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

Mimi Jones: Balance

Read "Balance" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 24, 2014

NYC-native bassist-raconteur Mimi Jones founded Hot Tone records in 2009, releasing her debut, A New Day. Jones states the label ..."was created to give chances to those who may have been overlooked and denied the necessary support and knowledge to develop." Specifically, and appropriately, the focus of the label has evolved as a resource for women jazz instrumentalists. After an incubation period of five years, Hot Tone records detonates with the release of Jones' second effort as a leader, Balance. ...

Album Review

Zevious: Passing Through The Wall

Read "Passing Through The Wall" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 24, 2014

Here's a group that started out as a no-frills jazz guitar trio. They've become louder and more aggressive, incorporating Machiavellian- like chutzpah, tinted with a punkish 'tude, spanning hardcore jazz- fusion and vintage progressive rock mechanisms. With an in-your-face modus operandi, the band intimates a high metabolism rate through a punishing impetus. The musicians' literally bust out of the seams during these blitzing compositions, where stinging ostinato grooves with a few discreet inferences to vintage King Crimson and high-volume jazz ...

Interview

Dan Loomis: On The Wee Trio and "Live At The Bistro"

by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
January 23, 2014

The Wee Trio, comprising Dan Loomis: bass; James Westfall: vibraphone; Jared Schonig: drums, are a band to keep looking out for. Having released four impressive albums already, including the recent, Live at the Bistro, their star continues to burn slowly--as all true stars are bound. The Wee Trio is a component of a new musical breed of elegant fearlessness that can play anything and make it sound right. In winter Skype interviews are just the best, you can ...

Album Review

Kasper Staub Trio: Havnepladen

Read "Havnepladen" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 23, 2014

There is no doubt that nowadays there is an increased focus on ecology and recycling, but Danish pianist Kasper Staub has gone the extra mile with his record Havnepladen (the harbor record). The album is pressed in 100 copies and each album has a sleeve that has been recycled from another record. Every cover was dampened, reversed and glued together again and printed with a serigraph, thus making each record a unique handmade work of art. As ...

Album Review

Kiko Berenguer: Aire

by Bruce Lindsay
January 23, 2014

Spanish saxophonist Kiko Berenguer has a keen ear for a melody. He's also a lover of flamenco. Both of these characteristics are apparent from the opening bars of Aire, his third album as leader, which combines jazz and flamenco in a set of original tunes. The lightness of Berenguer's compositions and the energy that flows out of each musician give Aire a distinctly friendly and welcoming feel. There's never any sense of self-indulgence--this is music played for its ...

Album Review

Sketches: Volume One

Read "Volume One" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 23, 2014

Compositional specificity can be a blessing and a curse. It's easy to understand how having every last instruction set to paper can be helpful when it comes to starting the music making process, but the flip side of that argument is that there's nothing left to actually create if everything is already there in black and white on the page. Jazz, as a form of creative music, has always wrestled to find a balance between structure and ...

Album Review

Matte Henderson with Marco Minnemann: The Veneer Of Logic

Read "The Veneer Of Logic" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 23, 2014

Guitarist, composer and futurist Matte Henderson is a former student of iconic progressive rock guitarist and founding father of King Crimson, Robert Fripp. He integrates some classic prog fundamentals such as odd-metered crunch chord voicings and wily rhythmic episodes, abetted by his collaborator and all-universe drummer Marco Minnemann. But Henderson spices up the program with muted voicemail vocals by David Torn and Dr. Know (Bad Brains) on a few tracks, amid recordings from prison parole hearings that spark remembrances of ...

Live Review

Roy Hargrove Quintet at Jazz at the Centre

by C. Andrew Hovan
January 23, 2014

Roy Hargrove Quintet Jazz at the CentreNorthwest Activities Center Detroit, Michigan January 11, 2014 It seems these days that some of the most crucial aspects of jazz are the ones being downplayed by those jazz artists that have become the darlings of the jazz media. Peruse any number of top ten lists from 2013 and you'll find that many of these titles lack those basic elements such as swing, the blues, and mastery ...

Album Review

Bob Dorough: Eulalia

by Dan Bilawsky
January 22, 2014

Hipness springs eternal from the mind, mouth and hands of Bob Dorough. The cool-as-can be Schoolhouse Rock! songsmith who's worked with everybody from trumpeter Miles Davis to precocious singer-songwriter Nellie McKay may have turned ninety in December of 2013, but age hasn't slowed him down too much; his wit is still razor-sharp and he still has a way of charming and disarming with his work. This collection of music, recorded a couple years before the aforementioned milestone ...

Extended Analysis

Arild Andersen / Paolo Vinaccia / Tommy Smith: Mira

by John Kelman
January 22, 2014

The debut of Arild Andersen's now longstanding trio with Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian expat drummer Paolo Vinaccia on Live at Belleville (ECM, 2008) came as no small surprise, even to those familiar with the Norwegian bassist's work on the label--dating right back to its inception on Jan Garbarek's classic Afric Pepperbird (ECM, 1971), as well as with his own fine triptych of more accessible early albums, recently collected on Green Into Blue--Early Quartets (ECM, 2010). Andersen ...