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.

Live Review

Roger Hodgson at the NYCB Theatre

by Mike Perciaccante
November 2, 2013

Roger Hodgson NYCB Theatre At Westbury Westbury, New York October 26, 2013 Though his name may not be totally familiar, his distinctive voice is instantly recognizable. Roger Hodgson, along with Rick Davies, founded Supertramp. In 1970, the band's self-titled debut album was released by A&M Records. During the '70s and early '80s, Hodgson's timeless songs helped propel the band to international stardom. In 1983 after the Famous Last Words (A&M Records, 1982) album and tour, ...

Album Review

Quarterpounder: brood

by Bruce Lindsay
November 2, 2013

Quarterpounder, led by Copenhagen-based bassist and composer-in-chief Mathias Wedeken, has an affinity with vinyl. The band's first release avoided the CD racks altogether. Its second album, brood, does the same, appearing as a beautifully-packaged 12" vinyl album, complete with a striking cover design and an accompanying download. It's a classy product all round. brood features the same line-up as the band's debut, becoming (Gateway Music, 2011). It's a tight, intuitive, quartet: the trombone and tenor sax front-line gives ...

Live Review

Minus the Bear at Best Buy Theater

by Christine Connallon
November 2, 2013

Minus the Bear Best Buy Theater New York, NY October 25, 2013 A few hours before taking the stage at the Best Buy Theater in midtown Manhattan, three members of Seattle-based rock band Minus the Bear sat in a high rise in Chelsea at the Livestream studios to engage in a session of questions and answers with fans, as well as playing a few songs live. Lead singer and guitarist Jake Snider's easy way ...

Album Review

Libor Smoldas Quartet & Bobby Watson: Intuition

Read "Intuition" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
November 2, 2013

One of Europe's rising young jazz star is Prague-based guitarist/composer and educator Libor Smoldas who unveils his fifth album as leader with the highly accessible Intuition featuring an all-Czech Republic quartet with alto saxophonist great Bobby Watson appearing as guest. Recorded at the end of the group's Czech tour, the album is in a sense, a follow up to their 18 Days, 2000 Miles (New Port Line, 2012) project coming out of the band's U.S. tour in 2012. Blending a ...

Album Review

Michael Jaeger Kerouac: Dance Around in Your Bones

Read "Dance Around in Your Bones" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 2, 2013

Zurich-based saxophonist Michael Jaeger and his band Kerouac have been a well-known entity in the European progressive jazz community amid alternating personnel since 2006. Jaeger is a musical voyager and covers a broad sound-design spectrum, steeped in prismatic colorations and the axiomatic peaks and valleys. Rather uncannily, the musicians impart numerous variables as they shape a mark of authenticity, when considering a group-centric concentration. Jaeger mixes it up via whispery clarinet sequences atop popping bass ostinatos on “Dance ...

Extended Analysis

Andrew Hill: Solos - The Jazz Sessions

by Karl Ackermann
November 1, 2013

"My name is Andrew Hill--pianist." With humility characteristic of his long career in music, these words open Solos: The Jazz Sessions. Hill's avant-garde contemporaries like Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton often pushed the boundaries of their music in directly experimental and mathematical ways and the affect is sometimes intentionally discordant. Hill's unique ability was to embrace melody even as he took it to the breaking point. His capacity to cast it off and reel it back in seamlessly was a ...

Album Review

Harold Lopez-Nussa: New Day

Read "New Day" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
November 1, 2013

Following in the footsteps and tradition of Chucho Valdés, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Roberto Fonseca, Harold López-Nussa is at the forefront of a new generation of Cuban jazz pianists, one that includes Rolando Luna and Marialy Pacheco--fellow winners of the Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition. López-Nussa's win in 2005 launched an international career that has since seen him play the world's great jazz festivals and collaborate with such notables as vibraphonist Stefon Harris, saxophonist David Sanchez and trumpeter Christian Scott ...

Multiple Reviews

Turkish Free Music Box Set

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 1, 2013

This project is a labor of love. It began when guitarist Umut Çağlar, head of the Turkish avant-jazz label and musicians collective and band KonstruKt, found a new edition of a rare album documenting the musical meeting of American multi-instrumentalist Phil Musra with one of the forefathers of Turkish free jazz scene, drummer Hüseyin Ertunç (At Hüseyin's, Sagittarius A-Star, 2011, originally recorded in 1991). Çağlar suggested to the head of the small Italian label that reissued the album, Sagittarius A-Star, ...

Album Review

Bill O'Connell + The Latin Jazz All-Stars: Zócalo

by Dan Bilawsky
November 1, 2013

Latin jazz piano dynamo Bill O'Connell found a parallel between this gathering and Zócalo, the main plaza situated in the center of Mexico City; that square has long been a place where people meet to connect, celebrate and join together as one, and the same sense of togetherness and unity associated with that spot surrounds this recording. O'Connell and his simpatico sextet mates sizzle, swoon and soar as they explore the art of creation through communication. Sometimes ...

Album Review

Tom Artwick: Jazz Scenes: Music from the Movies

Read "Jazz Scenes: Music from the Movies" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 1, 2013

A pleasant album of themes from various movies, seamlessly performed for an appreciative audience by five able musicians whose earnest labors affirm that there is an abundance of talented artists in this country whose endeavors pass largely unnoticed unless concerts such as this one are recorded and released so that a wider audience is able to hear and appreciate their proficiency. Saxophonist Tom Artwick leads the quintet, and he is a pleasure to hear on alto sax, ...