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

Kaz Simmons: Signs

by Bruce Lindsay
October 27, 2013

It's album number four from London-based singer and songwriter Kaz Simmons. It's called Signs. It deftly explores the fertile ground that encompasses jazz, folk and the quirkier end of '70s British psych-rock--and it's a joy. Simmons has slimmed down her band for Signs--a small but perfectly formed quartet share the musical honors, compared to the dozen or so players on her third album, Dandelions (Fast Awake, 2011). It hasn't reduced the musical range, however. Keyboard player Will Bartlett ...

Multiple Reviews

John Lilja's Robblerobble

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 27, 2013

American double bassist John Lilja, based in Stavanger, Norway, for more than 15 years, has collaborated frequently with the fertile, genre-bending, community of musicians of Stavanger, among them saxophonist Frode Gjerstad' s Circulasione Totale Orchestra, Kitchen Orchestra and trumpeter Gunhild Seim's Time Jungle. The quintet Robblerobble is Lilja's first project as a leader, a working quintet that keeps expanding its musical options. This quintet features some of the best, still underrated, improvisers of the Stavanger scene. ...

Album Review

Miles Davis: Legendary Concerts

Read "Legendary Concerts" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 27, 2013

Like the curate's egg, parts of trumpeter Miles Davis' 1980s recordings and performances were excellent, and others considerably less so. The 1985 Columbia album, You're Under Arrest--of which the CD/DVD set Legendary Concerts was a partial live performance, with one important personnel change--was the strongest of the early to mid 1980s albums, on which keyboardist Robert Irving 111's heavy on the back beat groove-arrangements, first heard on The Man With The Horn (Columbia, 1981), and Davis' increasingly minimalist playing, meshed ...

Live Review

Branford Marsalis Quartet at Max Fisher Music Center

by Steve Bryant
October 27, 2013

Branford Marsalis Quartet Max Fisher Music Center Detroit, MI October 11, 2013 The Branford Marsalis Quartet is arguably the best small unit working in jazz these days, as proven by the performance of the BMQ in Detroit. This concert was the opening event for the superb jazz series presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The emcee for the concert just happened to be renowned trumpeter and (Marsalis home-boy) Terence Blanchard, who ...

Album Review

Lisa Engelken: Lisa Engelken - Little Warrior

Read "Lisa Engelken - Little Warrior" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 27, 2013

Polymathic in her talent and approach, vocalist Lisa Engelken further cements her status as a far-reaching artist, established on the previous Caravan (Self Produced, 2010), with the present Little Warrior. Described as, “part freight train, part junkyard trombone," Engelken is 100% an American, hailing from the Kansas heartland where she obviously picked up fluency in Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian, all of which she shares with us. What of the music? The music is pleasantly all over the place.

Album Review

David Sills: Blue's the New Green

Read "Blue's the New Green" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 27, 2013

Saxophonist David Sills opens his Blue's the New Green with tenor sax titan Sonny Rollins' tune, “No Moe." But Sills doesn't use Rollins' musculature or his burly tone. He rolls more in the mode of sax men Joe Henderson or Stan Getz--or, to take it back further, Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster, with a smooth, vibrato-less delivery. Sills is steeped in the tradition of those who came before him, without being mired there. As in previous outings, Eastern ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Marquis Hill

by AAJ Staff
October 27, 2013

Meet Marquis Hill: At age 26, Marquis Hill is already a well-known name on the Chicago jazz scene. After receiving a Bachelor's degree in Music Education/Jazz Studies, and studying privately at Northern Illinois University, he started performing heavily in Chicago. He has performed with artist such as: Dee Alexander, Tito Carrillo, Bobby Broom, Willie Pickens, Ron Perrillo, Victor Garcia, Benny Golson, Antonio Hart, Rodney Whitaker, Steve Turre, Ernest Dawkins, Maurice Brown, Corey Wilkes, Willerm Delisfort, Brian Lynch and many others. ...

Live Review

Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola

by Keith Henry Brown
October 26, 2013

Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band Dizzy's Club Coca Cola New York, NY October 6, 2013 Though the band leader/pianist /composer Sun Ra spoke of being part of an “Angel Race" from Saturn, his music, as avant-garde as it could sometimes be, was for the large part, accessible. One of his lifetime heroes was Duke Ellington, not just for his ability to lead a brilliant orchestra, but also for the ...

Album Review

Jonas Kullhammar Quartet: Låt Det Vara

Read "Låt Det Vara" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 26, 2013

If someone told you that jazz wasn't invented in America, you would say they were crazy. Insane. Next thing they might submit is that Christopher Columbus didn't discover the New World. Oops, okay discounting the Native Americans already here, there's that Scandinavian guy Leif Ericson that came through the East Village about 500 years before Chris. That's why you might avoid any musical debate over the finest tenor saxophonists working in jazz today. When fans declare the Swedes, ...

Album Review

Levin Minnemann Rudess: Levin Minnemann Rudess

Read "Levin Minnemann Rudess" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
October 26, 2013

For a first crack at a fresh idea for Lazy Bones Records--three well-known musicians brought together to create improv-based music with a minimum of planning--Levin Torn White (2011) was a set that, beyond finding common ground amongst bassist/stick master Tony Levin, guitar sound sculptor David Torn and drummer Alan White, also proved, unequivocally, that White is capable of far more than he's demonstrated recently with his longstanding membership in the overly inflated dinosaur of Yes. But Levin Minnemann Rudess is ...