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

Alexander Hawkins Ensemble: Alexander Hawkins: Step Wide, Step Deep

Read "Alexander Hawkins: Step Wide, Step Deep" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 14, 2014

You don't need to spend long in the company of pianist Alexander Hawkins to realize that his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz encompasses everything from Duke Ellington to the avant-garde. That's as true of recordings as it is in person, and amply demonstrated on Step Wide, Step Deep, where the moods range from lazy Sunday afternoon to bristling polyphony. Even though the line up has changed since the excellent All There Ever Out (Babel Label, 2012), the combination of fierce musical ...

Album Review

Tarek Yamani: Lisan Al Tarab

Read "Lisan Al Tarab" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
August 14, 2014

Pianist Tarek Yamani's second release Lisãn Al Tarab is a sublime and innovative exploration of the common ground between Jazz and Arabic musical heritage. The title loosely translates as “Language of the Music" although there is no equivalent word to tarab in English. Tarab is the unique concept of music fused with its ecstatic, emotional impact, and has become synonymous with classical Arab song. Enough of crude attempts at linguistics and on to Yamani's album, which is not ...

Album Review

Louis Sclavis Quartet: Silk and Salt Melodies

Read "Silk and Salt Melodies" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 14, 2014

With its ancient roots and latter-day association with New Orleans, Dixieland and swing, the clarinet isn't often a frontline instrument in modern jazz let alone avant-garde. A handful of players such as Don Byron and Marty Ehrlich have aided in its prominence but not many. In the hands of Louis Sclavis the bass clarinet is not only a deterrent against conformist thinking; it is an instrument with greatly expanded borders and characteristics. Sclavis incorporates European chamber music, Middle-Eastern samazens and ...

Album Review

The Cookers: Time And Time Again

Read "Time And Time Again" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 13, 2014

The very idea of The Cookers is something of a pleasing paradox. It's a band that's populated by some of the most impressive and seasoned veterans out there, but it plays like an anti-super group; it's a real deal band, not a big payday or business venture, and nobody's phoning it in, grandstanding, or letting any bullshit get in the way of the music. This band has established itself as a no-nonsense outfit over the course of seven ...

Live Review

Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Hargrove at New Morning

by Patricia Myers
August 13, 2014

Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Hargrove New Morning Paris, France July 23, August 1, 2014 Among the nightly summer concerts staged at New Morning in Paris was a double dose of electronic funk and neo-soul sounds by multi-keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Each played to capacity audiences on humid nights that challenged the air-conditioning system of the spacious no-frills hall. Smith, 73, standing in front of the stage at an elevated ...

Album Review

Albert Ayler: Spiritual Unity

Read "Spiritual Unity" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 13, 2014

Fifty years after the recording of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, the music (and the man) are still causing tumult. It is not so much that free jazz hasn't been on our radar these past decades, it's just that this recording remains one of those “where were you, when you first heard it?" experiences. Recorded in a very small, hot studio in July of 1964, the album which thrust the new label ESP onto the map, consisted of just ...

Extended Analysis

Diane Monroe and Tony Miceli: Alone Together

by Victor L. Schermer
August 13, 2014

Duets allow two musicians to work together intimately without the complications of a rhythm section. Such recordings are often done on the spot at the suggestion of one of the musicians or an agent. Historically, two iconic collaborations of this type were a studio gig with Jerry Mulligan and Thelonious Monk (Mulligan Meets Monk, Riverside, 1957 ), and Oscar Peterson et Joe Pass a la Salle Pleyel(Pablo, 1975). When musicians such as these are creative and can think quickly on ...

Album Review

Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble: Intergalactic Beings

Read "Intergalactic Beings" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 13, 2014

Intergalactic Beings forms the second chapter in flutist Nicole Mitchell's science fiction derived discographical strand. Like the first, Xenogenesis Suite (Firehouse 12, 2008), it showcases Mitchell the composer, again drawing her inspiration from the Afrofuturist novels of Octavia Butler, in which survivors of nuclear holocaust are plucked from earth by aliens who believe that interbreeding is the only way to save the humans from themselves. Commissioned by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the recording documents the premier at the ...

Album Review

Spiral Mercury - Chicago/Sao Paulo Underground featuring Pharoah Sanders: Pharoah & The Underground

Read "Pharoah & The Underground" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 13, 2014

Renowned tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and new music, jazz-centric pioneer, cornetist Rob Mazurek bridge alternate generations of avant-gard-isms with this highly persuasive and indubitably, audacious production. It's an electro-acoustic meeting of futuristic minds, intersecting the trumpeter's Sao Paulo Underground and Chicago Underground ensembles. Moreover, they yield intergalactic nods to classic space rock via Guilherme Granado's inventive electronics, synths and samples permutations along with Matthew Lux's pumped up bass lines and Chad Taylor's sweeping drums patterns amid several distinctive indicators throughout. ...

Album Review

Touch and Go Sextet: Live at the Novara Jazz Festival

Read "Live at the Novara Jazz Festival" reviewed by Robert Bush

by Robert Bush
August 13, 2014

Drummer Vijay Anderson formed the Touch and Go Sextet in the Bay Area as a vehicle for performing and interpreting the works of visiting musicians, but his concurrent studies with alto sax legend Roscoe Mitchell gave him the confidence to steer this three-reed, one trumpet and double-bass ensemble into original compositions, the results of which are clearly realized on Live at the Novara Jazz Festival. On “Slippin,'" the horns wrap around each other like snakes in ...