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

Fred Lonberg-Holm / Nick Stephens: Crackle: Six improvisations for Cello and Double Bass

Read "Crackle: Six improvisations for Cello and Double Bass" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 2, 2014

These improvisations between Chicago's ubiquitous cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and veteran British double bassist Nick Stephens, known for ongoing collaborations with Norwegian reed master Frode Gjerstad and South-African drummer Louis Moholo- Moholo, were recorded in 2011 in Stephens' home-town, Northwood. The duo immediately establish a common language that encompasses organic elements of fiery free jazz, through exploration of extended bowing techniques or often simple, straight- forward and lyrical, chamber playing. The two juggle between these shifting elements, ...

Album Review

Mitch Shiner And The BloomingTones Big Band: Fly!

by Dan Bilawsky
August 1, 2014

"Hoosier Jazz" isn't an actual sub-genre of music, but that geographical tag fits this album so well. Drummer/Percussionist Mitch Shiner, a graduate of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, put together a Bloomington-based big band built around his IU chums, be they students, alums, local hotshots or professors. Then he simply fed them some killer arrangements and let them spread their wings. Fly!, the maiden voyage of Mitch Shiner And The BloomingTones Big Band, is a tight ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

August 2014

by Mr. P.C.
August 1, 2014

Dear Mr. P.C.: I work with a guitarist who I mistakenly thought was playing wrong notes when he took a solo. When I asked him about it, he explained to me that he was anticipating the chord change. My question is, do you have to anticipate a chord change in the same song? Or is it cooler to anticipate a chord in a song that you might be thinking of playing in the next set? --Wanting ...

Album Review

Darren Barrett Energy in Motion: The Music of the Bee Gees

Read "The Music of the Bee Gees" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
August 1, 2014

Polyester suits, platform shoes and big hairstyles were in vogue during the 1970's when being cool meant looking the part in spite of the outlandish attire. The music was equally flamboyant and among the many bands, the Australia/ England based Bee Gees, brothers (Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb) produced a string of top hits at the height of the Disco era. Canadian jazz trumpeter Darren Barrett shakes the cobwebs off of a few of the group's oldies--but still goodies--in this ...

Live Review

Garana Jazz Festival 2014

by Adriana Carcu
August 1, 2014

Garana Jazz Festival Wolf's Meadow Garana, Romania July 10-13, 2014 One of Europe's most visited festivals, taking place on a meadow over 300 ft. high in the Western Carpathians, just had its 18th anniversary. The lineup, a brand mark of the festival director, Marius Giura, combined again tradition with diversity, bringing together American jazz musicians such as Andy Sheppard, Tom Harrell, Joey Defrancesco and Mike Stern, the Nordic jazz representatives Ulf Wakenius, ...

Album Review

Marc Baron: Hidden Tapes

Read "Hidden Tapes" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
August 1, 2014

Since the turn of the millennium, Marc Baron has taken us on an interesting aural journey (albeit one that could have been more fully documented on disc.) He has evolved from an improvising alto saxophonist--maybe best represented by the sax quartet on Propagations (Potlatch, 2008)--through transitional experiments such as the “interesting" Formnction (Potlatch, 2009) by the duo Narthex, on which the sounds of bass and saxophone were replaced by constant frequency electronic tones, and a 2012 album on Cathnor which ...

Extended Analysis

Songs of Shadow, Songs of Light: the Music of Joni Mitchell

by C. Michael Bailey
August 1, 2014

Bay Area vocalist Laurie Antonioli has been performing and recording for more than 30 years. Early on she mixed paints with the likes of Joe Henderson, Mark Murphy and Pony Poindexter with whom she undertook an 8-month European junket in 1980, quickening her already impressive jazz chops. Antonioli's discography is a slim yet intense affair that is full of brilliant pathos and musicianship. She has had much time pass between releases resulting in a sonic career where her evolution as ...

Album Review

Josh Maxey: Completing The Cycle

Read "Completing The Cycle" reviewed by Mehdi El Mouden

by Mehdi El Mouden
August 1, 2014

In the midst of the numerous sounds any jazz listener can be exposed to, it's hard for a performer to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Guitarist Josh Maxey ,in an undoubtable effort of seeking original sounds, has taken up that challenge since 2011 and composed ten albums. The ninth in this series, Completing the Cycle, sounds like a quest coming to a close. The sounds are profound enough to give food for thought. Their complexity lies in their agreeable touch ...

Album Review

Odeya Nini: Vougheauxyice (Voice)

Read "Vougheauxyice (Voice)" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 1, 2014

The exceptional Odeya Nini explores assorted vocal aspects on her debut album, Vougheauxyice (Voice) --as an instrument that structures textural harmony, tonal animation or illuminates minute sounds; vocals that fit into collages of musique concrete; the kinetic characteristics of vocals in space relating to the body, and obviously, her own extended techniques. For Nini, the voice--in its great spectrum and her virtuoso delivery, beginning with innocent, primal articulations progressing through the most refined usages--is a means of inner searching and ...

Album Review

sPacemoNkey: The Karman Line

Read "The Karman Line" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
July 31, 2014

According to Wikipedia, the Kármán Line ..."lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and commonly represents the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space." It's as good a name as any for the debut album from sPacemoNkey, a collaboration by two of Norway's most impressive and increasingly influential musicians, despite still being in their early-to-mid thirties: keyboardist Morten Qvenild and drummer Gard Nilssen. Largely the result of spontaneous composition, with just three of ...