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

Kairos Ensemble: Rejoicing Blues

Read "Rejoicing Blues" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 7, 2014

Kairos Ensemble (not to be confused with another UK four piece, Kairos 4tet) came together in 2001. Rejoicing Blues is the ensemble's fifth album and features tunes from the band's live sets that have not previously been recorded. There is, indeed, much here that is worth rejoicing. The ensemble features saxophonist Dan Foster, pianist Peter James and drummer Tom Hooper. In a slightly-out-of-leftfield move the Kairos Ensemble's bottom end rhythm duties are handled not by the traditional double ...

Album Review

Frank Wess: Magic 201

Read "Magic 201" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 7, 2014

What a wonderful coda on an incredible life and career. Saxophonist/Flautist Frank Wess' final recordings--the critically acclaimed Magic 101 (IPO, 2013) and this follow-up, recorded two months after that album--speak to his brilliance and clarity as a melody maker and improviser. His wisdom and elegance come through in every note on both recordings. The titles of both albums rightly mark them as companion pieces and close relatives, so here's how they stack up side-by-side: Both albums favor ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Willie Oteri

by AAJ Staff
January 7, 2014

Meet Willie Oteri: An anomaly in the music world having survived tragedy and financial hardship that forced him to quit music as a profession during the early part of his career, Willie Oteri has come back to music. With a small budget he released two well-received blues/rock albums in the late '90s before moving to Austin, Texas where he befriended some of Austin's top jazz musicians. Wanting to pursue the freedom of electric jazz and improvisation, Oteri contracted producer ...

Album Review

Mike Longo and the New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble: Live from New York!

Read "Live from New York!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 7, 2014

The fourth album by pianist Mike Longo's stalwart New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble is the first one recorded in front of an audience, in May 2013 at the New York City Baha'i Center's John Birks Gillespie Auditorium. On the one hand, Live from New York! offers the kind of spontaneity and high spirits a studio date seldom can; on the other, no less than three of its eight tracks are vocals, and their acceptance is a matter ...

Album Review

Luiz Ebert / Fidel Cuellar: Audiograph

Read "Audiograph" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
January 6, 2014

A microcosmic view of life in New York City, Audiograph is more than just a clever play on words. This collection of “sound photographs" by drummer Luiz Ebert and pianist Fidel Cuellar audibly envisions some of their experiences and memories in the “City That Never Sleeps." It's a phrase made iconic by singer Liza Minnelli in the 1997 film New York, New York and reinvigorated for a new culture in rapper Jay-Z and singer Alicia Keys' 2009 pop hit “Empire ...

Album Review

Ben Allison: The Stars Look Very Different Today

Read "The Stars Look Very Different Today" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
January 6, 2014

Conservatory-educated jazz musicians often follow a similar developmental path as they mature, typically expanding the relatively narrow focus of their academic training to reexamine the non-jazz related music styles that initially inspired them. Take the young lions of the pre-millennial era for example; most have extended their purview beyond straight-ahead hard bop to incorporate aspects of the funk, r&b and soul music they grew up with. The same paradigm exists for their avant-garde counterparts, whose demographic is generally raised on ...

Record Label Profile

Music Matters slows it down

by Greg Simmons
January 6, 2014

Music Matters is pulling a fast one. For the past several years they've been hawking a series of reissues of the classic Blue Note Records catalogue of the 1950s and 60s. The defining features of this series have been that they've all been re-mastered from the original session tapes by mastering guru Kevin Gray and, in order to preserve the analog signal chain to the greatest extent possible, they've only been available on 45rpm vinyl. The fast spin ensures great ...

Extended Analysis

Maria Baptist: Music for Jazz Orchestra

by Jack Bowers
January 6, 2014

Like it or not, a new wave of young composer / arrangers has surfaced, scrupulously guiding big bands into heretofore uncharted waters, now and then smooth, at other times choppy, but always intriguing and inspired. Maria Schneider, George Gruntz, Jim McNeely and Carla Bley were among the pacesetters, followed in short order by such (relative) newcomers as Satoko Fujii, Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Keith Karns, Stan Sulzmann, Cecilia Coleman, Magnus Lindgren, Colin Byrne, John Daversa, Pete McGuinness, Gail Thompson, ...

Album Review

Band of Gypsys Reincarnation: Electric Angelland

Read "Electric Angelland" reviewed by Everett R. Davis

by Everett R. Davis
January 6, 2014

Jimi Hendrix is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music. So it's not surprising that the Band of Gypsys Reincarnation, founded by guitarist László Halper along with an all-star cast of musicians, electrified the stage at the Palace Of Arts Budapest and recorded this amazing compilation of Hendrix hits during a 70th birthday tribute to the legendary guitarist. From start to finish, the band unleashes a jazz-infused horn ...

Shrinktunes

The Mingus Excerpt

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
January 6, 2014

“The Mingus Excerpt" shows a sweet side of Charles Mingus that few people saw or could imagine. After all, his nickname was “The Angry Man of Jazz," and most biographical material supports that designation in one way or other. But for all his bluster and bombast, there was also generosity and kindness. This story describes his unlikely friendship with Steve Reichman, a young Jewish kid from the suburbs who eventually committed suicide in Morocco, at the age of ...