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.

Extended Analysis

Marc Ribot Trio: Live At The Village Vanguard

by Dan Bilawsky
April 30, 2014

Playing and recording at New York's Village Vanguard is often seen as a sign of ascendancy in the jazz world. For some, the honor is bestowed early on; for others, it comes at a more mature stage; and for a third group, it comes even further down the road. Guitarist Marc Ribot is part of that third group. This protean rabble-rouser has been an important part of New York's artistic landscape for decades, contributing to the music ...

Extended Analysis

Shalosh: The Bell Garden

by Phil Barnes
April 30, 2014

A strong friendship can be a wonderful thing, a connection that allows you to pick up where you left off no matter how long the gap, one that remains strong whatever your respective experiences since you last met. Should you and your friends happen to be professional musicians then that gift can potentially go to a whole new higher level. Israeli trio Shalosh met in High School and their friendship endured even pianist Gadi Stern's six year exile in the ...

Album Review

Mario Pavone: Street Songs

Read "Street Songs" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 30, 2014

Listing an accordion in a jazz sextet's lineup evokes either thoughts of avant-garde leanings or maybe kitschy hipsterism. Not so for bassist Mario Pavone. Street Songs includes Adam Matlock's bellows-driven squeezebox, not as a gimcrack ornament, but a link to the immigrant working class neighborhood music of Pavone's post-WW II youth. The musician's history is significant because his bass has anchored modern music including bands by innovators such as Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Thomas Chapin, Anthony Braxton, and ...

Album Review

Stefano Pastor & Charlotte Hug: Paragon D'archi

Read "Paragon D'archi" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
April 30, 2014

The title of the debut duo album of Swiss viola player and vocalist Charlotte Hug and Italian violinist Stefano Pastor is symbolic and insightful. Archi in Italian means bows, as the ones used for the string instruments of Hug and Pastor, but also arches, as in architectural structures. Yet the spectacular, improvised duets of these two masters do not attempt to be perfect structures, musical equivalents of baroque paragons. These duets suggest newer, inventive means for playing with sounds, using ...

Tell Me More

Stacey Kent: Songs in the Key of Love and Life

by Belinda Ware
April 30, 2014

Stacey Kent is a unique talent in the world of jazz with the ability to illuminate a stage through her enthusiasm and artistic zest for performance. As an international jazz singer, she can be described as an insightful storyteller with the inner gift to bring to life the human experience through her music with an honest candor that is respectable in many ways. As seen in the collection of her Blue Note recordings, Kent's musical gifts are truly unique in ...

Live Review

Jose James at Dazzle

by Geoff Anderson
April 29, 2014

Jose James Dazzle Denver, CO April 23, 2014 Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Gil Scott-Heron. Mix them together, bring them into the 21st Century and you end up with something that sounds a lot like Jose James. Wednesday night at Dazzle, 36-year-old James brought his band and updated soul sound to Denver. He also brought along a plethora of other influences like R&B, jazz, funk, some rock and a touch of hip hop. ...

Album Review

Charlie Dennard: From Brazil To New Orleans

Read "From Brazil To New Orleans" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 29, 2014

Thousands of miles separate Brazil and New Orleans, but pianist/composer Charlie Dennard thinks these two locales are a lot closer than that. This album is his way of showing that. Dennard, a former student of Ellis Marsalis who's served as a music director for Cirque du Soleil productions and shared the stage with drummer Stanton Moore, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and numerous other NOLA heavies, uses a rotating cast of twenty musicians to put life into this line ...

Live Review

“Chapito” Chavarria’s 100th Birthday Celebration at the Musical Instrument Museum

by Patricia Myers
April 29, 2014

"Chapito" Chavarria Orchestra Musical Instrument Museum Phoenix, Arizona April 6, 2014 A 10-piece band of Phoenix-area musicians performed a concert celebrating the 100th birthday of longtime bandleader Rafael “Chapito" Chavarria. The musician, composer and arranger attended the event, which included the dedication of a new segment of the “I Am AZ Music" exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum. The display that honors him as one of Arizona's cultural treasures features two of his instruments, hand-written ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles: Uganda Suite

Read "Uganda Suite" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 29, 2014

In 2008 saxophonist/composer Felipe Salles offered up the superb South American Suite (Curare Records). The highly rhythmic ode to his home continent seemed a natural for Salles, who hails originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He now moves his focus to the east, across the Atlantic for the gorgeous Ugandan Suite, a collection brimming with surging rhythms and fluid reed work. The use of the “geographical suite" in jazz, going back to composer/band leader Duke Ellington with his suites ...

Album Review

Marc Ribot Trio: Live At The Village Vanguard

Read "Live At The Village Vanguard" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 29, 2014

It had been 16,631 days since bassist Henry Grimes had last played music at New York's infamous Village Vanguard. His performance, with saxophonist Albert Ayler, on December 18, 1966 was recorded and released as In Greenwich Village (Impulse!, 1967). Back after 45 years, 6 months, and 12 days, the bassist, now part of guitarist Marc Ribot's Trio with drummer Chad Taylor, revisited the musical revolution Ayler instigated in the 1960s. Ribot's music, since its origins with John Lurie's ...