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

Noshir Mody: Stories from The Years of Living Passionately

Read "Stories from The Years of Living Passionately" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 31, 2014

A random sampling of Stories from The Years of Living Passionately could easily leave the impression that this is a hybrid of cool jazz, classical and world music. Even that broad an assumption would not be a comprehensive representation of Indian born Noshir Mody's complex, multi-layered collection of original music. A self-taught guitarist, he can invoke playing styles as diverse as Lee Ritenour, Pat Metheny or John Abercrombie yet his distinctive sound reveals no particular adherence to a form of ...

Extended Analysis

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb: Betzidei Drachim [Roadsides]

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 31, 2014

Israeli, Canada-based vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb attempts in her fourth solo album to portray a possible peaceful vision of the Middle-East through a wise arrangement of Israeli and Palestinian poetry. These poems, all sung in Hebrew (and all translated to English) suggest that behind the conflict, contrasting historical, political and even cultural narratives live people who share like-minded passions, dreams and loves, often in relation to the same shared natural scenery. Gottlieb composed these poems over a long time, few ...

Album Review

Kidd Jordan/Alvin Fielder/Peter Kowald: Trio and Duo in New Orleans

Read "Trio and Duo in New Orleans" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 31, 2014

Tenor saxophonist Edward Kidd Jordan and drummer Alvin Fielder have been a fixture in their southern outpost for nigh on forty years, but they've rarely been heard to such good effect as on Trio and Duo in New Orleans. This wonderful two CD set brings together music from three separate dates. The first disc (also available as a double LP) comprises a 70-minute exchange between the American pair and hugely talented peripatetic German bassist Peter Kowald in April 2002, five ...

Album Review

Alexander Hawkins Ensemble: Step Wide, Step Deep

Read "Step Wide, Step Deep" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 31, 2014

British composer, pianist Alexander Hawkins possesses the goods to be a world-beater in avant-jazz circles. He's collaborated with legendary drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo (Brotherhood of Breath) and co-leads the Convergence Quartet amid his concurrent 2014 solo piano release Song Singular and other notable endeavors for this UK-based record label. Hawkins' compositional prowess takes center-stage on this high-flying sojourn, showcasing a superfine band that communicates extraordinary synergy, coupled with towering solo spots and a penchant for zooming in for the kill, while ...

Album Review

Stacey Kent: The Changing Lights

Read "The Changing Lights" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 31, 2014

Stacey Kent's voice operates at the intersection of knowingness and innocence. She delivers every song with finesse, balancing a sense of wide-eyed wonderment with soft-handed confidence. Perhaps that's why she's been able to build such an enormous fan base since starting her singing career and showing up on listener's radars near the turn of the century. Kent came from New York and used England as a launching pad for her talent(s), but her art carries several passports. ...

Catching Up With

Eric Legnini: The Afro Beat from Europe

by Jean-Pierre Goffin
March 30, 2014

Starting very young with his own trio--Stéphane Galland (Aka Moon, Joe Zawinul, Lobi) on drums and Jean-Louis Rassinfosse, bassist of the European Chet Baker's trio with Philip Catherine--Eric Legnini left Brussels and has been living in Paris since then, appearing first with drummer Aldo Romano, alto saxophonist Stefano Di Battista and trumpet player Flavio Boltro. His first three recordings in the European jazz sphere were Miss Soul (Label Bleu, 2005), Big Booggallo (Label Bleu, 2007) and Trippin (B.Flat, 2009). His ...

Album Review

Tri-Fi: Staring into the Sun

Read "Staring into the Sun" reviewed by Jeffrey Uhrich

by Jeffrey Uhrich
March 30, 2014

With their impressive new release, Staring into the Sun, Tri-Fi defies the odds and provides a sound argument that a piano trio can indeed be a “band" in the truest sense of the word. In most cases, albums that are released by musicians marketing themselves as a jazz “band" are merely vehicles to provide a framework for the individual musicians of the “band" to show off their musical prowess and bombard the listener with indulgent solo after indulgent solo. With ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Braxton Cook

by AAJ Staff
March 30, 2014

Meet Braxton Cook: As a young emerging saxophonist, Braxton Cook has already garnered several honors and accolades. While in high school, he had been honored to be one of 30 other high school musicians selected from a nationwide competition to participate in the 2009 Grammy Jazz ensemble, held during the same week as the Grammy Awards. During his freshman year at Georgetown University, Braxton was selected as NFAA's 2010 YoungARTS Finalist and participated in a fully-paid expense week in ...

Album Review

Misha Tsiganov: Misha Tsiganov: The Artistry Of The Standard

Read "Misha Tsiganov: The Artistry Of The Standard" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 30, 2014

Veteran Russian pianist Misha Tsiganov has an extensive discography featuring original compositions and, like most musicians, blending a few standards for familiarity along the way. With The Artistry Of The Standard, the pianist presents an entire album of standards reprising the music of jazz greats Wayne Shorter, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery and John Coltrane among others. Jazz standards however, is not the only genre represented on the nine-piece repertoire as Tsiganov also includes music from the Great American Songbook drawing ...

Bailey's Bundles

The Jazz Ballad Gauntlet: Rebecca Parris and Beat Kaestli

by C. Michael Bailey
March 30, 2014

bal * lad :noun \'ba-ləd\ A slow popular song that is typically about love. The ballad remains one of the most durable vehicles in any music genre. In jazz, it is a make-or-break format capable of revealing the haves and haves not in the jazz vocals department. There have been many nonpareil jazz ballad singers, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Horn immediately come to mind. Among the men are Frank Sinatra, ...