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

Let Spin: Let Spin

Read "Let Spin" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
March 13, 2014

This eponymously titled album emanates from a new and exciting British band, which although the brainchild of its guitarist Moss Freed, is not actually his band as such, in that there is no formal leader and each of the quartet share equal composing duties. Freed has already made two fine albums under his own name (under the aegis of The Moss Project), whilst bassist Ruth Goller latterly played with the well-established UK band Acoustic Ladyland. Chris Williams is alto saxophonist ...

Album Review

1032K: That Which Is Planted

Read "That Which Is Planted" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
March 13, 2014

The intrepid and original trio 1032K (the temperature at which the laws of physics no longer apply) is comprised of three versatile and singularly artful musicians who share a common creative vision. Their phenomenal That Which is Planted is a stimulating glimpse at this collaboration recorded live in Buffalo and Rochester, New York. The group radically reinterprets five progressive jazz compositions all the while maintaining the spirit of these provocative tunes. On bassist Charles Mingus' classic “Ecclusiastics" trombonist ...

Album Review

Colin Edwin - Lorenzo Feliciati: Twinscapes

Read "Twinscapes" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 13, 2014

Bassists Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree) and Lorenzo Feliciati (Naked Truth, Beserk!) and several prominent guest artists venture towards the constellations via these bass-driven jaunts, shaded with streaming electronics, firm backbeats, and wraithlike soundscapes. Shortly after the first listen, I detected a kinship to bassist/producer Bill Laswell's early, bass- heavy ambient electronica outings and soon noticed that he engineered the mix for Twinscapes. The first several tracks contain loping bass grooves amid tastefully applied and largely, discreet otherworldly electronics ...

Album Review

Daunik Lazro / Joëlle Léandre: Hasparren

Read "Hasparren" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 13, 2014

French baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro and double bass master Joëlle Léandre began to collaborate almost thirty years ago. This collaboration has yielded one trio recording, Sweet Zee (Hathut, 1984 with trombonist George Lewis), two quartet recordings, Paris Quartet (IIntakt, 1989, with pianist Irène Schweizer, and trombonist Yves Robert, and Madly you (Potlatch, 2002, with violinist Carlos Zingaro and percussionist Paul Lovens), and one filmed duo in the Léandre documentary Basse continue (Hors oeil éditions, 2008) as well as many other ...

Album Review

ti-an-guis: ti-an-guis

Read "ti-an-guis" reviewed by Mike Oppenheim

by Mike Oppenheim
March 12, 2014

ti-an-guis, the self-titled debut album of the group ti-an- guis, is a unique contribution to contemporary folk and world music. Vocalist Lovorka Hojevac, guitarists Francisco Medina, Carlos Henrique Jacques Anderson, bassist Noa Stroeter, and percussionist Pepe Garcia come together to form a world fusion ensemble that is truly global. The individual musicians come from Mexican, Croatian, Brazilian and Portuguese backgrounds. Remarkably, their choice of repertoire is even more diverse. The album features eleven folk songs originating from locales ...

Record Label Profile

Hot Tone Music: Creating Great Music of Today

by Jakob Baekgaard
March 12, 2014

There was a time when the only possibility for an artist was to record for a major label, but nowadays things have changed. While major labels are struggling to make the money they used to do, many of them have also stopped being innovators. Instead, they churn out repackaged product and focus on new music that is guaranteed to sell. Patience and long term talent development isn't a thing that is seen very often. Fortunately, in spite ...

Extended Analysis

Hutchinson Andrew Trio: Prairie Modern

by John Kelman
March 12, 2014

If Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are the only places in Canada considered, in any way, as hotbeds for jazz, the prairie provinces are, with the exception of the annual Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, pretty close to the bottom of the list of other Canadian cities that have small but aspiring jazz scenes. If anything, the Alberta-based Hutchinson Andrew Trio (also going by the name HAT) is clear evidence of not existing jazz scenes in Edmonton and ...

Album Review

Vincent Courtois, Daniel Erdmann, Robin Fincker: Mediums

by Anthony Shaw
March 12, 2014

This album of tunes from the cross-border, French-led trio features many elements of their native approaches to improvised music-- exploratory experimentation on the boundaries of the respective instruments, solo work of a high order, and a strong sense of playfulness. The three instruments concerned are all from the middle range of pitch, as suggested in the title, two tenor saxophones led by a cello. As one might expect from the likes of Vincent Courtois (sometime colleague of ...

Album Review

Roberto Magris Trio: One Night In With Hope And More…vol. 2

Read "One Night In With Hope And More…vol. 2" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 12, 2014

Italian pianist and composer Roberto Magris continues his pilgrimage to the heart of hard bop with the release of his second volume of One Night In With Hope And More.... Volume 1 was critically well considered, focusing on the music of Elmo Hope, Andrew Hill, and Barry Harris. Magris' journey began several years earlier with the release of Mating Call (JMood, 2010) and continued with Morgan Rewind: A Tribute To Lee Morgan Vol. 1 (JMood, 2012), Sam Reed Meets ...

Album Review

Lisa Mezzacappa Trio: X Marks The Question

Read "X Marks The Question" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 12, 2014

X Marks The Question is one of two concurrent September 2013 releases on separate record labels by burgeoning San Francisco Bay Area-based, bassist composer Lisa Mezzacappa. On Comeuppance (Not Two Records, 2013) she fronts a quartet featuring saxophonist Aaron Bennett but here, spearheads a power-packed progressive jazz trio, highlighting lead soloist, guitarist Chris Welcome. And as history would dictate--given the bassist's avant-garde proclivities--this session is far from your boilerplate modern jazz guitar trio date other than “Negakfok," which leans towards ...