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

Matt Newton: Within Reach

Read "Within Reach" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 20, 2014

The piano only has 88 keys but an infinite number of possibilities are trapped within those black and white beauties. The instrument just sits and waits for the right people to come along and discover these yet-to-be-heard sounds. Judging from this album, Matt Newton is one of the right people. On Within Reach, the Toronto-based Newton doesn't simply play piano. He expertly shapes phrases, lets notes pool together, creates rich and luxuriant arcs of sound, and balances ...

Album Review

Eugene Skeef & Rae Howell: Heavy Forest Air

Read "Heavy Forest Air" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
February 20, 2014

The key words of the sparse liner notes are “created live," as Heavy Forest Air documents improvisations between percussionist/multi-faceted artist Eugene Skeef and vibraphonist/multi-instrumentalist Rae Howell, in the Rolston Recital Hall of the famous Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada. There were no charts and no overdubs--just two musicians responding to the evolving stimuli of the moment. The three pieces--two long improvisations and one short one--feature Australian Howell on vibraphone and marimba, and South African Skeef on a range of skin and ...

Album Review

Bohren & der Club of Gore: Piano Nights

Read "Piano Nights" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 20, 2014

Of the many hard-to-define sub-genres of jazz, “dark jazz" may be the most challenging to classify. Exemplifying the category is Bohren & der Club of Gore's Piano Nights . The German quartet, whose members have a variety of doom metal origins, has morphed their earlier inclinations into a hybrid that has little to suggest the player's roots. Unequal parts of ambient, experimental and modern jazz, it represents the most radical career transition since Charles Lloyd joined the Beach Boys.

Catching Up With

John Lurie's Art For Art's Sake

by Mark Corroto
February 20, 2014

The release of The Invention Of Animals (Amulet, 2014) finds the return of saxophonist and visual artist John Lurie to the musical spotlight he left nearly twenty years ago. First recognized in the late 1970s for his Downtown band The Lounge Lizards, a band that introduced many listeners to artists such as Marc Ribot, Michael Blake, Roy Nathanson, Steven Bernstein and brother Evan Lurie. Lurie's music spearheaded the political resistance to the neo-cons conservative jazz movement of the 1980s. He ...

Live Review

John Abercrombie Quartet at Library and Archives Canada

by John Kelman
February 20, 2014

John Abercrombie Quartet TD Ottawa Jazz Festival Winter Jazz Festival, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Canada February 15, 2014 It's always a treat to see some of your jazz heroes performing in your hometown, but it's an even greater pleasure to see some of them performing together in the same group. Guitarist John Abercrombie, pianist Marc Copland and bassist Drew Gress have been working together for nearly two decades, and they've all ...

Live Review

Tel Aviv White Night Festival 2014

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 20, 2014

Tel Aviv White Night Festival Enav Canter Tel Aviv, Israel February 6-7, 2014 The program of the 10th anniversary of Tel Aviv White Night Festival, for contemporary and improvised music, was more modest and focused this year than in previous years, but remained faithful to its vision--introducing innovative and forward-thinking musicians from the local scene and abroad. The all night festival was opened by a new outfit, headed by the forefather ...

Album Review

Lauren Kinhan: Circle In A Square

Read "Circle In A Square" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 20, 2014

Vocalist Lauren Kinhan is the alto quarter of vocal ensemble New York Voices and the leader of two previous solo outings, Hardly Blinking (Orchard, 2000) and Avalon (Koch, 2010). She was most recently hears on New York Voices holiday offering, Let It Snow (Five Cent Records, 2013). Kinhan's solo recordings are all originally composed by the singer making her solo artistic approach different from that of band mate Kim Nazarian and Janis Siegel and Cheryl Bentyne of the Manhattan Transfer. ...

Album Review

Mary Halvorson - Michael Formanek - Tomas Fujiwara: Thumbscrew

Read "Thumbscrew" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 20, 2014

Kindred musical spirits unite on this composers' cooperative, featuring three musicians who have been forerunners and antagonists of new-fangled directions in the avant-garde jazz spectrum, other than ripping into customary modern jazz fare with a vengeance. The artists' divergent discographies offer a worldly testament to these aspects, besides their work as first-call session aces. With Michael Formanek's pronounced bass lines, guitarist Mary Halvorson's fascinating permutations, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara laying down a host of perky grooves, the group executes within ...

Interview

Takuya Kuroda: Rising Son

by DanMichael Reyes
February 19, 2014

Awards aren't handed down to individuals that proclaim how tough it is to live in New York. Likewise, it's not news to write that the life of the modern day jazz musician is difficult. If we follow the past two sentences we might come to the conclusion that the life of a New York jazz musician is not a bunch of wine and roses. While prodigies that venture off on world tours before they are legally able to purchase alcoholic ...

Extended Analysis

Cecile McLorin Salvant: WomanChild

by Phil Barnes
February 19, 2014

There is no getting away from it, jazz is a 'mature' art form where the considerable achievements of past greats can sometimes weigh heavy on the shoulders of young artists. In the CD and internet era that illustrious past is ever present, constantly available at the click of a mouse, or an inexpensive out of copyright CD. So how does the modern jazz singer compete when, to pick a random example, it is currently possible to buy an official release ...