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

Dave Kain: Raising Kain

Read "Raising Kain" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 10, 2014

Raising Kain is a first for guitarist Dave Kain in two ways: it's the first trio record in his discography and it marks the first time he's worked with a producer instead of going it alone. After releasing a few albums with different incarnations of the Dave Kain Group, he decided to trim things down. Kain started writing specifically for trio, focusing in on this format as the gigging commenced. Once he felt like all the pieces ...

Album Review

Rodrigo Amado: Wire Quartet

Read "Wire Quartet" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
July 10, 2014

The debut album of Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's Wire Quartet--featuring the rhythm section of the acclaimed RED Trio, double bassist Hernâni Faustino and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini (who also plays in Amado's long-standing working Motion Trio) and experimental guitarist Manuel Mota--demonstrate Amado strongest and most intense performances to date, defying any attempt to associate it with post-bop or free jazz. This powerful quartet also establishes Amado's wise choice when it comes to radical and original sounding guitarists, after collaborating with Luis ...

Live Review

35th Annual Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland

by C. Andrew Hovan
July 9, 2014

Playhouse Square Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland Cleveland, Ohio June 26-28, 2014 For the first time in 35 years, Cuyahoga Community College's annual jazz festival received a major makeover via the shift from a two week event in April to a three day happening in June. Also key to this paradigm shift was a move of all concerts downtown to the newly rededicated Playhouse Square. With the second most significant theater district in the country next ...

Album Review

Hendrik Meurkens/Misha Tsiganov: Junity

by Dan Bilawsky
July 9, 2014

Junity? No, that's not a misprint. Take “junto," the Brazilian word for together, and marry it with “unity"; that's how you get “junity," a hybridized term that accurately describes the relationship between harmonica master Hendrik Meurkens and pianist Misha Tsiganov. These two men have been playing together for nearly a decade, appearing together on stages across the world and pleasing Meurkens albums like Samba To Go! (Zoho Music, 2009) and Celebrando (Zoho Music, 2012). Junity, a program ...

Album Review

Helge Lien Trio: Badgers and Other Beings

Read "Badgers and Other Beings" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
July 9, 2014

Since he signed to Dagobert Böhm's Ozella Music, Norwegian pianist Helge Lien has reached a new artistic plateau with his trio. Hello Troll (Ozella, 2008) was an immediate success that showcased the group's lyricism and tight interplay and the spacious beauty of Natsukashii (Ozella, 2010) added new colors to a wide musical vocabulary rooted in the Nordic aesthetic. Badgers and Other Beings continues the trio's journey in sound and like the previous releases, it has been superbly ...

Live Review

Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival 2014

by R.J. DeLuke
July 9, 2014

Saratoga Performing Arts Center Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival Saratoga Springs, NY June 28-29, 2014 Perfect weather accented this years Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival, an event that had an eclectic mix of young musicians with interesting ideas and approaches, and veterans who deliver consistently. The weather is always a factor because it's primarily an outdoor festival for two days, on two stages, at the beautiful Saratoga Performing Arts Center. (There is some covered amphitheater ...

Live Review

Festival International de Jazz de Montreal 2014

by John Kelman
July 8, 2014

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Ambrose Akinmusire By Invitation Tigran By Invitation Tord Gustavsen Quartet / Brad Mehldau & Mark Guiliana, Mehliana June 26-July 6, 2014 There simply isn't a festival in the world like the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Where else in the world can you find a city where, with a population of well over 1.5 million people, six square blocks are closed down for the entire duration of ...

Album Review

Tommy Andrews Quintet: The Crux

Read "The Crux" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
July 8, 2014

Saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and rock climber Tommy Andrews is part of a burgeoning British jazz scene, a scene that's notable for its wide range of talented young players. For The Crux, his first album, Andrews joins with four more members of the scene to form his quintet. It proves to be a fine band, sympathetic to Andrews' melodic, accessible, compositions: the result is a promising debut. On the evidence of The Crux Andrews' compositions are characterized by an ...

Live Review

Suoni Per Il Popolo 2014

by Mike Chamberlain
July 8, 2014

Suoni Per Il Popolo Various venues Montreal, Quebec June 4-22, 2014 Every June, the good folks who run Montreal's Casa del Popolo and Sala Rossa hold an extravaganza of what some call “liberation music" and what they call Suoni Per Il Popolo, or “sounds for the people." Now in its fourteenth year, the Suoni has become a highlight on the Montreal musical calendar, featuring provocative music in a wide variety of genres, ...

Album Review

Alon Nechustan: Venture Bound

Read "Venture Bound" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 8, 2014

Pianist Alon Nechustan is full of surprises. His work with Talat-- The Growl (Tzadik, 2007)--placed him in the alt klezmer jazz category, but he refused to stay put in that area. Nechustan changed gears with Words Beyond (Buckyball Records, 2011), casting aside his allegiance to Hebraic-tinged melodies so he could focus on the modern language of the jazz trio. Then he quickly abandoned that course-on-record, redefining himself as an electro-acoustic outlier with the grim Dark Forces (Creative Sources Recordings, 2011) ...