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.

Take Five With...

Take Five With Noel Akchote

by AAJ Staff
December 15, 2013

Meet Noel Akchote: Trained from the age of eight, Noel Akchote debuted as a guitarist in 1990. Noel Akochote has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians like Henri Texier, Louis Sclavis, Daniel Humair, Jacques Thollot, Sam Rivers, Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Firth, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Tim Berne, and George Lewis. Later in his career, Akchote began contributing on records by artists like David Grubbs, Luc Ferrari, David Sylvian, J.G Thirwell's band Steroid Maximus, Max Nagl, Andrew ...

Album Review

Nerve 4tet: Even Worms Have Nerves

Read "Even Worms Have Nerves" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 15, 2013

In the 1979 cult classic film Breaking Away a small town American boy becomes obsessed with all things Italian: food, language, and especially bicycle racing. His father protests his rebellion saying, “I know “I-tee" food when I hear it! It's all them “eenie" foods... zucchini... and linguine... and fettuccine. I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!" Maybe he wouldn't complain as loud if he had exposure to Italian avant-jazz. A great place for him to ...

Album Review

Peter Kerlin Octet: Salamander

Read "Salamander" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 15, 2013

With an unconventional group setting, initial impressions might suggest chamber-jazz of some flavor, but Brooklyn bassist Peter Kerlin's debut effort as a leader is framed on several tangents of classical and jazz. And the young musicians impart aspirations and ingenuity, often intimating the outcomes of a thirst for knowledge and unhindered commitment. Here, the band abides by an unhurried stride as Kerlin's unique and enlivening compositions honor the modern jazz and nouveau chamber strata. But these pieces also contain doses ...

Album Review

Pedrito Martinez: The Pedrito Martinez Group

Read "The Pedrito Martinez Group" reviewed by Andrew Luhn

by Andrew Luhn
December 15, 2013

On the front cover of their debut album, The Pedrito Martinez group, declares their music to be “The Latin Jazz Revolution!" and revolutionary might just be the best way to describe the group's music. Pedrito Martinez is undeniably one of the most talented young musicians in Latin music today and has become one of the most in-demand in the industry for both his beautiful voice and his exceptional percussion skills. The group he leads is expanding the definitions of Latin ...

New York Beat

Minton's: An iconic Jazz Haven Re-opens in Harlem

by Rob Mariani
December 14, 2013

An iconic jazz haven is born again. It's a name I don't think I've heard spoken of in many years. And so when I learned that after many years, “Minton's Playhouse" was re-opening at its original address at West 118th Street in Harlem on the ground floor of the old Cecil Hotel, I was really delighted. Delighted that the unassuming little nightclub where Bird and Diz' and Monk and the rest of the greats and near-greats all went ...

Album Review

Louis Stewart & Jim Doherty: Tunes

by Ian Patterson
December 14, 2013

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a good idea at the time. Ireland's best known jazz musicians, guitarist Louis Stewart and pianist Jim Doherty have played together since the days of the famous Irish show bands in the early 1960s and have recorded together on numerous projects, but the idea to record a duo album of the jazz standards they cherish has taken fifty years to move from seed to fruition. The simply titled Tunes ...

Album Review

Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: Wedding Music

Read "Wedding Music" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
December 14, 2013

Six improvised pieces of music, created over a three-day residency by two of the UK's most innovative and visionary young players and performed as church organ and saxophone duets. That's Wedding Music, by organist Kit Downes and saxophonist Tom Challenger. Six strange, atmospheric and starkly beautiful pieces of music. Wedding Music was recorded in St Paul's Church, Huddersfield, in Yorkshire--the home of a church organ which Downes describes as “exceptional." It's the culmination of a three-day residency at ...

Album Review

Gordon Grdina/Mark Helias: No Difference

Read "No Difference" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 14, 2013

No Difference takes place at the crossroads of the known and unknown, expected and surprising, and fenced in and free. More importantly, it's an album built upon the bonds of shared experience. Each of the four musicians involved with this project can be paired off with at least one other in their respective backstories. Grdina and bassist Mark Helias play together every time the guitarist/oud master makes his way from his home base in Vancouver to New York; Helias and ...

Album Review

Sonny Clark: Dial "S" For Sonny

Read "Dial "S" For Sonny" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
December 14, 2013

Original copies of Blue Note 1570--Dial “S" For Sonny--are among the rarer Blue Note records, often changing hands for thousands of dollars for even a mediocre copy. That's an awful lot of scratch for a fifty-six year old piece of pressed vinyl and a cardboard sleeve. Fortunately, there are better ways to hear pianist Sonny Clark's debut recording for the fabled label. The Music Matters series of two-disk, 45 rpm vinyl records is winding down after close to one hundred ...

Album Review

Itamar Erez & Yshai Afterman: New Dawn

Read "New Dawn" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
December 14, 2013

Israeli guitarist-pianist Itamar Erez, member of American- Turkish Sufi multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek band, revisits some of his best compositions in an intimate setting in his album New Dawn, a duo with fellow Israeli percussionist Yshai Afterman, a disciple of master Israeli percussionist Zohar Fresco. Tough Erez is the composer of all the pieces, except Afterman solo, the two share equal leading roles, demonstrating an almost telepathic interplay. Most of the pieces were recorded on Erez ...