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.

We Travel the Spaceways

Pete Mills: The Anatomy Of A Jazz Release

by Mark Corroto
January 28, 2014

I'm here to tell you that everything you thought about the making of a modern jazz records is wrong. The notion that there are talent agents selling concepts to record companies—wrong. That bands work on tunes, perfecting them for months before entering the studio—wrong. That jazz musicians make money from records—again, wrong. I had the first-hand experience of observing how saxophonist Pete Mills put together his latest recording Sweet Shadow (Cellar Live, 2014) from conception to release. If ...

Extended Analysis

Pat Metheny Unity Group: Kin (←→)

by John Kelman
January 28, 2014

Strangely enough, the release of Kin () may be the one that most polarizes longtime fans of guitarist Pat Metheny. There are those who feel that, beginning with 2005's last recording with his then-longstanding Pat Metheny Group, that he'd become too complex, too chops-heavy and too distanced from the accessible music of recordings like Travels (ECM, 1983) and Still Life (Talking) (Nonesuch, 1987). He further distanced himself from a number of his core constituents with Orchestrion (Nonesuch, 2010), and his ...

Album Review

Griffith Hiltz Trio: This Is What You Get

Read "This Is What You Get" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
January 27, 2014

Groovy, somewhat off-kilter jazz is the order of the day for the Griffith Hiltz Trio, a young Canadian band comprised of reedman Johnny Griffith, multi-instrumentalist Nathan Hiltz, and drummer Sly Juhas. One novel aspect of their music is tied into the group's instrumentation. Hiltz simultaneously plays guitar while holding down the bass lines using pedals, just like an organist would on the Hammond B-3. The trio's music is not quite the funk-fest one might surmise, given the players' youth. For ...

Interview

Fabian Almazan: Espejos

by DanMichael Reyes
January 27, 2014

Intent is one of those intangible qualities that make a jazz musician. While traits like technical facility, memory, harmonic and rhythmic sophistication play a huge part in the career and development of the aspiring jazz artist, intention is the X-factor that can make a performance special. In an art form that demands spontaneity and thrives within improvisation, hearing what you're going to play before you play it--in some cases hearing it as you play--is crucial in order to get your ...

Extended Analysis

Dan Willis and Velvet Gentlemen: The Satie Project II

by Dave Wayne
January 27, 2014

The music of Eric Satie may well be some of the most malleable and adaptable works ever composed. This could be partly due to the fact that Satie himself stood well outside of the musical mainstream of his time, thus his compositions are comparatively unencumbered by the stylistic baggage of his era. Satie was avant-garde before the term was coined, and is considered by many to be a precursor to the Minimalists and to the 20th Century Serialist composers such ...

Album Review

Maciej Fortuna / Krzysztof Dys: Tropy

by Karl Ackermann
January 27, 2014

It remains largely unrecognized that the Polish jazz culture predates Louis Armstrong's “invention" of modern improvised jazz. As early as 1923, Polish jazz musicians were touring Eastern Europe in the company of Chicago and New Orleans Dixieland players. The American perspective of Polish jazz is principally defined by trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, violinist Michal Urbaniak and pianist Krzysztof Komeda. Along with later arrivals to the scene, such as pianists Marcin Wasilewski and Adam Makowicz and saxophonist Zbigniew Namyslowski this group of ...

Extended Analysis

Fred Fried: Core Bacharach

by Geannine Reid
January 27, 2014

As a kid in New York, Fred Fried enjoyed everything from early rock and roll to show tunes. He remembers listening to cast albums of Oklahoma, South Pacific and West Side Story. He loved Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and pretended to conduct the orchestra in front of the record player. From age 12, Fried played clarinet and was in various junior high school bands and orchestras. As a teenager Fried attended New York's High School of Performing Arts as a ...

Album Review

David Helbock's Random / Control: Think Of Two

Read "Think Of Two" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 27, 2014

Inferring that his Germany-based trio is a multitasking machine would be an understatement. With a fleet of instruments at their disposal, the compositions are largely sinuous, vastly complex, and highly coordinated. The musicians toggle between instruments to alter the pitch, accent the rhythms or whirl through complex unison choruses while adding wit and whimsy into the grand schema. Pianist David Helbock provides one composition, yet the program is fabricated around works by Thelonious Monk and legendary Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal. ...

Album Review

Fred Van Hove / Peter Jacquemyn / Damon Smith: Burns Longer

Read "Burns Longer" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
January 27, 2014

This unique, ad-hoc trio features Belgian master pianist Fred Van Hove, one of the architects of European free improvised music and close collaborator of influential European improvisers such as German reed man Peter Brötzmann, late bassist Peter Kowald, Dutch drummer Han Bennink, fellow countryman and double bassist (and sculptor) Peter Jacquemyn. Both of them rarely recorded in recent years with prolific American double bassist Damon Smith, who initiated this meeting and is influenced by the European approach to free improvisation. ...

The Mort Report

WOW! Bird and Bach: Them two cats really could play!

by Mort Weiss
January 26, 2014

O.K. Now that I've got your attention, what should I write about? The many articles here at AAJ have damn near covered each and every aspect on the topic of jazz and its place (albeit) always in flux and change with each and every up and coming generation of players. Where is jazz in the scheme of worldly import and does its relationship to the here and now pay proper respect to all the cats that came before, laying each ...