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

East West Collective: Humeurs

by John Sharpe
May 15, 2014

The East West Collective constituted one of the surprise hits of the 2013 Vision Festival in New York City. As their name implies the five strong outfit comprises improvisers from both the Occident and Orient. Their origin lies in French cellist Didier Petit's regular visits to the Far East, often with clarinetist Sylvain Kassap in tow, where he perceived a connection between Chinese traditional music and European improvisation. Guzheng player Xu Fengxia and koto exponent Miya Masaoka were invited to ...

Album Review

Alan Wilkinson/Steve Noble/John Coxon/Pat Thomas: The Founder Effect I

Read "The Founder Effect I" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 15, 2014

You cannot judge a book by its cover. Maybe, but music fans somehow know that expression doesn't lend itself to album covers (in this case, CD covers). Look at the Blue Note Records covers from the 1960 sixties, Miles Davis' On The Corner (Columbia, 1972), or The Clash's London Calling (Columbia, 1979), and tell me you don't have a very good idea what you'll hear on those records. Covers matter, and more importantly they reveal essential information about ...

Album Review

Thomas Gunillasson: Glashus

Read "Glashus" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 15, 2014

The musical career of Swedish, Västerås-based guitarist Thomas Gunillasson flirts with early influences of Nordic metal bands and later sophistication of improvising jazz outfits and left-of-center rock outfits. Gunillasson plays in fellow Swede, and avant-garde vocalist Lindha Kallerdahl's GOLD band, co-leads the quartet Thymeshift with drummer Johan Björklund and leads the trio Les Pickadoles with ex- Zappa band drummer Morgan Ågren, known also from his Mats/Morgan Band, and bassist Gustaf Hielm, a former member of the Swedish metal band Meshugga. ...

Album Review

Roy Assaf Trio: Second Row Behind The Painter

Read "Second Row Behind The Painter" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 14, 2014

Pianist Roy Assaf decided to try a different studio tactic when he set out to make this record. Instead of simply having his trio take multiple passes at tracks on a single predetermined playlist, he decided to have the group simulate a stay at a club. They recorded multiple sets, accumulating almost five hours worth of recorded music. When all was said and done, he sifted through it all to come up with the best material for this album. It's ...

Live Review

Beale Street Music Festival 2014

by C. Michael Bailey
May 14, 2014

Beale Street Music FestivalMemphis in May International Festival Tom Lee Park Memphis, Tennessee May 2-4, 2014 For most of us, even those born and raised here and rooted to the soil like one of Faulkner's oaks, the South no longer exists. In fact, nearer to the truth, it has never existed. The South, as we know it, is a collective fantasy that lives in us as much as we in it... The little ...

Album Review

Rodrigo Amado: Wire Quartet

Read "Wire Quartet" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 14, 2014

It is possible that Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's earlier releases caught your attention because of the names of his playing partners. Chicago trombonist Jeb Bishop recorded two discs with Amado's Motion Trio, The Flame Alphabet (Not Two, 2012) and Burning Live At Jazz AO Centro (JACC Records, 2012). There was also Searching For Adam (Not Two, 2010) with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and bassist John Hébert and The Abstract Truth (European Echoes, 2009) with bassist Kent Kessler, ...

Album Review

Harvey Mason: Chameleon

Read "Chameleon" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
May 14, 2014

When you've been making music as long as Harvey Mason has as a solo artist and manning the drum chair for Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Donald Byrd,and more artists than there is space here to list, you are not only pleasing longtime fans, you're making new converts as well. Some who might ask, “This guy's pretty good. Wonder what else he's done?" Mason's answer is his first album in a decade, Chameleon and he both looks back at ...

Multiple Reviews

Juhani Aaltonen Celebrates the Heroes of Finnish Jazz

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 14, 2014

Since its inception, the Finnish Tum label's aim was to document the current, local jazz scene and to position it in a broader perspective--from seminal influences by local heroes, musicians from the first generation of Finnish Jazz, and formative forces from European jazz, mainly the Scandinavian ones. Almost 80-year old sax hero Juhani Aaltonen, born in 1935, embodies this vision perfectly as a musician who began his professional career alin 1958 and performed with all the great Finnish jazz musicians, ...

Album Review

Peter Hammill / Gary Lucas: Other World

Read "Other World" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 14, 2014

On paper, this alliance might seem like an improbable encounter. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Peter Hammill is revered for his work with the legendary progressive rock unit, Van Der Graaf Generator. While guitarist Gary Lucas' resume contains a historic affiliation with avant, blues-rock wiz Captain Beefheart amid stints within New York City's downtown scene denizens, vocalist Joan Osborne; numerous solo albums and other heterogeneous projects. Yet Other Worlds emanated from Lucas' affinity for prog rock and admiration of Hammill's longstanding eminence ...

Extended Analysis

Road Shows, Vol. 3

by Victor L. Schermer
May 14, 2014

Legendary tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins has proven himself to be one of the most durable, consistently strong musicians of any era and genre. He started playing tenor saxophone in the 1940s, came into his own as a recognized player in the 1950s, and, except for short interruptions has been working and recording ever since. The reason he has been so steadily successful and productive is that he has unswervingly pursued his own exciting and highly inventive style that incorporates the ...