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

Donald Edwards: Evolution Of An Influenced Mind

Read "Evolution Of An Influenced Mind" reviewed by Andrew Luhn

by Andrew Luhn
March 25, 2014

In recent years, Donald Edwards has become a familiar name in the Criss Cross catalogue. His drumming can be heard on six previous Criss Cross releases, but on Evolution of an Influenced Mind, Edwards makes his debut as a leader. His sensitive and protean drumming has made him a first-call sideman in New York, but this program focuses on his prowess as a composer; Edwards contributes ten of the eleven tunes, with pianist Orrin Evans leading the eleventh.

Album Review

Emilia Mårtensson: Ana

by Mark Corroto
March 25, 2014

Jazz does indeed reside in one large house these days. Thanks to the world travels of Don Cherry and Randy Weston in the 1960s, the European free movement, The Latin voice, and the indelible mark of ECM Records, jazz has transmuted into folk music. It had to happen, what once was the province of the New Orleans bagnio and the metropolis spread to the rural peoples becoming global. Or, perhaps it was the countryside that has seeped into the city. ...

Extended Analysis

Eric Revis: In Memory Of Things Yet Seen

by Henning Bolte
March 25, 2014

Bassist Eric Revis is a heavyweight in more than one respect. He is doing the improbable in a remarkable way, thereby ignoring collectively imposed and maintained demarcations at work. Armed with his physically very present, raw and vibrant bass sound he beats his track into the realms of freely improvised music. He made his debut as a leader in 2012 with Parallax, on the authoritative Lisboan Clean Feed label, with a dream team of Jason Moran, Ken Vandermark and Nasheet ...

Album Review

Kullhammar - Aalberg - Zetterberg: Basement Sessions Vol. 2

Read "Basement Sessions Vol. 2" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 25, 2014

This is the second installment of the Swedish trio's manifold and largely, hard-hitting Basement Sessions motif for Clean Feed Records. And while the artists incorporate a high level of experimentation, they intertwine old school jazz values into the big picture via structured compositions and free-flight improvisations amid an aggregation of contrasting hues, capacious soundscapes and more. From a trio standpoint, the musicians bring quite a bit to the forefront. They expand, contract and generate some blazing, red-zone like turbulence with ...

Album Review

Dan Weiss: Fourteen

Read "Fourteen" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 24, 2014

While the ear essentially functions the same way for everybody, all people don't process sound in the same fashion. Experiences shape the way each and every person takes in what they hear. Some tend to focus in on a single sound, others key in on conversational concepts, and then there are those who are big picture listeners; drummer Dan Weiss' Fourteen, a brilliantly ambitious through-composed work, toys with all three of these angles of perception. Weiss gathered ...

Book Review

Chet Baker: The Missing Years by Artt Frank

by C. Michael Bailey
March 24, 2014

Chet Baker: The Missing Years Artt Frank 234 Pages ISBN: # 978-0-9887687-4-1 BooksEndependent 2014 Baker attracts positive and negative criticism like a celebrity black hole--the artist as hero and antihero. When considering Baker, you consider no one else. From “On The Banks of the Jabbok with Chet Baker," All About Jazz, 2012. Since his death in 1988, trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker has been the subject of three biographies that ...

Album Review

Nicky Schrire: To The Spring

Read "To The Spring" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 24, 2014

It's brief--barely 30 minutes long--and released only in digital form, but To The Spring packs plenty into its allotted time span. This is the third release from singer and songwriter Nicky Schrire. It's another excellent release, her voice framed by the sparse but sympathetic piano and bass of Fabian Almazan and Desmond White. Schrire's voice matures and grows more confident with every release. It's technically impressive, but more importantly it's striking in its ability to inhabit and project ...

Album Review

Tim Hegarty: Tribute

by Dan Bilawsky
March 24, 2014

Tim Hegarty's Tribute is an audible panegyric on the great saxophonist-composers. It's a well-crafted, straightforward date that highlights Hegarty's love for those who've come before and the work that they've done on paper and on record. The list of saxophonists that Hegarty has studied includes George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Joe Henderson, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, and Michael Brecker; the first four on that list are represented on the composition side during this program ...

Album Review

Greg Nathan: I'll Think Of Something

Read "I'll Think Of Something" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 24, 2014

Bassist/vocalist Greg Nathan makes it perfectly clear that he would like the liner notes of I'll Think of Something to be read before listening to the disc. He wants to lay the groundwork for an intimate and proper homage to his late father, composer Charles Nathan. Joining Nathan is guitarist Mike Denny for a recital of eleven original compositions and standards. Among these is Charles Nathan's “I'll Think Of Something" from his musical “Where The Heck's The Plot," which is ...

Album Review

Hanuman: Soundhousing

Read "Soundhousing" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 24, 2014

Hailing from Italy, The Hanuman Quartet's gospel professes a far- reaching and multicolored plane of concepts, including hummable themes, investigative dialogues and asymmetrical pulses that pose a slight realm of suspense on a per-track basis. Many of the semi-structured compositional attributes contain an open forum for improvisation amid nimble atmospherics, simmering free-jazz opuses and a little roughhousing along the way. The band integrates numerous metrics into its manifesto. For instance on “Bhurma Dreams," bassist Stefano Solani's loping blues ...