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

Trio WUH: Live at Jazzinec

Read "Live at Jazzinec" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
May 24, 2014

The first time Skip Wilkins František Uhliř and Jaromir Helešic played together was in January 2012. The following day they got the opportunity of playing at Birdland Neuborg on the Danube. they hit it off and by the time this recording was made in February 2013, they had performed together over 40 times. The trio brings in a mix of standards and originals setting off with “The Second Time Around." Wilkins lets the melody ebb and flow before ...

Album Review

The Apophonics: On Air

by John Sharpe
May 24, 2014

In On Air, radical English saxophonist John Butcher combines two favorite pairings into a threesome which explores a fresh take on the traditional sax/bass/drums model. When Californian percussionist Gino Robair first performed with Butcher in a 1997 recording session in Oakland, something clicked and they have toured extensively since, releasing three duo CDs and nine in total including this one. In 2011 they formed The Apophonics by inviting bassist John Edwards, like Butcher an in demand fixture on the London ...

Album Review

Chicago: Chicago VII

Read "Chicago VII" reviewed by Marc Davis

by Marc Davis
May 24, 2014

Consider the curious case of Chicago, the rock band. This is a group that has lived several lives--some wild, some mild. In the late 60s and early 70s, Chicago was at the cutting edge of rock. Its lead guitarist, Terry Kath, was favorably compared to Jimi Hendrix--by Jimi himself. Its horn section sometimes featured wild improvisations bordering on avante garde and free jazz. The band rocked. It was good. Later, of course, Chicago drowned in shmaltz, ...

Live Review

Mai Jazz 2014

by John Kelman
May 24, 2014

Mai Jazz 2014 Stavanger, Norway May 6-11, 2014 After visiting Norway as often as four or five times annually, a first trip to the country in early May is surprisingly late for a first visit of the year. The last time visiting the west coast city of Stavanger was in 2008, part of the annual JazzNorway in a Nutshell event that brought international guests from around the globe to sample Norwegian culture but, most importantly, the ...

Catching Up With

Johanna Graham: Don't Let Me Be Lonely

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
May 23, 2014

Say their names: Kate Bush, Lordes, Johanna Graham. There's a common thread between these women--a need for drama, designed lyrics and a refreshingly diminished thirst for quick-fix mass appeal, which makes them seem lacking in the lust-for-fame department. What do they have to prove to anyone? The lyrics they write and sing have lived-in depth, their tune arrangements are effortlessly catchy and they are artists whose musical voices are, and will probably remain, timeless; regardless the generation to which they ...

Album Review

J.C. Sanford Orchestra: Views from the Inside

Read "Views from the Inside" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 23, 2014

As John Cleese used to intone on the groundbreaking Monty Python television series, ." . .and now for something completely different." Brooklyn-based composer / arranger J.C. Sanford's Views from the Inside are unlike any that more scrupulous big bands would choose to envision. That is not to say they are any less valid, only unique. It isn't often, for example (well, it isn't ever) that a big-band album opens with more than a minute of what sounds much like random ...

Book Review

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork

by Nenad Georgievski
May 23, 2014

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork Scott Gutterman 204 ISBN: 978-1608872237 Insight Editions 2013 Few are the musicians in any era that accurately inhabit the word “superstar" in the sense that artist Andy Warhol used it. He defined a “superstar" as a person of style, influence and panache, a figure of endless charisma and on whom one's attention falls and rarely wanders. It could be said with certainty that trumpeter Miles Davis ...

Album Review

Sei Miguel: Salvation Modes

Read "Salvation Modes" reviewed by John Ephland

by John Ephland
May 23, 2014

A delicacy pervades this music from start to finish. Sei Miguel's Salvation Modes is flush with silence, interludes, the sounds of musical instruments that made you love them in the first place. The disc is spread over three extended pieces: the first piece, “Preludio e Cruz De Sala," including trumpeter Miguel with guitarist Pedro Gomes, trombonist Fala Mariam and percussionist Cesar Burago; the second, entitled “Fermata," with Miguel also on finger cymbals along with Andre Concalves on hammond manipulation, Margarida ...

Album Review

Nistha Raj: Exit 1

Read "Exit 1" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 23, 2014

Composer and violin player Nistha Raj has studied Hindustani (North Indian) and Western classical music for most of her life. She was raised in Texas and graduated with honors from music studies at the University of Houston, and then studied music for three years in India through a scholarship with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. “This album is the first stop on my musical journey," she says of her Exit 1 debut. “That's why I called it Exit 1. ...

Album Review

Fail Better!: Zero Sum

Read "Zero Sum" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 23, 2014

The name of the Portuguese quintet Fail Better! is inspired by Samuel Beckett who advised: “ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try again, fail again, fail better." This saying, together with the one of Miles Davis who claimed that there are no mistakes in music, capture the very essence of the process of free improvisation. And, obviously its real-time sense of experiment and discovery, a walk on a thin line between magic and the sonic equivalent of psychodrama. ...