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

Ayal Tsubery: Decisions

Read "Decisions" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 7, 2014

Ayal Tsubery is a Berklee-educated bassist and composer influenced, as he puts it, by ..." jazz, Israeli folk, African and Middle Eastern grooves and old-school gritty rock 'n' roll." On his debut album, Decisions, he brings most of those influences together to create a strong set of tunes--not so much of the gritty rock 'n' roll, but jazz and the middle east are very much in evidence. Percussionist Jon Nellen opens “Blue Nights," setting a mood that conjures ...

Live Review

Diane Monroe Quartet at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

by Victor L. Schermer
August 7, 2014

Diane Monroe Quartet Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts “Spiritual Strivings" Exhibition and Concert Philadelphia, PA August 2, 2014 In the tradition of the Paris salons, art and music go together, and some of the best jazz in the Philadelphia area today can be heard at art museums, taking up some of the slack due to the attrition of nightclubs. In this instance, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, a premiere art school and ...

Album Review

Chassol: Indiamore

Read "Indiamore" reviewed by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
August 7, 2014

The album Indiamore by French pianist and composer Christophe Chassol is a mix of fusion that quite possibly will appeal to art house jazz fans as well as more mainstream music fans. All required gimmickry abounds:--Artsy, iconographic album cover, a neat global concept --far-flung discovery trips to India working out how to find an angle--parallel lines converging in AV technology for the trés but not quite ultra-modern, something unspoken but reverberatingly Indoploitation. ...so what about the ...

Album Review

Joëlle Léandre & Pascal Contet: 3

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 7, 2014

Like a conversation between old comrades, not much needs to be said in order to make perfect sense. The implied, fleeting body moves, facial expressions can direct the course of the interaction and charge it with emotional depth, tension or colorful cinematic narratives. 3 the third recorded collaboration between French double bass master Joëlle Léandre and accordionist Pascal Contet--after a self-titled album (Concord, 1996) and Freeway (Clean Feed Records, 2007)--feature these two friends in top form. ...

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Interview

Idris Muhammad: Coming to Grips with His Greatness

by R.J. DeLuke
August 6, 2014

This interview was originally published on May 2002. “Style? No, I just play, man. I don't really have a style. Just being able to play music is a style, you know?" says the veteran drummer master Idris Muhammad in his laid-back and understated style. Others know better than to take that self-effacing comment at face value. His style developed into a unique sound over the years, a New Orleans-based rhythm that has influenced many other drummers ...

Live Review

John Cage's Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake at Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival 2014

by Ian Patterson
August 6, 2014

John Cage's Roaratorio, An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett FestivalMarble Arch Caves N. Ireland July 31, 2014 Standing on a street corner watching and listening to the world around you may not seem like an extraordinary event; after all, it's an everyday occurrence for millions of people around the world. For composer John Cage, it was a street corner--it just happened to be in Seville--and the infinite number ...

Album Review

Pat Mallinger Quartet With Bill Carrothers: Elevate

Read "Elevate" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 6, 2014

Chicago-based saxophonist Pat Mallinger's Home on Richmond (Self Produced, 2011), featuring pianist Bill Carrothers, introduced a superb teaming of talents. Mallinger could be tagged as a mainstreamer, but only in an elastic interpretation of the label, something like calling sax man Jackie McLean a straight ahead jazz guy. Maybe, but he, like Mallinger sure does test the edges of that tag. Carrothers is an original who rollicks in whatever direction his muse points out--Civil War tunes, twenties music, a tribute ...

Album Review

L.A. Jenkins / Hasan Abdur-Razzaq / Adam Smith: Intrusion

Read "Intrusion" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 6, 2014

This outwardly simple and uncomplicated trio recording by L.A. Jenkins matches three improvisers with almost identical musical visions. The guitarist collaborates with saxophonist Hasan Abdur-Razzaq and drummer Adam Smith. Both partners are versed in the exploratory music of Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and Pharoah Sanders. And both are members of The Wizards, a quartet that mines the cosmic and free jazz landscapes of the 1960s and 70s. Jenkins, a student of Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, has developed a sound ...

Live Review

Jazz à Juan 2014

by Jean-Pierre Goffin
August 6, 2014

54th Jazz à Juan Juan-les-Pins, Antibes France On the sunny Côte d'Azur, Juan-les-Pins offers a jazz festival every year by mixing all-stars bands, and daring to take risks in offering new artists not exclusively from the jazz sphere. Jazz à Juan (Jazz in Juan) is first of all a wonderful site, the timeless decor of the Gould pine grove a unique place with the Mediterranean Sea as a backdrop. As Booker T. Jones said after ...

Album Review

Charles Davis: For The Love Of Lori

Read "For The Love Of Lori" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
August 6, 2014

Saxophonist Charles Davis' paean to his late wife, For the Love of Lori, is more of a musical celebration of her spirit than a requiem. Sure, there are moments of intense sorrow and nostalgic melancholy but they are enveloped in positive, swinging creativity. On “What'll I Do?" for instance, Davis' wistful soliloquy is filled with reserved anguish and enveloped with elegant lyricism. Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli's muted, soothing tone marks his intricate improvisation while trombonist Steve Davis' soft, resonant ...