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

Mark Alban Lotz: Solo Flutes

Read "Solo Flutes" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 3, 2014

The eclectic, even eccentric musical tastes of German, Netherlands- based flute master Mark Alban Lotz may be attributed to his personal history. He grew up in Thailand, Germany, and Uganda, while studying jazz, contemporary music, and Indian bansuri flute playing in Amsterdam, New York, and Los Angeles. This globe-trotting biography is reflected in his flute solo performances of contemporary composed music and associative improvisations, all recorded in one go with no overdubs or sound processing. Lotz ...

Album Review

Jens Jefsen: Jam Me Up

Read "Jam Me Up" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 3, 2014

Veteran Danish double bassist and educator Jens Jefsen, who performed with legendary jazz musicians as Ben Webster, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, and Johnny Griffin, gives a new meaning to the term “jam up." For Jensen, it does not mean malfunction or inefficiency but an opportunity to rethink his playing when guest musicians are put to the test playing his musical conceptions and aesthetics. Jam Me Up features Jefsen's recent compositions for solo double bass enriched by ...

Rhythm In Every Guise

Jeff Hirshfield on Rich Perry's SteepleChase Recordings

by David A. Orthmann
August 3, 2014

"Some drummers get carried away and stop listening, maybe because we are doing four or five things at the same time. You want to see if things will work out or not, but you're not paying enough attention...We think we need to make everything happen, but it's not true: Everything is already happening, all you need to do is find your place." Albert Tootie" Heath. Interview by Ethan Iverson in Do The Math, the bad plus blog and webzine.

Album Review

Simon Phillips: Protocol II

Read "Protocol II" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 2, 2014

Protocol II arrives fourteen years after drummer Simon Phillips' last leader date--the hard bop and post-bop based Vantage Point (Jazzline Records, 2000). And it comes approximately a quarter century after the original Protocol (Music for Nations, 1988)--a true solo date that had Phillips covering all the instruments, filling in the space around his calling-card drumming. So why the long wait for another solo album? That question is pretty simple to answer: Phillips wasn't thrilled with much of ...

Live Review

Tedeschi Trucks Band at Red Rocks

by Geoff Anderson
August 2, 2014

Tedeschi Trucks Band Red Rocks Denver, CO July 25, 2014 Never underestimate the power of a cover. A cleverly selected and well executed cover tune can be like a firecracker with a too-short fuse, a shot of vodka when you expected water, a lightning bolt out of a clear, blue sky. The Tedeschi Trucks Band threw a lightning strike with its very first song Friday night, July 25, at Red Rocks, exhuming Traffic's “Who Knows ...

Album Review

Jim Stranahan Little Big Band: Migration to Higher Ground

Read "Migration to Higher Ground" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
August 2, 2014

The big band sounds gets an infusion of swing and swagger on Migration to Higher Ground, a session of high-octane straight ahead jazz from Jim Stranahan's dynamic Little Big Band. The album has Denver-based saxophonist and educator Jim Stranahan leading a twelve-piece ensemble comprised of some of the best players in Colorado gyrating through six big band arrangements. In addition, the leader also includes four tracks recorded in a sextet format that also features son and drummer, Colin Stranahan of ...

Extended Analysis

Manfred Eicher: ECM - Selected Signs III - VIII

by John Kelman
August 2, 2014

When München's Haus der Kunst sponsored a nearly three-month exhibition about the ECM Records label, ECM: A Cultural Archeology, which ran from November, 2012 to February, 2013, there was far more to it than just bringing together collections of album covers, rarely seen video, archival tapes, imagery and concert performances. As much as ECM has carved a niche for itself as a label concerned about the whole package, including quality of sound, design and artwork, it is, after all, a ...

Album Review

Hi Fiction Science: Curious Yellow

Read "Curious Yellow" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 2, 2014

Indeed, this British quintet brings a qualitative aspect to the rock world, sans any filler material amid gestures to the 70s array of space-rockers, along with current art-rock persuasions and impressions of vintage Brian Eno's spectral electronics-based dreamscapes. Moreover, Maria Charles' beatific vocals, supported by solid undertones, enhance the band's mesmeric grooves, tinted with hypnotic etudes and an air of innocence. But several works cast lucid imagery of forbidden zones and cautionary implications, in addition to nouveau psychedelic riffs and ...

Jazz Poetry

The Fire in Coltrane’s Lungs

by Larry Jaffe
August 2, 2014

When the horn sounds the jazz begins Unity rediscovered A crisscross divergence of souls Coltrane steals the birthright of his heritage makes it into music The horn blasts loud and not so pure-- Life lives between the notes not at the end of the song Painfully hidden tones magically appear dragged out one by one by one breathless gasps of tonal agony Coltrane plays tears of subjugation between notes of joyous rhapsody

Album Review

Paul Marinaro: Without A Song

Read "Without A Song" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
August 2, 2014

There are tribute albums and then, there are musical homages that have far more personal meaning for an artist then dedications to other musicians. Such is the case for Chicago-based singer Paul Marinaro whose debut album Without A Song is a heartfelt tip of the hat to his 85-year old father Joseph, whose unfulfilled dreams of becoming a professional singer, inspired the making of this recording. Growing up in Buffalo, NY, the young Marinaro was surrounded by music at home ...