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

Tommaso Starace: Italian Short Stories

Read "Italian Short Stories" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 4, 2014

Some musicians appear to conjure their tunes from thin air, others work with raw material furnished by the great composers, still others take their inspirations from many different sources and give them due acknowledgement. Saxophonist Tommaso Starace is in the latter camp. This lyrical, engaging, player's second album, Tommaso Starace Plays The Photos Of Elliot Erwitt (Frame Records, 2006), drew on eight photographs by this master of the camera. For Italian Short Stories Starace returns to this source of inspiration. ...

Album Review

Mason Bates: Stereo Is King

Read "Stereo Is King" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 4, 2014

Modern composer and electronics artist Mason Bates is equally comfortable in the worlds of new classical and hip hop. Working closely with the symphony orchestras of San Francisco and Chicago, he has been a driving force in escalating the role of electronics in the orchestra setting. To that end, Bates has put years into the study of flow, process and the acoustics of the classical orchestra. The rewards of this discipline are shared with listeners on Stereo Is King.

Extended Analysis

Jason Anick: Tipping Point

by Ian Patterson
August 4, 2014

One of the Berklee College of Music's youngest instructors, violinist/mandolinist Jason Anick had already made a name for himself in 2008, when at twenty two years of age he was invited to tour with Grammy-winning guitarist John Jorgenson. Anick's tremendous virtuosity was to the fore on the acoustic Rhythm Future Quartet's Sleepless (Self Produced, 2011), a lively gypsy jazz romp--a genre he excels in. Tipping Point, however, showcases Anick's more contemporary songwriting acumen and the numerous stylistic strands that define ...

Album Review

Sharp Three: Sharp Three/Zero Cool

Read "Sharp Three/Zero Cool" reviewed by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
August 4, 2014

Sharp Three put a wide mix of music together on their album, Zero Cool. Surpassing the quotidian jazz clichés about “moments" and “hipness," this album possesses sonority where even the stoniest non- emotes hear spirituality, Sharp Three provide music with enough cultural variation to lose self in parts or whole. There are 9 generous tracks on the album, each conjures a new landscape, and the facility of the brother team of Goh and Kai Kurasawa on “probably all ...

From the Inside Out

Musings on Jazz, Blues and the Sabbath

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 4, 2014

Margie Baker Sings With So Many Stars Consolidated Artists Productions 2014 Margie Baker didn't begin her career as a jazz and blues vocalist in the San Francisco area until she was nearly 40, but she made up for this delayed entry with endurance: She was often featured at the Monterey Jazz Festival and as in Festival road shows led by Richie Cole and the legendary James Moody (for whom Baker penned “Mood for Mr. ...

Album Review

Michael Carvin Experience: Flash Forward

Read "Flash Forward" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 3, 2014

In 2006, oft-unsung drummer Michael Carvin broke a decade-long silence as a leader on record, releasing one of the strongest dates of his career through Marsalis Music's Honor Series. Fast-forward eight years and you have Flash Forward, another quartet-based album that stands as a testament to Carvin's skills as drummer, bandleader, and musical catalyst. Flash Forward is a fresh musical start for Carvin. It's his first release for the Motema Music imprint and the first album to ...

Live Review

Holt Festival 2014

by Bruce Lindsay
August 3, 2014

Holt Festival Norfolk, UK July 19-27 2014 The nine-day Holt Festival is an intriguing mix: visual arts, theatre, literature, music and comedy all graced its 2014 program across a range of venues in and around the town. The Theatre In The Woods is the jewel in the festival's crown of venues: a 900-seat open air amphitheatre nestling secretly under cover of trees. Think Hollywood Bowl, but prettier. For the 2014 festival this ...

Album Review

Peter Brotzmann: Mental Shake

Read "Mental Shake" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 3, 2014

German saxophone powerhouse Peter Brotzmann favors the trio format to deliver the optimum combination of energy and directness. Over the years he's sought inspiration from many illustrious rhythm teams, from the South African Harry Miller / Louis Moholo axis, through the American Die Like A Dog coupling of William Parker and Hamid Drake, to the Swiss Full Blast pairing of Michael Wertmuller and Marino Pliakas. However one of his most potent units in recent times has been the English twosome ...

Album Review

Kosi: Pictures of Us

Read "Pictures of Us" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
August 3, 2014

This is an album whose authenticity and directness of expression is matched only by its underlying artistic complexity and conceptual nuances. Kosi Gyebi Sorensen (Akosua Gyebi) is a New York-based singer and composer whose vocal persona on this album is that of a young woman of humble origins struggling with the trials of intimacy and love, the apotheosis of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The Facebook pages of the singer herself, however, reveal a sophisticated, intellectually ...

Book Review

Jazz Life: A Journey for Jazz Across America in 1960

by Nenad Georgievski
August 3, 2014

Jazz Life: A Journey for Jazz Across America in 1960 William Claxton and Joachim E. Berendt 552 ISBN: 3836544687 Taschen 2013 A single photograph can say and convene more than a thousand words. Although music itself can't be photographed, only a handful of photographers ever got closer to pulling it off than photographers such as Herman Leonard, William P. Gottlieb or William Claxton, to name but a few, whose photographs have captured ...