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

Frk. Jacobsen: Lobsters

Read "Lobsters" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 21, 2013

Lobsters is the debut solo EP of Danish multi-instrumentalist Anja Jacobsen--taking here the title Frk. Jacobsen (Miss Jacobsen)--the driving force of alternative, improvising outfits as Selvhenter, Valby Vokalgruppe and Oum, the tribute to the great Egyptian singer Oum Kulthoum. As on her other projects Jacobsen is determined to find common ground between fearless and inventive sonic experimentalism, varied elements of world music and pop-song sensibilities. This EP features Jacobsen as a highly original musician, gifted with ...

Album Review

Brian Molley Quartet: Clock

by Bruce Lindsay
November 20, 2013

Clock suggests consistency, the regular tick and tock of seconds, minutes and hours moving inexorably onward. Reliable, necessary, but a bit lacking in variation--and as for swing, that would never do, not in a clock. So the title of this Scottish quartet's debut album is somewhat misleading, because the Brian Molley Quartet swings mightily. Molley, saxophonist and composer, is joined by a rhythm section of impeccable style: bassist Mario Caribé, pianist Tom Gibbs and drummer Stuart Brown. Molley, ...

Interview

Dwayne Burno: Tradition

by George Colligan
November 20, 2013

[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth] Dwayne Burno is one of the great bass players of his generation. Originally from Philadelphia, Burno has been on the New York and international jazz scene since 1990. He has played with so many of the great legends of jazz: Betty Carter, Benny Golson, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Chambers, and so many more. Burno is truly a musician's musician in that the integrity of the music ...

Book Review

Testimony: A Tribute To Charlie Parker

by Ian Patterson
November 20, 2013

Testimony: A Tribute To Charlie Parker Yusef Komunyakaa 156 pages ISBN: 978-0-8195-7429-9 Wesleyan University Press 2013 In terms of his global influence and enduring legacy, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker was unquestionably one of the most important artistic figures of the 20th century. Almost sixty years after his premature demise Parker's musical DNA can be detected almost everywhere jazz is played. Parker's music--and in no small measure his myth--has inspired countless jazz musicians but ...

Album Review

konstruKt: Turkish Free Music

Read "Turkish Free Music" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
November 20, 2013

When we think of the term “virus," we equate it with human disease or an infection, as in a computer virus. But consider the musical virus known as free jazz, or improvisation. Its origins can be traced back to a Louis Armstrong solo deviating from his brass band's arrangement. Quickly, his extemporizing blossomed into jazz music and gave birth to creative soloists. Fast forward 50 years, and free jazz players created whole pieces of music spontaneously. Ornette Coleman, The Art ...

Extended Analysis

The Glenn Miller Orchestra: In the Mood

by Jack Bowers
November 20, 2013

You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of big bands formed in the 1930s that continue to perform today, long after the storied Big Band Era has faded from national craze to modest footnote in American musical history. Foremost among the survivors is the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the latest incarnation of which was established more than half a century ago in 1956, about a dozen years after Miller's disappearance on a presumably routine flight over the ...

Album Review

Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras

Read "Piano Sutras" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 20, 2013

Wikipedia tells us that in ancient Indian literature, the term sutra denotes a distinct type of literary composition, based on short aphoristic statements. Similarly concise motifs lie at the heart of many of the selections on Matthew Shipp's eighth solo album Piano Sutras. It's a measure of the American's place in the pianistic pantheon that he still has something worthwhile to say after some 25 years on the scene. Of all his outings, Piano Sutras most resembles Un Piano (Rogue ...

Album Review

Lena Willemark / Jonas Knutsson / Mats Oberg: Alla Drommars Sang

Read "Alla Drommars Sang" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 20, 2013

Alla Drömmars Sång (Song of Dreams) is the debut of three resourceful and versatile Swedish master musicians who bridge the Swedish rich folk music with jazz and world music sensibilities. All three musicians worked with Swedish mufti-instrumentalist and world music pioneer Ale Möller, who wrote the liner notes for this album. Vocalist Lena Willmark led with him on the Nordan Project (Nordan, Agram ECM, 1994 and 1996) and Frifot. Trio.; Saxophonist Jonas Knutsson played on the Nordan projects albums and ...

Album Review

Gustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot

Read "Snapshot" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
November 19, 2013

By now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that jazz musicians often live itinerant lives. Everyone is from somewhere, but usually it's not here, wherever that is. Early jazz musicians--almost exclusively American--migrated from all over the country to the formative hot spots in Chicago and then, a little latter, New York. Today's musicians make those same migratory journeys for school or a gig or a scene, but their points of origin are as likely to be from foreign countries as domestic. Starting ...

Book Review

Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker by Gary Giddins

by C. Michael Bailey
November 19, 2013

Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker Gary Giddins 208 pages ISBN: 978-1-4529-4080-9 University of Minnesota Press 2013 Having read Gary Giddins' revised edition of Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker I am even more committed to my position in my recent review of Stanley Crouch's Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker: “Crouch casts a well-worn story, many times told, within the frame of an exhaustively-researched ...