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

EGG3: The Butcher Diarias

Read "The Butcher Diarias" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 21, 2014

The marriage of jazz--in all its incarnations--and metal may sound at first as a sacrilegious act but not for a creative musician in the vibrant Norwegian music scene. Norwegian metal bands defined the black metal sub-genre in the eighties and nineties. Moreover, the young generation of Norwegian jazz-trained musicians ignore the American strictly codified version of jazz and have interpreted this music as an open, inclusive one. So why bother with theoretical arguments about clearly defined musical genres and not ...

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Genius Guide to Jazz

How to Win Friends and Influence People to Jazz

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
May 21, 2014

Suppose for a moment that you (or someone a lot like you, except taller) knew someone who had never heard jazz. Or, more likely, had never really listened to jazz. Everyone has heard jazz, in some form or another, even if it was just background music in a TV commercial and/or porno flick (it's hard to tell one from the other nowadays). And suppose that you, a known jazz aficionado, were to introduce them to this music that we love. ...

Album Review

The Basin Street Brawlers: It's Tight Like That

Read "It's Tight Like That" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 20, 2014

It's Tight Like That! is the debut release from the Basin Street Brawlers. Self-styled “purveyors of hot jazz"--indeed, with laudable hubris, “London's own master exponents of hot jazz"--the Basin Street Brawlers hark back to a bygone age, when sharp suits were de rigueur and bands that failed to get their audiences dancing would soon be excluded from polite society. The hubris is (at least partly) tongue-in-cheek and the band has the chops to back up its claims. There's ...

From the Inside Out

Worlds Apart, Whirled Together

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 20, 2014

BossaCucaNova Our Kind of Bossa Six Degrees 2014 Our Kind of Bossa celebrates fifteen fun years of BossaCucaNova, one of Brazil's most adventurous contemporary ensembles (and was also timed to coincide with Brazil hosting the 2014 soccer World Cup). These eleven tracks fuse the electro-bossa nova for which the group is best known with samba and other dance rhythms from their homeland, and celebrate the BossaCucaNova core quartet--Marcio Menescal (son of bossa nova pioneer ...

Album Review

Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack: ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire

Read "...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
May 20, 2014

...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire is an epic four-part suite based on the fictitious songs found scattered throughout celebrated author Thomas Pynchon's early novels V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow. Oboist Kyle Bruckmann conceived this post-modern “musical phantasmagoria" as the first long-form composition written for Wrack, his experimental chamber jazz ensemble, employing an expanded version of the long-standing unit to realize the project's pan-stylistic scope.A former Chicago resident, Bruckmann relocated to San Francisco after the turn ...

Extended Analysis

André Santos: Ponto de Partida

by Phil Barnes
May 20, 2014

There is something wonderful about watching a talented musician make the leap to bandleader and composer on record for the first time. Possibilities have yet to be closed off, the inspiration simply to showcase a personal take on the music they love, the budget not even contemplating high concepts, lavish orchestras, or if you're Rick Wakeman ice skaters. Lisbon resident, Madeira born, guitarist Andre Santos released this energising debut collection, the appropriately titled Ponto de Partida (or 'starting point') in ...

Album Review

Jo-Yu Chen: Stranger

Read "Stranger" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 20, 2014

The short version of pianist Jo-Yu Chen's biography: Born in Taiwan, started with music in the classical realm, moved to New York to study oboe and piano at Julliard School, and fell under the spell of jazz. That's not an unusual back story in the world of jazz, with the exception of her Taiwanese roots. The pianist self-produced two CDs, Obsession (Sony Music Taiwan, 2010) and My Incomplete Soul (Sony Music, 2011), and now--as the first Taiwanese jazz artist signed ...

Extended Analysis

Takeshi Asai: French Trio, Vol. 1

by Geannine Reid
May 20, 2014

Spreading his time between the music scenes of Europe, Asia and the United States, composer and pianist Takeshi Asai brings a fresh sound to jazz via classical harmonic structures and movements. Choosing to present his compositions in a trio format, Asai's CD, Takeshi Asai New York Trio Vol. 1 focuses on the style of jazz in New York. In the summer of 2013, Asai formed his French Trio with Pascal Combeau on bass and drummer Maime Legrand and began touring ...

Album Review

Ralph Bowen: Standard Deviation

Read "Standard Deviation" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 20, 2014

Tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen (Out Of The Blue, Horace Silver, Michel Camillo) is a highly regarded New York-based artiste and an idea man who can stand with the best of them. With his fifth solo venture for Posi- Tone Records Bowen tackles standards, and as the title intimates, he often deviates from the norm. Jerome Kern's “Yesterdays" receives a Latin uplift, sparked by venerable pianist Bill O'Connell's topsy-turvy opening statements and bristling unison choruses with the rhythm section. ...

Album Review

Benjamin Duboc: St. James Infirmary

Read "St. James Infirmary" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 20, 2014

French double bassist Benjamin Duboc belongs to the elite of the European free improvisation scene. He is a musician with a unique command of the bull fiddle, employing a wide array of inventive and original extended techniques. But he is also an improviser that charges each of his solo performances with captivating emotional power. His latest solo album was recorded in the church building Eglise Saint- Martin in Bignac in the western part of France in ...