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.

Book Review

Chris Searle: Red Groove

by Duncan Heining
November 1, 2013

Red Groove Chris Searle 283 pages ISBN: 978-1907869495 Five Leaves 2013 The life story of poet, teacher, author and activist Chris Searle is as intriguing as that of many of the musicians he discusses in Red Groove. Teaching at an inner city school in London in the early seventies, Searle encouraged his pupils to write poems about their lives and then published the results. An active trades unionist, ...

Album Review

Archie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra: I Hear the Sound

Read "I Hear the Sound" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 1, 2013

Recorded in France in 2012 and 2013, I Hear the Sound is a live recording of saxophonist Archie Shepp's oratorio, “Attica Blues," co-written and arranged with Cal Massey in 1971, which was first heard on an Impulse! album a year later. Most of that album, Attica Blues, is revisited, with some adjustments to the running order of the tunes. In addition, Duke Ellington's “Come Sunday" is woven into the middle of the suite, and Shepp's “Mama Too Tight," the title ...

Live Review

Live From Old York: Julian Argüelles, Poltergeist, Dr. Feelgood & North Mississippi All-Stars

by Martin Longley
October 31, 2013

The Julian Argüelles Quartet The University Of York October 12, 2013 Saxophonist Julian Argüelles grew up in Birmingham, spent much of his career in London and can now be found stomping around the coastal village of Belhaven in Scotland. Over the years, he's developed an ongoing relationship with The University Of York, on both the teaching and performance fronts. This gig gave Argüelles the opportunity to present his current youthfully spry cohorts, nearing ...

Album Review

Vijay Iyer / Mike ladd: Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project

Read "Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 31, 2013

It's been nearly 70 years since the film The Best Years Of Our Lives won seven Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture (1946). The story revolved around three returning WWII veterans and their difficulties adjusting to civilian life. While those veterans came back to the economic powerhouse that was the United States, today's returning soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars find a country with the same meager prospects that perhaps drove them to enlist in the first place. ...

Album Review

Octobop: . . .Out of Nowhere

Read ". . .Out of Nowhere" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 31, 2013

With Octobop, what you see (and hear) is what you get: “octo," as in octet, and “bop," as in swinging, straight-from-the-shoulder jazz as practiced by the legendary masters who rewrote the music's vocabulary in the '40s, '50s and '60s. Saxophonist and prime mover Geoff Roach leads the California-based group on its sixth CD, Out of Nowhere, which, much like the first five, is likable from end to end, blending the group's readiness and camaraderie after fifteen years together with an ...

Extended Analysis

Christian Winther & Christian Meaas Svendsen: W / M

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 31, 2013

W/ M is a double album that feature two debuts as solo artists of two young and promising Norwegian improvisers, both spinning out of the creative environment around the Music Academy in Oslo. Guitarist Christian Winther, a member of the punk-jazz trio Ich Bin N!ntendo, genre-bending trio Monkey Plot and the free improvisers collective Mummu, and double bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen, a member of the modern jazz quintet Mopti, the duo Duplex with saxophonist Harald Larssen, Andrea Kvintett and Paal ...

Album Review

Arno Haas: Magic Hands

Read "Magic Hands" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 31, 2013

Could it get any funkier than this, any deeper into the groove? It's doubtful. Saxophonist Arno Haas has, with Magic Hands, crafted a sound that's as tight and danceable as anything that James Brown's Famous Flames conjured back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “You Better Watch Out," a blast of fusion, opens the set with a slashing guitar, tight horn work, funky bass lines, all sweetened by a swirling organ breeze, with the leader slicing through ...

Album Review

Ode To Omni: October's Fire

Read "October's Fire" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
October 31, 2013

The Philadelphia based collective, Ode to Omni's debut album October Fire is heavily influenced by the 1970s spiritual jazz recordings, particularly those on the legendary now sadly defunct label, Strata East. A couple of gem's that instantly come to mind are The John Betsch Society's Earth Blossom (Strata East, 1972) and Billy Parker's Fourth World's Freedom of Speech (Strata East, 1974). Much like Betsch and Parker, the leader of Ode to Omni, Marcus Myers is also a percussionist and under ...

Profile

Art Blakey: The Musical Drummer

by Anton Rasmussen
October 31, 2013

“Jazz Washes Away the Dust of Everyday Life" --Art Blakey So said, Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (1919-1990), more widely known to the world of jazz by his pre-Islamic name: Art Blakey. Blakey was my first introduction into the musicality of jazz drumming and, in some senses, my introduction to a lifelong love of jazz. Truly a powerhouse in swing and blues, Blakey led the hard bop playing Jazz Messengers from the 1950s to the 1980s (recording for ...

Album Review

Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music

Read "His Life, His Music" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 30, 2013

Singer and composer Joseph Kabasele, aka Le Grand Kallé, is widely credited with the creation of “Congolese rumba," the most popular style in Central and East Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. In reality, Congolese rumba was born of several parents, but Kabasele's role in its creation was far reaching and has become the best documented. He was instrumental in blending traditional Congolese music with Cuban dance music--which was rooted in the music Congolese slaves had brought to the island ...