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

Simin Tander: Where Water Travels Home

Read "Where Water Travels Home" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
June 11, 2014

A typical jazz format perhaps, but the delivery on Simon Tander's second CD is anything but typical. As on her memorable debut Wagma (Neuklang Records, 2011), Tander sings in various languages--English, French--and in her improvised language. Here, however, Tander explores her roots by singing in pashto--her Afghan father's language--with mesmerizing results. On Wagma, Tander already sounded conceptually and musically fairly rounded, but Where Water Travels Home comes across as a more mature and personal work, one that reaffirms Tander's credentials ...

The Vinyl Post

Roland Kirk: The Limelight/Verve Albums

by C. Andrew Hovan
June 10, 2014

Several years ago when this writer was looking for rarities to include in the column Jazz From the Vinyl Junkyard, the chances for the medium to make a huge comeback seemed to be slim at best. Fast forward and it seems that vinyl is the new black, with efforts to market it to a fresh and younger audience. The availability of simple to operate and affordable turntables aids the process. And until just recently, Stereophile magazine had an entire column, ...

Album Review

Alice Zawadzki: China Lane

Read "China Lane" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 10, 2014

Singer, songwriter and violinist Alice Zawadzki spent five years creating her first album, China Lane. A group of the UK's most respected young musicians joins her to bring her compositions to life--the result is a strong debut, the arrival of a musician with a distinctive voice and songwriting style. As a writer, Zawadzki doesn't just stick to tales of love or romance. The subject matter of the songs on China Lane moves from the relative ordinariness of daily ...

Live Review

Billy Hart Quartet at the Village Vanguard

by Dan Bilawsky
June 10, 2014

Billy Hart Quartet Village Vanguard New York, NY June 3, 2014 What does it take for an esteemed veteran drummer to get his due as a leader? In the case of the great Billy Hart, it seems that a pair of albums under his name on the ECM imprint--All Our Reasons (ECM, 2012) and One Is The Other (ECM, 2014)--helped to do the trick. Hart, who's been around the block more ...

Album Review

Tyrone Birkett | Emancipation: Post Modern Spirituals: The Promised Land

Read "Post Modern Spirituals: The Promised Land" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 10, 2014

Saxophonist and composer Tyrone Birkett's early output, particularly his In the Fullness of Time (Convergence Records, 2006) was dangerously close to the over-sentimental, syrupy and innocuous sounds of (gasp!) smooth jazz. What kept the record from falling over into that, much maligned, genre was Birkett's superlative improvisational chops and his robust devotional sense. On his sophomore release as a leader Post Modern Spirituals: The Promised Land both of these attributes are at the forefront leaving any flirtations with instrumental pop ...

Album Review

David White Jazz Orchestra: The Chase

Read "The Chase" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 10, 2014

Flashpoint, released three years ago (in 2011), introduced listeners to a splendid New York-based orchestra led by composer / trombonist David White. On The Chase, White proves that Flashpoint was indeed no fluke, guiding what is essentially the same ensemble through its paces on half a dozen of his admirable charts. There is one sizable difference, which will be addressed in due course; in musical terms, however, White and the orchestra are as a rule beyond reproach. He writes tasteful ...

Album Review

Various Artists: Impulsively Ellington!: A Tribute to Duke Ellington

Read "Impulsively Ellington!: A Tribute to Duke Ellington" reviewed by Marc Davis

by Marc Davis
June 10, 2014

It's not hard to find Duke Ellington cover songs. Nearly every jazz musician alive (and many long dead) has covered an Ellington tune or two. Some have done entire albums. Ella Fitzgerald did a three-CD set. Many covers are so well-known and so ordinary, they're hardly worth finding. “Sophisticated Lady" has been done to death. Ditto “Satin Doll." I'm not sure the world needs another cover version of either. I choose the path less traveled.

Album Review

Morten, J. Olsen: Bass Drum!

Read "Bass Drum!" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
June 10, 2014

Norwegian, Berlin-based percussionist Morten J. Olsen's debut solo album demonstrates how far and advanced his instrumental vocabulary has become. Olsen was part of the high-energy duo MoHa, with guitarist Anders Hana, which later evolved to the powerful quartet Ultralyd, founded by legendary reeds player Frode Gjerstad. After moving to Berlin he became a member of Splitter Orchestra, a 25-piece improvising collective and recently began to perform as a techno DJ. Bass Drum! features Olsen's instrument of ...

Extended Analysis

Keith Jarrett / Charlie Haden: Last Dance

by John Kelman
June 10, 2014

For the past 30 years--barring a few diversions into classical repertoire, unexpected instrumentation like 1986's Book of Ways and a couple of home-cooked solo albums that, as with the 1986 recording No End (ECM, 2013), were out-of-character recordings where he overdubbed all the instruments himself--pianist Keith Jarrett has been working two contexts and two contexts only: solo piano performances that, with the exception of the home-recorded The Melody at Night, With You (ECM, 1999), have all been recorded live; and ...

Album Review

Georgia Mancio and Nigel Price: Come Rain Or Come Shine

Read "Come Rain Or Come Shine" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 9, 2014

Subtlety. It's a useful characteristic in many walks of life. It's underused, too. Come Rain Or Come Shine, the first recording from the partnership of singer Georgia Mancio and guitarist Nigel Price, is an object lesson in subtlety, in understated interpretation, in the impact of nuance. It's really rather good. Mancio and Price are well-established performers with growing reputations--Price's Organ Trio won the 2010 Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Ensemble, Mancio's third album, Silhouette (Roomspin Records), was one ...