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.

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

February 2014

by Mr. P.C.
February 3, 2014

Dear Mr. P.C.: What's up with singers who count off tunes so quietly that not all the guys in the band can even hear it? Then half the band starts up and the other guys kind of flail their way in. It amazes me because it would be so easy to fix, but they act like the numbers are some dirty little secret or something. -- Singers Have Hard Heads Dear SHHH:

Book Review

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

by David A. Orthmann
February 3, 2014

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker Stanley Crouch 365 ISBN:978-0-06-200559-5 Harper Collins 2013 Stanley Crouch's account of Charlie Parker's first twenty-one years isn't a litany of facts and antidotes rendered in an easily digestible form. Not unlike Parker, Crouch is brilliant, bold, ambitious, and mercurial. He delights in conjoining a dazzling array of topics, often introducing a particular subject, moving on to something else, and later on revisiting the ...

Album Review

Bob Dorough: Eulalia

Read "Eulalia" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 3, 2014

Cherry Hill Township is located in Perry County about 50 miles west of Little Rock. Cherry Hill is also the birthplace of singer Bob Dorough, born December 12, 1923. Dorough left Arkansas soon after, his family moving to Texas, where he would begin his musical education that, 70 years later would bring him to Eulalia, his follow-up to last year's Duets (Self Produced). While Dorough's music smacks of East Coast sophistication, his voice retains the rural grace of his home ...

Live Review

Jeff "Tain" Watts Family Reunion Band at the Jazz Standard

by Tomas Pena
February 3, 2014

Jeff “Tain" Watts Family Reunion Band Jazz Standard New York, NY January 23, 2014 Sigmund Freud would have had a field day with Jeff “Tain" Watts' compositions. Case in point: “The Devil's Ringtone," where Watts conjures up an imaginary conversation between Satan and a corrupt politician. The tune features Paul Bollenback, whose electric guitar eerily captures the pleas of the politician, and Frank Lacey, whose growling trombone captures Satan's devilish reply. The tune ...

Album Review

Anton Schwartz: Flash Mob

Read "Flash Mob" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 3, 2014

While attending Harvard University, Anton Schwartz held down the first tenor saxophone chair in its jazz band, yet relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he became a significant jazz force, also serving as an educator and mentor. Flash Mob--which is perhaps his most robust album to date--denotes his fifth venture as a leader and first album since Radiant Blue (Antonjazz, 2006). Schwartz reaps the benefits of nascent talent and possesses a commanding presence amid his full-bodied tone and ...

Album Review

John Hollenbeck / Alban Darche / Sébastien Boisseau / Samuel Blaser: J.A.S.S.

Read "J.A.S.S." reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 3, 2014

J.A.S.S. as in the first letters of the names of American drummer John hollenbeck, French saxophonist Alban Darche and double bassist Sébastien Boisseau and Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser. But Jass also as the term used by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in March 1917 for the very first jazz-album recording or just the name of centuries-old popular card game in Switzerland and Austria. All of the above references relevant to this quartet who first played together ...

Album Review

Satelliti: Transister

Read "Transister" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 2, 2014

Marco Dalle Luche and Andrea Polato are Satelliti, a keyboards and drums duo from Bolzano in northern Italy. The pair started jamming together in 2010: Transister is their impressive second album, a mature and enjoyable collection of original tunes. The Satelliti sound combines one of the earliest musical instruments, the drum, with one of the most recent--the electronic wizardry of Dalle Luche's keyboards would to a large extent have been impossible only a few decades ago. Old and ...

Album Review

John Russell / Ståle Liavik Solberg: No Step

by John Eyles
February 2, 2014

London-based guitarist John Russell and percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg from Oslo have worked together as a duo since June 2012 when they first appeared together in London and then toured Scandinavia. No Step was recorded in May 2013 at the Blow Out! concert series that Solberg curates in Oslo. It consists of one thirty-three minute piece which shares its title with the album. The relative brevity of the album is more than compensated for by its quality. Russell ...

Extended Analysis

Stan Kenton Alumni Band: Road Scholars

by Jack Bowers
February 2, 2014

Road Scholars? A clever title indeed, but these gentlemen (and three ladies) are more akin to “road maestros," an appraisal that is abundantly clear from A to Z on this latest recording by trumpeter Mike Vax's turbo-charged Stan Kenton Alumni Band, taped at various concerts during the band's 2013 spring tour, a two-week, three-thousand-mile odyssey that encompassed a dozen concerts in six states and the District of Columbia. About four thousand people were lucky enough to see and hear the ...

Extended Analysis

Robin Taylor: Evidence

by Dave Wayne
February 2, 2014

2013 was a banner year of sorts for Robin Taylor and his band, Taylor's Universe. The Copenhagen-based composer, keyboardist, and guitarist completed two albums Evidence, and Worn Out (Marvel of Beauty, 2013) and both stand among his finest work. A studio-bound aggregation, Taylor's Universe specializes in very personal and distinctive take on progressive rock. Instead of vocals, however, Taylor's Universe features horn soloists who find lots to say over the music's complicated chord progressions. Though Taylor clearly is not trying ...