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.

Live Review

Live Guitars From Birmingham: Rhys Chatham, David Grubbs & Pierre Bensusan

by Martin Longley
June 19, 2014

Rhys Chatham Birmingham Town Hall June 7, 2014 When the guitarist/composer Rhys Chatham performs with his small combo, he's usually clad casually, but in his role as conductor for this large-scale performance, he was suitably be-suited. There's an immediate dichotomy here, when this New Yorker's epic 2006 piece, “A Secret Rose," was presented with the trappings of a classical work, but actually involved around 100 liberally-amplified electric guitars. This was the UK premiere ...

Album Review

David Ambrosio: Gone

by Dan Bilawsky
June 19, 2014

In many ways, bassist David Ambrosio can track his adult life and his musical relationships by his back-and-forth moves between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ambrosio has called each borough home on more than one occasion over the past few decades, observing the key differences between each scene from the inside. He doesn't discriminate when it comes to choosing a New York City spot to put his bass down and play, and he happily shares his talent(s) wherever he can, but it's ...

Album Review

First Take Trio: Recollections

Read "Recollections" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 19, 2014

When Michael Anthony left home in the late 1950s for the bright lights of Hollywood, one of the resident artists who took him under his wing was fellow guitarist Howard Roberts, already established as one of the film and television industry's top studio musicians as well as an esteemed jazz virtuoso whose work with the Chico Hamilton Quintet and other groups led to his earning a DownBeat magazine New Star Award in 1955. Roberts “took me on as a student," ...

Extended Analysis

Free Range Music

by Jack Bowers
June 19, 2014

Hazel Leach has had quite a musical career. After college, where she studied classical flute as well as jazz / pop saxophone, the Englishwoman spent a number of years as a freelance musician / arranger before moving to Holland in 1979. Six years later she was named lecturer in music at the Arnheim Conservatoire, and in 1992 she co-founded the United Women's Orchestra with friend and colleague Christina Fuchs. The UWO lasted until 2009, after which Leach (who meanwhile had ...

Album Review

Dub Colossus: Dub Colossus: Addis To Omega

Read "Dub Colossus: Addis To Omega" reviewed by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
June 19, 2014

If you're a sucker for BIG horn sections, or something like the sounds of UB40 and Groove Armada, still have a 'lickle ting' for Bob Marley and Finley Quaye records and your Pops obsession with Two-Tone (as do we all surely), then you're probably going to like Addis to Omega from Dub Colossus produced by Dubulah aka Nick Page. An album of skatalitic reggae dub delights, all sepia tinged in Studio One nostalgia with some heavy nods to Ethio jazz. ...

Album Review

Chris Schlarb: Making The Saint

Read "Making The Saint" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
June 18, 2014

Having spent four years cutting and pasting fifty trusted musicians on his stunning debut solo recording, Twilight & Ghost Stories (Asthmatic Kitty Records, 2007) guitarist/composer Chris Schlarb may understandably have felt like scaling back. Instead, Schlarb invested similar time and resources to sculpt the beautifully meditative folk-jazz ambient suite Psychic Temple (Sounds Are Active/Asthmatic Kitty Records, 2011) and the outsized pool of backing musicians was on hand again for Psychic Temple II (Asthmatic Kitty Records, 2013) with its Frank Zappa ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Miles Davis, Volume 1 and 2 -- Blue Note 1501 and 1502

by Marc Davis
June 18, 2014

Miles Davis didn't record much for Blue Note Records, just three sessions in three years. So it's odd that the very first two CDs in Blue Note's classic 1500 series--the 100 albums from the 1950s that made Blue Note the top label in hard bop--are from Miles Davis. They're not bad records, but they're not essential Miles Davis. This isn't classic muted Miles, or modal Miles, or Miles with orchestra. And, of course, it's many years before classic ...

Album Review

Rich Halley 4: The Wisdom of Rocks

Read "The Wisdom of Rocks" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 18, 2014

Tenor saxophonist and composer Rich Halley believes in the wisdom of rocks, or so one must assume from the title of his 16th album as leader, The Wisdom Of Rocks. It's probably smart to acknowledge Halley's expertise in such matters: as a qualified field biologist who lives in Oregon he's no doubt encountered more than a few rocks in his time. As a musician, composer and band leader Halley has a distinguished and extensive discography. The Wisdom Of Rocks follows ...

Live Review

Bill Charlap-Renee Rosnes at Musical Instrument Museum

by Patricia Myers
June 18, 2014

Bill Charlap-Renee Rosnes Musical Instrument Museum Phoenix, Arizona June 4, 2014 Facing each other at a nestled pair of nine-foot concert grand pianos, Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes combined their 20 fingers for a compelling concert that didn't rely solely on the Great American Songbook. While there was a bit of George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, the program offered a refreshingly varied and intriguing repertoire. They mostly worked from charts related to their ...

Extended Analysis

Dino Saluzzi Group: El Valle de la Infancia

by John Kelman
June 18, 2014

In his 32-year relationship with ECM Records, Argentinean bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi has explored many paths--paths upon which he has rarely traveled more than once, even if there were certain road marks common to them all. A pair of trio recordings with his son, guitarist José Maria Saluzzi, employed two different bassists--Marc Johnson on 1997's Cité de la Musique and Palle Danielsson on 2003's Responsorium--their graceful elegance possessing a similar but different intimacy when compared to the bandoneonist's ongoing duo with ...