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 Clare Fischer Orchestra: Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest

Read "Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 1, 2014

Is this beautiful music, wonderfully played? Definitely. Is it jazz (or anything close to it)? Afraid not. Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest is chamber music with a classical temperament, colorful and captivating, written (presumably over a period of some years) and conducted by one of the giants in that field, the late Dr. Clare Fischer. As the title denotes, strings and percussion are predominant; as for “the rest," Fischer employs a small orchestra composed primarily of reeds (no ...

Extended Analysis

Johnny Winter: True to the Blues - The Johnny Winter Story

by John Kelman
March 1, 2014

With the release of From His Head to His Heart to His Hands earlier this year, Legacy Recordings proved it was possible to put together a career-spanning retrospective, even if the artist's discography--in this case, the late blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield--spanned several disconnected labels. Now, less than one month later, Legacy does it again with yet another bluesman who, over the years, has also lost much of the visibility and a lot of the commercial success he achieved from the ...

Album Review

Julian Waterfall Pollack Trio: Waves Of Albion

Read "Waves Of Albion" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 1, 2014

Waves Of Albion is the second album from the Julian Waterfall Pollack Trio. The musical talent and imagination displayed on the trio's debut, Infinite Playground (Junebeat Records, 2010), makes album number two an exciting prospect. The young pianist and his band mates don't disappoint. Pollack has filled the time between albums with sideman appearances with the likes of Peter Schwebs and Steve Lyman. Back in the role of bandleader and on a new label--Germany's Berthold Records--Pollack is joined ...

Album Review

Lisa Young Quartet: Grace

Read "Grace" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 1, 2014

The Lisa Young Quartet released their third and fourth recordings in close proximity to one another. Of The Eternal Pulse (Self Produced, 2012), colleague Ian Patterson observes of the Melbourne-native Young's influences, “Young--a student of south Indian music for many years--has developed a hybrid improvisational style that combines the rhythmic contours of konnakol with a keen melodic sensitivity that owes almost as much to Indian tradition as it does to jazz. ." On Grace, ...

Extended Analysis

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis

by C. Michael Bailey
March 1, 2014

Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir will celebrate their Golden Anniversary with a performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610 at King's College Cambridge on March 5, 2014. It was 50 years to-the-day, in the same venue, that Gardiner and his Choir performed the Vespers as their debut. The only thing Gardiner and his forces have done in the meantime is completely change music scholarship and performance. Gardiner could easily divide his professional career ...

Album Review

Jon Irabagon Trio: It Takes All Kinds

Read "It Takes All Kinds" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 1, 2014

This trio radiated Olympian style heroics akin to an endurance race on Foxy (Hot Cup, 2010). It was an arousing exercise in energy and power. And while drummer Barry Altschul, and bassist Mark Helias are time-honored jazz warriors-- respectively appearing on many landmark albums--saxophonist Jon Irabagon is now firmly seated with the upper-echelon of modern saxophone heroes. His star has definitely risen. A first-call session ace and stalwart member of the cutting-edge, nouveau jazz ensemble Mostly Other People Do The ...

Album Review

Hot Club of Philadelphia: Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams

Read "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams" reviewed by Wade Luquet

by Wade Luquet
March 1, 2014

Gypsy jazz has had a resurgence of late with Hot Club bands and Django Reinhardt-style guitar strummers and pickers popping up in major cities world-wide. Philadelphia boasts one of the hottest of these bands— The Hot Club of Philadelphia. More than a Django cover band, this group adds a gypsy twist to a multitude of tunes including those from the Great American Songbook on their CD Wrap Your Trouble In Dreams. Led by a master of the genre, ...

Album Review

Shawn Maxwell: Shawn Maxwell's Alliance

Read "Shawn Maxwell's Alliance" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 28, 2014

In the liner notes for Shawn Maxwell's Alliance, the Chicago-based multi-reedist is transparent as can be. He makes note of the fact that this project was born out of a conscious desire to do something different and pull away from the commonplace quartet and quintet formats that are so prevalent today. He also notes that he initially had no intention of recording this group, and that some of these numbers are “sketches," not fully fleshed out compositions. ...

Catching Up With

The Four Freshmen: Tradition and Innovation in a New Century

by Richard J Salvucci
February 28, 2014

The year was 1963. The President of the United States was John F Kennedy. It was late Summer. I was riding back from the Jersey shore, returning from vacation. I was twelve years old. My Dad always had music on, always and everywhere, but especially, in the car, a two-tone 1955 Buick Special. I'm pretty sure the tuner had push buttons. I was, as usual, in the back seat. One reason the scene from fifty years ...

Album Review

The Jim Olsen Ensemble: We See Stars

Read "We See Stars" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 28, 2014

For We See Stars, Oregon-based composer / arranger Jim Olsen has pared his usual big band down to a more manageable tentet but hasn't lessened the ebullience and ingenuity that are invariably a part of Olsen's broad palette. The album, Olsen says, evolved from a casual post-concert conversation in which he asked trumpeter Bobby Shew and saxophonist Dick Oatts, longtime friends and colleagues who had performed and recorded together in the past, if they would consider teaming up to do ...