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

Max Johnson Trio: The Invisible Trio

Read "The Invisible Trio" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 5, 2014

The musical lineage within the small circle of bassist Max Johnson's trio is unquestionably among the finest in cutting-edge jazz. The leader has played with bassist William Parker, alto legend Anthony Braxton, trombonist Steve Swell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. In the case of Johnson's current trio, his drummer, Ziv Ravitz, is also a member of the Lee Konitz Quartet and has performed with Joe Lovano, Tomasz Stanko, Aaron Parks and many others. Kirk Knuffke ranks as an equal to Rob ...

Extended Analysis

Harold Mabern: Right On Time

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 5, 2014

It's always cool when you get in on the ground floor of something new and exciting. That's how it feels to have spent time delving into the music being documented by a new jazz label. Since 1998, Smoke has been one of the most happening places in Manhattan to take in some live jazz. A bit secluded from other jazz venues as it is on an upper section of Broadway, Smoke nonetheless first made a name for itself back in ...

Album Review

Juhani Aaltonen: To Future Memories

Read "To Future Memories" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 5, 2014

Helsinki-based TUM Records, launched in 2003, “promotes more experienced musicians whose work is not favored by commercial trends of our time." The label is especially supportive of the freer end of jazz's spectrum, offering up albums like Kolibri by Finish pianist/harpist Iro Haarla, violinist Billy Bang's Da Bang, and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's Occupy the World, to name just a few of the label's adventurous 2013 offerings. Finnish saxophonist/flutist Juhani Aaltonen (b. 1935) , who cites saxophonist John ...

Album Review

Gerry Hemingway: Kernelings

Read "Kernelings" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 5, 2014

Drummer Gerry Hemingway penned these solo works from 1995-2012 and recorded the album at various points during this timeframe. Essentially, the CD and companion DVD pinpoint his artistic proclivities partly framed in multimedia. It took 15 years to complete the project. The program is divided into four parts: mist, dust, light, and sex, although the CD track list solely denotes the 15 works appearing in sequential order without references to the four topics. Viewing the film is meant ...

Album Review

IPA: Bubble

Read "Bubble" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 5, 2014

The third album of the Norwegian-Swedish band IPA feature it as a quintet with the addition of Swedish vibes master Mattias Ståhl. The former quartet--Norwegian saxophonist Atle Nymo; drummer Håkon Mjåset Johansen, both playing in the modern jazz quintet Motif; double bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, who collaborated with Nymo and Johansen for a reworking of Don Cherry's Complete Communion (Bolage, 2006) and a member of the power-free jazz trio The Thing and of another Norwegian-Swedish quintet Atomic; and Swedish trumpeter ...

From the Inside Out

Raising Vision and Voice

by Chris M. Slawecki
March 4, 2014

Decades ago, Archie Shepp and Sun Ra were among the first musicians to expand their vision for the human voice beyond the traditional verse-chorus-verse song structure. Today, through digital sampling and other technology, musicians incorporate and manipulate the human voice in ways that even these two iconoclasts might not recognize. At the same time, the profound simplicity of a singer-songwriter baring and sharing their soul through popular song structure still endures. Composer Richard Strauss once wrote, “The human voice is ...

Album Review

Avishai Cohen: Almah

by Bruce Lindsay
March 4, 2014

After a dozen albums as leader and a career that has seen him perform with Chick Corea, Mark Guiliana and Alicia Keys, Almah finds bassist Avishai Cohen returning to his first loves. Those “first loves," according to the press notes, are classical music and, more particularly, chamber music. Almah is a return to these loves, but with a healthy dose of Middle Eastern inspiration and at least one certified jazz standard (Thad Jones' “A Child Is Born," which receives a ...

Live Review

Carmen Lundy at Lakeland Jazz Festival

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 4, 2014

Carmen Lundy Quartet Lakeland Community College 42nd Annual Lakeland Jazz Festival Kirtland, Ohio February 22, 2014 It had been well over five years since Grammy award-winning vocalist Carmen Lundy had been in the vicinity of Cleveland and she certainly made up for her absence by delivering a powerhouse performance as the Saturday evening headliner for the 42nd annual Lakeland Jazz Festival. As heady a performer as she is in the true tradition of ...

Album Review

Dominic Lash: Opabinia

by John Sharpe
March 4, 2014

As British bassist Dominic Lash explains in the liners to his Quartet's debut Opabinia, both the album and several of the tracks on it are named after extinct creatures excavated as fossils from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. That inspiration arises from both the fabulous nature of the animals and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's musings on contingency: the role of chance in determining which members of this fauna survived and which disappeared. Lash draws a parallel with how chance ...

Multiple Reviews

Four From The Posi-Tone Pile

by Dan Bilawsky
March 4, 2014

Some labels release a few records a year; some put out a record every month or two; and then there are those, like the Los Angeles-based Posi-Tone Records, that prefer to push even more music through the pipeline. As 2014 came into being, Posi-Tone began an ambitious release schedule, putting out a new album every few weeks. Those who cover jazz and follow the scene intently can't seem to turn around these days without bumping into one ...