post-modern outlook, respect for the traditions of this music, and the smarts not to let that respect get in the way of what it set out to do. Audacity, assurance, and the spirit of cooperation ...

Album Review

Annie Ross: To Lady with Love

Read "To Lady with Love" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 20, 2014

If you want to hear the best Annie Ross, listen to King Pleasure Sings / Annie Ross Sings (Fantasy, 1952). If you want to hear the most empathic and honest Annie Ross, listen to To Lady with Love. Ross is in her early to mid-80s and her voice is not what it was in the 50s and '60s, but her passion, grace and intelligence surpasses all previous recordings. This is a late autumn--early winter voice, to be sure. This recording ...

Album Review

The Omar Hakim Experience: We Are One

Read "We Are One" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
August 20, 2014

To properly appreciate The Omar Hakim Experience one must look back to move forward. By the time Hakim slipped behind the drum kit of Weather Report in 1983, the band was staggering under the weight of personnel departures, management problems and family issues. Founding member Joe Zawinul went in search of new recruits and in walked Hakim with bassist Victor Bailey and percussionist Jose Rossy. Curt Bianchi's well-researched blog, The Weather Report Annotated Discography, is the go-to site ...

Album Review

Caffeine Petrol: Nosejob

Read "Nosejob" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 20, 2014

The jazz department of the NTNU university in Trondheim, Norway keeps presenting gifted and opinionated musicians that challenge conventional perspectives on genres and styles. The new power trio Caffeine Petrol--guitarist Gudmund Bolstad Skjær, who wrote all the trio pieces, bassist Fredrik Gundersen and drummer Martin Sandvik-- demonstrate how any neo-jazz-cons attempt to frame jazz aesthetics in clear, linear, historical or geographical musical boundaries is futile. These young musicians do not bother themselves with such intellectual abstractions. They focus on the ...

Album Review

Bill Warfield Big Band: Trumpet Story

Read "Trumpet Story" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 20, 2014

Trumpeters Bill Warfield and Randy Brecker have been friends for twenty years; it's high time they joined forces in a recording studio and began making beautiful music together. On Trumpet Story, Warfield's big-band homage to trumpeters and other musicians who have influenced him through the years, six-time Grammy Award winner Brecker solos on eight of ten numbers, several of which were written by Warfield with him in mind. The result is what Joe Listener might expect--uniformly high-caliber jazz tastefully articulated ...

Album Review

John Coltrane: Offering: Live At Temple University

Read "Offering: Live At Temple University" reviewed by Robert Bush

by Robert Bush
August 20, 2014

Discovering unheard John Coltrane material is the Holy Grail for serious music devotees, and the imminent release (Sept.23,2014) of a 1966 live date in the form of Offering: Live at Temple University on the Impulse! label (in conjunction with Resonance Records and Universal Music) to join The Olatunji Concert and One Down, One Up Live at the Half Note in the Coltrane archive is good news, indeed, for those wishing to explore the iconic saxophonist's later years. Adding significantly to ...

Album Review

Ahmad Jamal & Yusef Lateef: Live At The Olympia

Read "Live At The Olympia" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 20, 2014

Ahmad Jamal's live performances have been well represented in his discography over the past sixty years. Yet despite touring the globe, all Jamal's live recordings--with the exception of the DVD concert from Lebanon, Live at Baalbeck (Birdology, 2003)--document North American and European gigs. France has always accorded the Pittsburgh pianist a royal welcome, naming him an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007;the regard is mutual, as Live at the Olympia is Jamal's fourth live recording in ...

Album Review

Topology And Trichotomy: Healthy

Read "Healthy" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 19, 2014

Collaboration is a jazz staple, just one of the many ways musicians seek to breathe a freshness into their performance or composition. Mostly, such collaborations take place between individuals. Healthy takes collaboration one stage further, joining together two Australian outfits--jazz piano trio Trichotomy and contemporary classical quintet Topology--on a collection of original compositions plus a take on Steve Reich's “Clapping Music." Trichotomy--pianist Sean Foran, bassist Pat Marchisella and drummer John Parker--has released five impressive, critically-acclaimed, albums. On “Start," ...