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

The Splendor: Delphian Palace

Read "Delphian Palace" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
November 8, 2013

Probably it's best for jazz writers to paraphrase press releases, but sometimes the wording is too good to tamper with. For instance: “The Splendor is a jazz quartet with antennae out, claws in, and a tireless interest in all the small details of the music that transform each concert into its own universe." It's a marvelous description of this Swedish group and its one-of-a-kind soundscape: the music is joyful, inventive, and above all, boldly beautiful. The Splendor's second ...

Album Review

Arve Henriksen: Places Of Worship

Read "Places Of Worship" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
November 8, 2013

Places of Worship marks the return of Supersilent's trumpeter and vocalist Arve Henriksen to Rune Grammofon after his 2008 solo album Cartography for ECM—if we conveniently ignore the awesome compilation Solidification (Rune Grammofon, 2012). While this new release is credited to Henriksen alone, it continues his long-standing collaboration with Jan Bang and Erik Honoré of Punkt, who played on and produced it, so it could rightly have been credited to all three. In a methodology reminiscent of Jon ...

Interview

Steve Wilson: Lifetime of Study

by George Colligan
November 8, 2013

Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth. I'm very happy to have the opportunity to interview a musician that I've worked with a lot over the years. When people say that a musician has worked with everybody in the business, Steve Wilson has literally worked with everyone in jazz. It would be hard to name somebody that he hasn't worked with in jazz. I feel like this is kind of a coup from ...

Album Review

Ted Rosenthal Trio: Wonderland

Read "Wonderland" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 7, 2013

Lots of “Christmas Albums" come out every year. Many of them are nice for an easy holiday listen, but let's face it, expectations are low in terms of endurance, and they can often be rightfully seen as quickly done, quick buck affairs. Then there are the ones that have endured: the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965); Elvis Presley's A Christmas Album (RCA, 1957); and Frank Sinatra's A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra (Capitol, 1957). And aside ...

Catching Up With

The La Barbera Brothers: Jazz DNA

by Nicholas F. Mondello
November 7, 2013

It's an interesting phenomenon how certain families enter and distinguish themselves in this marvelous world of jazz--The Joneses, Heaths, Candolis, Royals, Breckers, Mangiones, and others. Over the last five decades--even many more if one goes farther back to when they were young children playing in the family band with Mom and Pop--the La Barbera Brothers--John, Joe and Pat have graced stages with pantheon artists such as Bill Evans, Buddy Rich, Buddy DeFranco, DIVA, Tony Bennett, Elvin Jones and many more. ...

Album Review

Houston Person: Nice 'n' Easy

Read "Nice 'n' Easy" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 7, 2013

Even though Houston Person isn't, strictly speaking, a “Texas tenor"--he hails from Florence, SC--the crafty veteran hits the mark in almost every other respect, from his clear and powerful sound to his unremitting propensity to brighten a melody and to swing under any and all conditions. On his latest album, Person, still marshaling all the right notes at age seventy-eight, is said to be taking it Nice 'n' Easy, but that's anyone's guess, as he makes what he does sound ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Craig Tweddell

by AAJ Staff
November 7, 2013

Meet Craig Tweddell: Craig Tweddell attended Morehead State University, where he was privileged to study with his hero and mentor Greg Wing, who he credits with instilling within him a work ethic and passion for music that continues to inspire him to this day. Craig discovered and fell in love with jazz music and improvising while at MSU, which he attended on the Musicians' Union Performance Scholarship, and The Jamey Aebersold Jazz Scholarship. He was also a member of ...

Extended Analysis

Mike and Kate Westbrook: The Serpent Hit

by Duncan Heining
November 7, 2013

Mike and Kate Westbrook have a reputation for tackling big subjects--war, European history, life and death and the nature of art and creativity. With The Serpent Hit, they turn their attention to perhaps the grandest subject of them all--the fall from grace and the loss of paradise. This beautifully packaged CD features a gorgeous cover painting by Kate Westbrook that could easily have sprung from the wall of a 14th century Italian church. We start with this because ...

Album Review

Spyro Gyra: The Rhinebeck Sessions

Read "The Rhinebeck Sessions" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 7, 2013

In 2014, the Buffalo, NY band Spyro Gyra will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Indeed, a remarkable feat. Well-known for cross- pollinating contemporary jazz with jazz-fusion, the musicians merge an amenable game plan with engaging melodies and largely buoyant grooves amid a sense of bravado, stemming from their formidable chops and intense improv segments. The group locks into a bevy of spunky motifs, complete with tuneful hooks and pumping rhythms. They delve into jazz-funk, Latin and mainstream jazz, along with a ...

Album Review

Ligeia Mare: Songs We Never Thought Of

Read "Songs We Never Thought Of" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 7, 2013

The sophomore release of the Colorado-based aggregate of musicians Ligeia Mare, is based on similar recordings that were the basis for the quintet's debut 1 (2012). Songs We Never Thought Of distills its live, spontaneous improvisations into loosely structured sonic events. True to the inspiration for its name, the lake in the north polar region of the Saturnian moon, Titan, these dreamy and evocative soundscapes bridge spacey, psychedelic progressive rock with abstract texts and voices, weird percussive sounds and assorted ...