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.

Book Excerpts

The Blue Note: Seattle’s Black Musicians' Union A Pictorial History

by David Keller
February 23, 2014

The following is an excerpt from the preface of The Blue Note: Seattle's Black Musicians' Union A Pictorial History by David Keller (Our House Publishing, 2013). This is a story about the hopes and dreams of a small group of African American men and women. They ran their own union in Seattle beginning in the early 1900s. This union was the American Federation of Musicians' Union Local 493. Its members had a dream that they should be ...

Live Review

Helen Sung at Jazz Standard

by Ernest Barteldes
February 23, 2014

Helen Sung Jazz Standard New York, NYFebruary 12, 2014 The first set of the CD release celebration for Helen Sung's Anthem For A New Day (Concord, 2014), began with her original tune “Chaos Theory" that started with a percussive introduction by Samuel Torres with the quintet following in a theme that seemed to go into a Latin-inflected direction at first, but then went into more of a contemporary format. There was little improvisation there, as ...

Album Review

Dave Stryker: Eight Track

Read "Eight Track" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 23, 2014

On Eight Track, New York-based guitarist Dave Stryker's quartet takes the listener back some forty years or so to a time when there actually were eight-track tape players, relics on which Stryker listened to jazz and popular tunes of the day, several of which are reanimated on this tasteful and smoothly swinging album. Some of these songs have shown remarkable staying power, and Stryker and his colleagues--organist Jared Gold, drummer McClenty Hunter, guest vibraphonist Stefon Harris--prove why that is so, ...

Album Review

Theo Jorgensmann: Bucksch

Read "Bucksch" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 23, 2014

Revered German clarinetist Theo Jorgensmann has played an integral role in the European free jazz scene and is one of several artists who helped revitalize the instrument within avant-garde flanked jazz and improvisational vistas. Here, the artist predominately performs solo works on his G-low clarinet, yet unites with his trio culled from a live performance in Luneburg, Germany on the aptly titled “Interweave Thoughts." This musical portraiture duly mirrors the suggestion of a dynamic interweaving of thoughts, featuring ...

Album Review

Marco Sanguinetti: 8

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 23, 2014

Argentine pianist Marco Sanguinetti mocks any attempt to position himself in a defined style or genre. This gifted composer and jazz improviser and his trio Pibe-A previously recorded complete interpretations of Radiohead's Kid A and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. But on his fourth solo project, 8 he deliberately focused to write compositions with distinct aesthetics. Sanguinetti's compositions mirror his search for local, urban sounds of his hometown, Buenos Aires. The recording of his ...

Album Review

Mike Bardash Quintet: Polygon

by Jack Bowers
February 22, 2014

Mike Bardash, who has been playing piano since age five and performing in and around the New York City area for more than a quarter-century, gets right down to “Brass Tacks" on Polygon, which, as far as can be determined, is the first full-length album he has recorded as leader of a group, in this case the Mike Bardash Quintet. The bracing studio date, for which Bardash composed ten of the eleven selections, touches a lot of bases, from bop ...

Extended Analysis

The Allman Brothers Band: Play All Night

by Doug Collette
February 22, 2014

Much as the current Allman Brothers lineup had coalesced in 2003, the ensemble that came together in 1989 for the twentieth anniversary box set Dreams (Polydor, 1989) tour had tightened considerably (minus keyboardist /vocalist Johnny Neel) by the time they decided to engage in their first extended run at New York's Beacon Theatre and record themselves for a live album. Play All Night: Live At the Beacon Theatre consists of performances captured on March 10 & 11 in 1992 and ...

Live Review

Alexis P. Suter Band at Gwynedd Mercy University

by Wade Luquet
February 22, 2014

Alexis P. Suter Band Women in the Blues Gwynedd Mercy University Gwynedd Valley, PA February 7, 2014 A frozen night in Pennsylvania was made immensely warmer when the Alexis P. Suter Band took the stage at Gwynedd Mercy University in suburban Philadelphia. The bass-voiced blues diva electrified the crowd with her unique and powerful sound, as well as the band's interpretations of blues standards, originals, and tunes that one might not think of ...

Album Review

Dewa Budjana: Joged Kahyangan

Read "Joged Kahyangan" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
February 22, 2014

A million-selling artist in Indonesia with pop-rock band Gigi, guitarist Dewa Budjana's solo projects informed by progressive rock, Indonesian folk and jazz fusion reveal a greater spirit of adventure. Budjana's second release of 2013 on the MoonJune label following Dawai in Paradise is similarly melodic, though differs significantly. Firstly, the word-fusion-meets-prog rock of Dawai in Paradise gives way to a more overtly contemporary jazz approach on Joged Kahyangan. Secondly, whereas the earlier release featured predominantly Indonesian musicians, Budjana harnesses heavyweight ...

Album Review

Monteverdi Choir, Sir John Eliot Gardiner: Bach Motets

Read "Bach Motets" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 22, 2014

Sir John Eliot Gardiner could easily divide his professional career into “before BCP" and after “BCP." At the close of the 20th Century, Gardiner began the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the bulk of the project taking place throughout the millennial year 2000. With his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner performed and recorded all of Bach's surviving church cantatas over the course of the year, in proper liturgical order and at the same time marking the 250th anniversary of ...