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

Lena Bloch: Feathery

Read "Feathery" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 16, 2014

Russian-born tenor saxophonist Lena Bloch carries a cool burning torch for the music of saxophonist Warne Marsh and the Lennie Tristano school of jazz. For Feathery, her debut CD as a leader, Bloch has assembled a quartet that can rival the loose and interactive and spontaneous ensembles of alto saxophonist Lee Konitz--a Tristano acolyte and Bloch's friend and mentor. Like the marvelous Konitz outing, Live at Birdland (ECM Record, 2011), where the saxophonist was joined by top notch ...

Album Review

Jon Irabagon: It Takes All Kinds

Read "It Takes All Kinds" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 16, 2014

It Takes All Kinds is the third recorded collaboration between prolific tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon and a great drummer, Barry Altschul. The first, Irabagon's Foxy (Hot cup, 2010) featured double bassist Peter Brendler. The second, Altschul's The 3dom Factor (TUM, 2013) featured double bass player Joe Fonda. The most recent one features Altschul's longtime rhythm teammate, double bassist virtuoso Mark Helias. Irabagon, Altschul and Helias are each highly creative musicians with distinct, dominant voices nurtured by an extensive, diverse array ...

Album Review

Cirrus: Méli Mélo

Read "Méli Mélo" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 15, 2014

Norwegian group Cirrus started life as a drummerless trio when singer Eva Bjerga Haugen, saxophonist Inge Weatherhead Breistein and bassist Theodor Barsnes Onarheim met while studying performance and improvisation at the University of Stavanger. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when teacher and drummer Stein Inge Braekhus joined for this debut recording, bringing a heightened sense of groove and shifting dynamics to what is essentially chamber jazz. Though the strikingly gifted Haugen may garner most plaudits for ...

Extended Analysis

Andre Carvalho: Memoria De Amiba

by Phil Barnes
March 15, 2014

Subtlety and gentility are not qualities that our modern world tends to value significantly, but in jazz they can add greatly to the listening experience. Think perhaps of say a Bill Evans and Jim Hall collaboration or maybe Arve Henriksen's recent Places of Worship, music that beguiles and insinuates its way into your sub-conscious until it feels as if it has always been a part of your life. While it is too soon to say whether the new ...

Album Review

GoGo Penguin: v2.0

by Bruce Lindsay
March 15, 2014

So what do we have here? An album by Manchester trio GoGo Penguin. The minimalist front cover gives nothing away, no band name, no album title. The somewhat prosaic title, v2.0 is actually rather more informative--for this is the band's second album, performed by its second lineup. Pianist Chris Illingworth and drummer Rob Turner both appeared on the band's debut, Fanfares (Gondwana Records, 2012). Nick Blacka joined them at the end of 2012, replacing original bassist Grant Russell.

Album Review

Matt Slocum: Black Elk's Dream

Read "Black Elk's Dream" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 15, 2014

Musicians always aim to tell a story with their music, but drummer Matt Slocum goes one better on Black Elk Speaks: Slocum uses a story--an entire individual's history, in fact--to shape his own telling of musical tales. On his third release, following Portraits (Chandra Records, 2009) and After The Storm (Chandra Records, 2011), Slocum digs deep into the history of Black Elk, the famed Oglala Lakota medicine man who was immortalized on paper when John G. Neihardt ...

Album Review

Jazz Snobs Funk Addicts: Season 2: The Return of JSFA!!

Read "Season 2: The Return of JSFA!!" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 15, 2014

Jazz Snobs Funk Addicts is a Seoul-based sextet co-led by pianist/keyboardist Jiyoung Lee and bassist Eunchang Choi. Its 2009 eponymous debut mixed electro-acoustic jazz-funk and mellifluous contemporary jazz and was the enjoyable calling card of a band starting out. JSFA has spent the last four years honing its sound on stage, resulting in greater collective cohesion, a pulsating directness and an undeniably confident group identity on its hard-grooving second CD. Lee's compositions take inspiration from the jazz-funk tradition--with ...

Album Review

Albrecht Maurer - Norbert Rodenkirchen: Loplop's Call

Read "Loplop's Call" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 15, 2014

German and international music scene stalwarts, violinist Albrecht Maurer and flutist Norbert Rodenkirchen juxtapose the visual arts with music, focusing on German surrealist painter Max Ernst's ideologies, poetry, and techniques duly noted in the album liners. Here, the duo casts a hybrid, folk, jazz, and classical muse while bringing a polytonal agenda to the forefront, and uncannily melding a sense of antiquity with a newfangled complexion. These aspects are partly attributed to Maurer's use of a gothic fiddle that forges ...

Live Review

Disappear Incompletely at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society

by Bill Leikam
March 15, 2014

Disappear Incompletely Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society Half Moon Bay, CA February 9, 2014 The electro-jazz septet of Disappear Incompletely performed selected numbers from the Radiohead songbook, with all arrangements by trombonist and electronics master Rob Ewing in what might be best described as the jazzification of the English rock band. Ewing brought some of the finest electro-jazz musicians in the San Francisco bay area to the stage: Kasey Knudsen on tenor saxophone; Patrick Cress ...

Album Review

Christian Vuust: Urban Hymn

Read "Urban Hymn" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
March 14, 2014

As the jazz capital of the world, New York holds a special fascination for musicians around the world. One of them, the Danish saxophonist Christian Vuust, got the chance to fulfill his dream of living and working in the city and also recorded an album of his own music while he was there. The result is more than a souvenir from a musical tourist. It is a genuine artwork of sophisticated beauty where Vuust is able to hold his own ...