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

The Frank DiBussolo Group: Songs to Write Home About

Read "Songs to Write Home About" reviewed by Vince Lewis

by Vince Lewis
March 4, 2014

Guitarist Frank Dibussolo has long been a highly regarded performer and educator, with a career that has included work with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Dizzy Gillespie. DiBussolo is currently residing in Pennsylvania, where he continues his teaching and has now assembled this fine combination of musicians. The selections here are tried and true standards performed in a relatively straight-ahead and traditional manner. Vocalist Singer Tiffany Grochowki opens the set with a lilting version of “I'm Beginning to ...

Album Review

Konvoj Ensemble: Colors Of:

Read "Colors Of:" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 4, 2014

The Konvoj Ensemble is a Pan-European quintet based in Malmö, Sweden, and run by Swedish saxophonist Ola Paulson. This quintet is comprised of experienced free improvisers--Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker and lap-top player Jakob Riis, Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas, and Swedish drummer Anders Uddeskog, augmented for its debut recording by British sax legend Evan Parker and Swedish pianist Sten Sandell. The live recording from September 2013 in Malmö feature a 52-composition, “Colors Of:," constructed with a series of ...

Album Review

Phil Grenadier: Shimmer

Read "Shimmer" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 4, 2014

Boston, MA, based trumpeter Phil Grenadier is a highly regarded jazz artisan, performing and recording with famous crooners, rock bands and ingratiating his wares within numerous progressive jazz fronts. He's also taught at New York City's prestigious Mannes College of Music and for the most part, has enjoyed status as a go-to session ace amid a stockpile of impressive accomplishments. His leadership skills and consummate technical gifts shine radiantly on Shimmer. Indeed, the musicians must have had ...

Album Review

Mike Longo: Step On It

Read "Step On It" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 3, 2014

If you want to hear what pianist Mike Longo enjoys, and how he thinks, you listen to his big band--The New York State Of The Art Jazz Ensemble--which is featured on Live From New York! (Consolidate Artists Productions, 2013); if you just want to hear Mike Longo, you listen to this trio. Step On It is the third go-round for this group, following Sting Like A Bee (Consolidated Artists Productions, 2009) and the trio-plus-guests To My Surprise ...

Interview

Franklin Kiermyer: Joy And Consequence

by Ian Patterson
March 3, 2014

The tradition. It's common jazz terminology. What does it mean, though, to be “in the tradition"? The term usually confers on the musician a stamp of authenticity and infers working knowledge of the dominant idiom, as typified by the jazz cannon. It also perhaps implies a certain orthodoxy. It's strange to think, however, that a music that has always celebrated the innovative and reified its trailblazers, places so much emphasis upon allegiance to the tradition. For drummer Franklin ...

Extended Analysis

Franklin Kiermyer: Further

by John Kelman
March 3, 2014

The number of jazz musicians whose lives and music have been impacted by John Coltrane is truly legion; few, however, have extrapolated the exploratory space travelled by the late, great saxophonist in his final two years as intensely--and successfully--as Canadian expat, one-time New York resident and now Oslo-dwelling drummer Franklin Kiermyer. While his international profile has, for the past several years, been rather low, barring appearances like in Bergen's Natt Jazz in 2010, where he participated in an incendiary performance ...

Album Review

Bob van Luijt's Square Orange: The Core

Read "The Core" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 3, 2014

What's the appeal of a square orange? Place it on a table and it stays put. That's about it. The musical equivalent, in the shape of Dutch bass guitarist Bob van Luijt's Square Orange, has much greater appeal. The quintet's debut album, The Core, features van Luijt's original compositions: a set with impressive stylistic range. The review copy of The Core was beautifully packaged in a distinctive black cover with a bright orange band. Information was scant, however--the ...

Live Review

Jeff Hamilton Trio at Arizona Musicfest

by Patricia Myers
March 3, 2014

Jeff Hamilton Trio Fairway House at Grayhawk Arizona Musicfest Scottsdale, Arizona February 13, 2014 The Jeff Hamilton Trio's performance at Arizona Musicfest was aptly and enticingly billed as “Paragon of Groove," and the combo delivered that groove from first note to last. Hamilton's precise power and nuanced sensitivity was evident throughout the two-set concert, a perfect fit with the elegance of pianist Tamir Hendelman and the rich timbre of acoustic bassist Christoph ...

Album Review

Abdullah Ibrahim: African Piano

Read "African Piano" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
March 3, 2014

Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett are widely thought to have represented ECM Records' initial solo piano forays with Piano Improvisations, Vol. 1 & 2 (1971/1972) and Facing You (1972), respectively, but a lesser-known recording from 1969, unreleased until 1973 on ECM's sister label, JAPO, could be considered its true first. Originally released under Dollar Brand's birth surname as the South African pianist had yet to convert to Islam and become Abdullah Ibrahim, African Piano's reissue as part of ECM's Re:solutions ...

Album Review

The Eric Starr Group: Such Is Life

Read "Such Is Life" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 3, 2014

Drummer Eric Starr is not a purist of any kind, in fact, he has always been interested in “genre bending" when it comes to his playing and draws equally from both jazz and rock drumming styles on this album. Along with brother Nelson--both third-generation musicians from Western New York--the duo created The Eric Starr Group (ESG) as a showcase for Eric's music and Nelson's tantalizing vocals and together they bring forth their second album Such Is Life containing elements of ...