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

Adam Smale: Out of the Blue

Read "Out of the Blue" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
April 6, 2014

Out of the Blue is the U.S. debut album by Canadian-born guitarist Adam Smale, but Smale hasn't come out of nowhere. In 2000, he released the album Fun City in his home country and received plenty of airplay and critical acclaim and in 2009 he moved to New York and since then he has become a vital addition to the jazz scene in the city. New York is celebrated on “NYC Love Affair," a cool, swinging tune ...

Album Review

Watters / Felts Project: Watters / Felts Project

Read "Watters / Felts Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 6, 2014

On The Watters / Felts Project, Ken Watters, a fine trumpeter, and his quintet are confined for the most part to escorting singer Ingrid Felts as she wends her way through five present-day compositions, Billie Holiday's “Fine and Mellow" and the standard “I'll Be Seeing You." Is it a good idea? That depends in part on one's response to Felts' casual, blues-based vocal style. The opinion here is that her performance is for the most part adequate but no more ...

Album Review

Michel Edelin Quartet: Resurgence

Read "Resurgence" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 6, 2014

French flutist Michel Edelin is back among familiar faces on Resurgence, after his appearance with fellow flutist Nicole Mitchell on The Ethiopian Princess Meets The Tantric Priest (Rouge Art, 2011). He reconstitutes the quartet which last appeared together on Déblocage D'émergence (AA Records, 1995) for a studio set of 11 of his smart originals. On bass Jean-Jacques Avenel demonstrates why he held tenure for such a long time with the late Steve Lacy, freed to join the frontline by drummer ...

Album Review

Ondrej Stveracek Quartet: The Form

Read "The Form" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 6, 2014

Prague-based saxophonist Ondrej Stveracek and his sterling quartet are a driving force in Central Europe's thriving jazz scene and the group's stellar outing on The Form, is more than ample testament to this claim. A young lion from the Czech Republic, Stveracek was inspired by the music of John Coltrane and, although drawn in by his style, he clearly distinguishes himself by developing a voice of his own. The album presents an audacious session of post-bop jazz where his own ...

Album Review

Yoni Kretzmer 66 Boxes: Graceless

Read "Graceless" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
April 6, 2014

Israeli, New York-based tenor saxophonist Yoni Kretzmer returns on Graceless to an old passion of his--writing music that attempts to bridge the forward-thinking jazz from the school of sax heroes Tim Berne, Ellery Eskelin, and European jazz with elements from contemporary chamber music. Kretzmer's debut album as a leader, Yoni Kretzmer's New Dilemma (Earsay, 2009) focused on the same idea, but now with a better and varied experience and is accompanied by resourceful and opinionated musicians, he comes closer to ...

Live Review

Brilliant Corners 2014

by Ian Patterson
April 6, 2014

Brilliant Corners Various Venues Belfast N. Ireland March 26-29, 2014 It's taken a while, but Belfast has finally joined the ranks of cities that play host to an international jazz festival. The first edition of Brilliant Corners was staged in the rejuvenated Cathedral Quarter of the city in 2013 and such was the response of the public, musicans and media that Brian Carson, founder of Northern Ireland's premier music promotions company Moving On ...

Extended Analysis

Jaco Pastorius: Modern American Music…Period! The Criteria Sessions

by John Kelman
April 6, 2014

1976 was, for electric bassists, the year where everything changed. Jaco Pastorius hadn't quite emerged from nowhere, and the few prior recordings on which he could be found may have provided some hint of what was to come, but it was the quadruple punch of fellow legend-in-the-making Pat Metheny's leader debut Bright Size Life (ECM, 1976), singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell's classic Hejira (Elektra/Asylum, 1976), fusion super group Weather Report's Black Market (Columbia, 1976) and, most notably, the bassist's own Jaco Pastorius ...

Extended Analysis

Emmylou Harris: Wrecking Ball

by Nenad Georgievski
April 5, 2014

Wrecking Ball seemed like a pivotal record in singer Emmylou Harris' history when it was released in 1995 and it is no less important now 20 years later. It is said that great records may go out of print but they rarely go out of style, and Wrecking Ball still radiates with its sheer beauty. Assisted by legendary producer Daniel Lanois ("The Medicine Man") and a band of musicians that have played with him either on his previous solo records ...

Album Review

Alan Broadbent And NDR Bigband: America The Beautiful

Read "America The Beautiful" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 5, 2014

In the brief liner essay that accompanies America The Beautiful, pianist Alan Broadbent notes that he has “an aversion to being clever," but the rest of the music world never received that memo. Everybody from Irene Kral to Diana Krall and Charlie Haden to Charlie Rich has benefited from his brilliance with a pen and/or a piano. Now Broadbent gets a chance to live within his own well-written constructs. America The Beautiful finds Broadbent in the company ...

Album Review

Perry Beekman: Bewitched

Read "Bewitched" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 5, 2014

Perry Beekman: a guitarist who sings or a singer who plays guitar? It's a question that doesn't take long to answer. Clearly, Beekman is a guitarist who sings. That's not to say, however, that he sings poorly. Beekman has a pleasant voice, which he puts to good use on this album of marvelous songs by the dynamic duo of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. On the other hand, he's no Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett or Nat King Cole. To be ...