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

RED Trio: Rebento

by John Sharpe
December 3, 2013

Piano trios which accentuate the abstract facets of the format have become increasingly widespread in recent years, although boasting a legacy which stretches back to the pioneering outfits of British pianist Howard Riley in the late 1960s with bassist Barry Guy. Foremost among the current roll call, which includes Frenchwoman Eve Risser, Spaniard Agusti Fernandez, and the New York City-based Dawn of Midi, stands Portugal's Red Trio. Its fourth outing Rebento, issued as an LP containing three collectively birthed tracks ...

Album Review

Clara Vuust: Here’s To Love

Read "Here’s To Love" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
December 3, 2013

Denmark's Clara Vuust has a voice as clean and clear as the “ping" you get when you flick your fingernail against a piece of Scandinavian crystal glassware." She uses it to come up with a quite stunning debut album. Hitherto she was known in her homeland only as the sister of saxophonist Christian Vuust and for an educational show for children aged 2-6 called Jazzkatten På Tur (The Jazz Cat On Tour). Her metamorphosis ...

Album Review

Sketches: Volume One

Read "Volume One" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 3, 2013

This Brooklyn-based jazz quintet comprised of nascent talent takes a unique approach to composition. Here, the musicians share a sketch from a notepad, denoting an incomplete composition or musical fragment and another band-member runs with it to use as a foundation for a new composition. Nonetheless, it's a balanced program, where the musicians fuse probing melodic content via regimented flows and loose grooves, while occasionally skirting the outside realm. Essentially, these pieces are structured by design, yet the band doesn't ...

Live Review

Etienne Charles at The Little Carib Theatre, Port of Spain, Trinidad

by Nigel Campbell
December 3, 2013

Etienne Charles Little Carib Theatre Creole Soul Port of Spain, Trinidad November 30, 2013 Fresh from an exciting TEDx Port of Spain talk in the morning, the always dapper Etienne Charles and his band delivered a superb set of jazz at the gala opening of his Creole Soul tour stop in Trinidad on the evening of November 30 at the Little Carib Theatre in Port of Spain. A homecoming of sorts—this is the second ...

Genius Guide to Jazz

2013 Holiday Gift Guide

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
December 3, 2013

One of the longstanding traditions around the 'Dome, along with Taco Tuesdays and the monthly Google Nude® check to see if any of my favorite actresses have “accidentally" Tweeted “private" pictures of themselves recently, is the annual viewing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Few things bring back the warm memories of childhood and invoke the true spirit of the holiday more than the beloved 1965 animated special, which is a jewel even among the many treasures of the golden era ...

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

Mr. P.C.'s Best of 2013

by Mr. P.C.
December 2, 2013

Dear Mr. P.C.: I was playing at a club in town, a pretty fancy place, the gig all the guys in town want. On the break a pretty woman in the audience came up to me and complimented my playing. So far so good! But then she asked if I play professionally--right in the middle of a gig! What should I have said? John G., Denver Dear John: You should be flattered! ...

Album Review

Trespass Trio + Joe McPhee: Human Encore

Read "Human Encore" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
December 2, 2013

Portugal is one of the most free-jazz friendly countries on the planet, and the innovative Clean Feed label is one of the reasons why. With over two hundred releases thus far, Clean Feed has been documenting the next wave(s) of avant-free music. This includes the mighty Trespass Trio, a powerhouse group of improvisers consisting of Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen, Norwegian double bassist Per Zanussi, and Swedish drummer Raymond Strid. Clean Feed released Trespass Trio's debut Was There to Illuminate the ...

Multiple Reviews

2013 Yuletide Offerings

by Dan Bilawsky
December 2, 2013

It's clear that the holidays are coming when the mercury dips and the cheery tidings of the season are balanced out by shopping-fueled malaise. When it comes to music, said shopping is often centered on a series of new holiday-themed releases that seem to arrive like clockwork in the weeks and months prior to Christmas; this year--surprise, surprise--is no different than any other year in that respect. In some ways, it's hard to understand the ever-continuing fascination ...

Live Review

London Jazz Festival 2013

by Duncan Heining
December 2, 2013

Enrico Pieranunzi, Julie Sassoon and Stan Tracey--Pianos on the Edge London Jazz Festival November 15-24, 2014 The Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London, a few blocks from the Bank of England, might seem an odd place for a jazz gig but--under the auspices of the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston--stranger things do happen. On this opening night of 2013's EFG London Jazz Festival, this double bill of the Enrico Pieranunzi Trio and Julie Sassoon ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra: I Hear the Sound

Read "I Hear the Sound" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 2, 2013

Saxophonist Archie Shepp wrote “Attica Blues" in 1972, not long after a five-day uprising at that New York state prison left thirty-nine people dead, twenty-nine of whom were inmates. Now, more than forty years later, Shepp's Attica Blues Orchestra (comprised for the most part of French musicians) has resurrected the “Blues" and made it the linchpin of a new album, I Hear the Sound, which includes five more compositions by Shepp, three by Cal Massey, one by pianist Amina Claudine ...