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

Julie Sassoon: Land Of Shadows

Read "Land Of Shadows" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 6, 2013

Land Of Shadows, the second album from British pianist Julie Sassoon, is a striking work. A mix of the simple and complex, gentle and strident, dark and light, it's powerful and affecting.After studying in the UK Sassoon moved to Germany in 2009. Recorded live in Cologne, Dessau and the Neue Synagoge Berlin during April 2012, this music explores Sassoon's German-Jewish roots. Clearly, this exploration is an extremely personal one but Sassoon's music has a universality that invites everyone ...

Interview

Billy Kilson: Nasty Pitch

by Trish Richardson
November 6, 2013

Here's the wind up. And the pitch. Whoa, did you see that one folks? That pitch was just nasty. In baseball, occasionally a ball gets thrown by the pitcher that is so good, so perfectly placed, so unbelievable, the announcer calls it nasty. The opposing batter doesn't have much chance of hitting it, but can only look back at the mound and tip his hat with respect. Occasionally, the same thing occurs in music. Atop a ...

Multiple Reviews

Kari Ikonen: Bright and The Helsinki Suite

by John Ephland
November 6, 2013

Kari Ikonen Trio Bright Ozella Music 2013 The 40-year-old Finnish keyboardist Kari Ikonen--first heard by this reviewer in a live context in his native homeland with another, much more open and unconventional trio Slo Motive--lets his jazz chops shine, his groove glisten and his range within the music flourish with these two releases. From the first bars of Bright with his frolicking swinger “Bapmgwala" it becomes apparent that Ikonen can be both lyrical and slightly ...

Album Review

Jon Lundbom: Liverevil

Read "Liverevil" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
November 6, 2013

Like Stiff Records from the 1970s and '80s punk era, Hot Cup Records always delivers music that is a sharp shot to the solar plexus. Home to the renegade jazz ensemble Mostly Other People Do The (MOPDTK), the avant-jazz country-music cover band Bryan And The Haggards, and guitarist Jon Lundbom's Big Five Chord, Hot Cup always comes out punching. Liverevil Lundbom's fifth Big Five Chord release follows the vinyl (and download) LP No New Tunes (Hot Cup, 2012) ...

Book Review

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

by C. Michael Bailey
November 6, 2013

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker Stanley Crouch 365 Pages ISBN: # 978-0-06-200559-5 Harper 2013 Ross Russell, in the cover blurb of his biography of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker Bird Lives--The High Life and hard Times of Charlie “Yardbird" Parker (Quartet Books, 1973), asks “Why should a white man tell this story?" and proceeds to state the obvious: “Firstly, because [as Ross Russell points out] no black man has ...

Album Review

VCDC: Insult

Read "Insult" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 6, 2013

The sophomore release of the Norwegian-American free improvisation quartet VCDC (following the self-titled album, Hispid, 2011) features the quartet as a highly inventive and playful unit. Clarinetist Frode Gjerstad, one of the forefathers of the Norwegian free jazz and free improvisation scene; cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who in the last years collaborate regularly with Scandinavian musicians as Gjerstad on other projects or the Swedish-American quintet Seval; drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg and vocal artist Stine Janvin Motland, who work together as the ...

Album Review

William Shatner: Ponder The Mystery

Read "Ponder The Mystery" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 6, 2013

Fundamentally, the notion of actor William Shatner reciting his poetic verse atop progressive rock compositions--performed by many of this genre's elite--including solo spots by Rick Wakeman (keyboards), Steve Vai (guitar), and Edgar Froese (guitar) may seem like an anomalous concoction. It doesn't end there. Jazz-fusion icon Al Di Meola (guitar) amid county music and rock stars such as guitarist Vince Gill and saxophonist, keyboardist Edgar Winter lend their talents, Yes multi-instrumentalist, producer Billy Sherwood lays down the core bass, guitar, ...

Profile

Julie Sassoon: Dancing in the Shadows

by Duncan Heining
November 5, 2013

It's been seven years since British pianist and composer Julie Sassoon released her first solo CD, New Life (Babel). Since then, she and her family have moved to Berlin and Sassoon has quietly established herself in Germany as an unusual and unique talent. It's been a long wait for fans but her new live album, Land of Shadows (jazzwerkstatt) offers both a confirmation of and even a deepening of her approach to composition and improvisation. It's also been ...

Album Review

Brass Jaw: Minted

by Bruce Lindsay
November 5, 2013

This is not an unbiased review. That needs to be said from the outset. Payola changed hands to ensure that this review was written. The press release for Minted--the fourth album from Scotland's Brass Jaw--arrived accompanied by cash. An obvious bribe. Painted to resemble an eye, but still quite obviously coin of the realm. Two pence, sterling. Such a fundamentally ineffectual attempt at bribery seems to be in keeping with the quartet's light-hearted outlook on life. This is ...

Live Review

The Guinness Cork Jazz Camp 2013

by Melody McLaren
November 5, 2013

While much of the interest in Guinness Cork Jazz Festival --celebrating its 35th year in 2013--inevitably focuses on concert headliners, one of the hidden gems of the annual weekend programme is the Cork Jazz Camp, a collaborative effort between Fáilte IrelandCIT Cork School of Music and the Global Music Foundation which has been developing since 2009. Global Music Foundation Director Stephen Keogh one of Europe's top drummers and jazz educators as well as a Festival veteran, selects his workshop teams ...