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

Matt Bauder And Day In Pictures: Nightshades

Read "Nightshades" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 20, 2014

The lesson learned from listening to saxophonist Matt Bauder's second Day In Pictures release Nightshades is that you would never want to take a blindfold listening test with him. He'd steal your records. The quintet from his 2010 self-titled release on Clean Feed remains intact, with the exception that Angelica Sanchez was replaced by pianist Kris Davis. Otherwise, the musicians: Nate Wooley (trumpet), Jason Ajemian (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums) nourish Bauder's vision that innovation in jazz in ...

Album Review

Matt Bauder And Day In Pictures: Nightshades

Read "Nightshades" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 20, 2014

Saxophonist Matt Bauder was mentored by celebrated avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton and has been a busy and quite productive artist on numerous jazz fronts. As a topnotch session man and leader, Bauder's resume intimates fruitful affiliations with musicians who are at the forefront of the progressive jazz and avant-garde sectors. Fueled by an all-star lineup, Nightshades is the saxophonist's second solo effort for Portugal-based Clean Feed Records, and is a program that shifts between mainstream jazz and ...

Album Review

Dan Peter Sundland: Elevenette

Read "Elevenette" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 20, 2014

Eleventte is the ambitious debut album of Norwegian, 27-year- old bassist Dan Peter Sundland that attempts to merge compositions for chamber ensembles, improvised segments and texts from contemporary American poets. Sundland's group consists of four classically-trained musicians, plus seven musicians with backgrounds in modern jazz and free improvisation, most notably tenor saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg and drummer Hans Hulbækmo, both members of Paulsberg Concept, and trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, one of the most promising, busiest Norwegian free improvisers and a member ...

Album Review

Matthew Shipp Trio: Root of Things

Read "Root of Things" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
March 19, 2014

Root of Things is the third recording by pianist Matthew Shipp's working trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey, following Elastic Aspects (Thirsty Ear, 2012) and the group's live debut The Art Of The Improviser (Thirsty Ear, 2011). Over the past three decades, Shipp has demonstrated the reach of his artistry in myriad ways, including genre-defying electro-acoustic experiments. In recent years however, Shipp has narrowed his focus, concentrating on acoustic efforts largely based in intimate solo, duo and ...

Interview

Ed Palermo: Not Only In It For The Money

by Duncan Heining
March 19, 2014

It's been twenty years since saxophonist-composer-arranger Ed Palermo and his Big Band began playing the music of Frank Zappa. Twenty years, not a lot of bread but a whole lot of love from fans and musicians alike. Oh No! Not Jazz!! on Cuneiform Records marks the band's fourth Zappa album and the third for that remarkable independent label but it also adds something new to the mix. It's a double CD set with the second CD devoted to Palermo's own ...

Album Review

Marc Halbheer's 5th Edition: Confidence in Symmetry

Read "Confidence in Symmetry" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 19, 2014

Swiss drummer/bandleader Marc Halbheer couldn't be accused of lumping his eggs in one basket. His more orthodox projects encompass a jazz standards quartet, and the contemporary Trio Edition with bassist Arild Andersen and guitarist Christy Doran. Halbheer's more exotic collaborations embrace the folk musics of China, Central Asia, the Alps and the Balkans in genre-defying fusions. Confidence in Symmetry, however, represents a significant step for the drummer in compositional terms. Whereas Halbheer's previous record as a leader, Mood Swings (Texit ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Matt Ridley

by AAJ Staff
March 19, 2014

Meet Matt Ridley: I graduated from Trinity College of Music in Greenwich, London in 2005 and have been a full time bassist since then. Music has taken me all around the world and I've been very privileged to perform regularly with some of the finest jazz musicians in UK like Jason Yarde, John Turville, and George Hart who were on my debut album, Thymos (Whirlwind, 2013). I also produced a record with the MJQ Celebration, which plays ...

Album Review

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension: The Boston Record

Read "The Boston Record" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
March 19, 2014

Ever since guitarist John McLaughlin formed the 4th Dimension--his first electric fusion band in a decade--fans have been hoping he'd dig a little further into his back catalog. The wait is over with The Boston Record, a live album recorded in 2013 at Boston's Berklee College of Music. This isn't 4th Dimension's first live album, though it is the first to feature the seven year-old group's current configuration. Ranjit Barot, first heard with McLaughlin on Floating Point (Abstract ...

Album Review

Regina Carter: Southern Comfort

Read "Southern Comfort" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 19, 2014

Violinist Regina Carter's debut for Sony Masterworks finds her knee-deep in history once again. Carter has become something of a genre-blind and stylistically-inclusive musicologist, marrying her violin, family history and more to music of various shapes and origins. She paid tribute to the dark lord of the violin on Paganini: After A Dream (Verve, 2003), explored the songs that her mother loved on I'll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey (Verve, 2006), and bridged the gap between ...

Album Review

As Deafness Increases: As Deafness Increases

Read "As Deafness Increases" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 19, 2014

Do not attempt to adjust the speed setting on your turntable. The music delivered by As Deafness Increases is indeed punk, or perhaps noise. It's just that the punk presented is at a glacial pace, or maybe it's the noise of Merzbow performed as if there were a sleeping baby in the room. Released by the often obstreperous label Va Fongool, the same outfit that gave us the thrashing band ICH BIN N!NTENDO, the distortion band MUMMU, and ...