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

Jake Marmer: Hermeneutic Stomp

Read "Hermeneutic Stomp" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 22, 2013

Jake Marmer is an observant jew, poet, and dedicated scholar of beat poetry, the blues, and jazz legacy. He was born in Ukraine, emigrated to New York with a short time in between in Jerusalem, Israel. His poetry, perceived by himself as a work in progress, borrows colorful images from Jewish Talmudic texts and Chassidic chants, improvised and charged by the accompanying musicians and then spun instantly into reflections and innuendos, even ironic zen riddles, spiced with references to “the ...

Album Review

Magnus Ostrom: Searching For Jupiter

Read "Searching For Jupiter" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
October 21, 2013

Time is the great healer. Certainly there are signs that the two years since Thread of Life (ACT Music, 2011)--drummer/composer Magnus Öström's emotionally charged debut as leader--have helped him better cope with the death in 2008 of pianist Esbjorn Svensson-- his colleague of 15 years in the influential trio e.s.t. That album's cover showed a bare-chested Öström clutching a cymbal against a Bible-black void; jarringly atypical of ACT Music's aesthetic, it screamed of grief and naked pain. The music cried ...

Album Review

Huntsville: Past Increasing, Future Receding

Read "Past Increasing, Future Receding" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
October 21, 2013

For their fourth album release--the second on the Hubro label--the Norwegian guitar/bass/drums (plus effects) trio Huntsville have moved away from the collaborations (notably that with vocalist Hanne Hukkelberg) which characterised their last two recordings, and again opted to record as a threesome. The main reason for that is obvious once the music begins. Past Increasing, Future Receding was recorded in the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum at Slemdal in Oslo--a dimly lit barrel-vaulted room completely covered in frescos painted by Vigeland, who ...

Extended Analysis

The Avengers: On A Mission

by Dave Wayne
October 21, 2013

If there's such as thing as good old basic, meat-and-potatoes straight ahead jazz, then The Avengers' new album On A Mission could fairly be characterized as good old basic meat-and-potatoes jazz-rock fusion. Largely--but not completely--devoid of avant-garde, metal, or prog-rock stylings, On A Mission is a straight-ahead fusion album somewhat along the lines of recent offerings by artists such as Mike Stern, Allan Holdsworth, and John McLaughlin's Fourth Dimension. The band is led by guitarist Beledo, a native of Uruguay ...

Album Review

Noah Preminger: Haymaker

by Dave Wayne
October 21, 2013

Tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger is one of those guys who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, fully-formed, with total command of his instrument--including an admirably rich tone--and lots of great ideas, both compositional and improvisational. Well, that's not totally correct. He did study for years with saxophone great Dave Liebman, and graduated from the New England Conservatory. So he's not exactly from nowhere. But a great education isn't everything, as thousands of folks with great educations will tell you. Interestingly, if ...

Album Review

Goat's Notes: Wild Nature Executives

Read "Wild Nature Executives" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 21, 2013

Hailing from Moscow, Goat's Notes and four guest artists execute a liberating soundscape and sustain a great deal of interest, partly due to the conciseness of pieces averaging three-minutes in length. Featuring a whipped-up blend of improvisation, jazz, classical, and rock shaped into an avant-garde disposition, the artists integrate memorable melodies with dissonance, humor, and rambunctious breakdowns. It's a cyclical deconstruction effort, covering about every conceivable possibility imaginable. But it's surprisingly cohesive as they cluster a horde of mini-motifs into ...

Extended Analysis

Saturday Morning

by Ian Patterson
October 21, 2013

Just over a year after Blue Moon (Jazzbook Records, 2012) —Jamal's stellar homage to American cinema and Broadway—the Pittsburgh pianist returns in the same rich vein of form on Saturday Morning. Blue Moon earned a Grammy nomination, and for the second time in recent years Jamal was invited to open the Lincoln Center season in September; clearly, Jamal is enjoying his status as one of jazz's great, elder statesmen. Saturday Morning could almost be part of the same sessions that ...

Rethinking Jazz Cultures

Tony Whyton: What Does Jazz Do For You?

by Ian Patterson
October 21, 2013

[The first installment of interviews with leading jazz academics as part of All About Jazz's new Rethinking Jazz Cultures series begins with Professor Tony Whyton, Director of the Salford Music Research Centre at the University of Salford.] Wherever you stand on what constitutes jazz music, jazz history and its great historical figures/landmark recordings, Tony Whyton invites you to think again. Whatever your views on jazz criticism, literature and photography, Whyton might just make you see things in a ...

Interview

Lonnie Plaxico: Being Your Own Bird

by George Colligan
October 20, 2013

Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth] Electric and acoustic bassist Lonnie Plaxico has been on the jazz scene in New York since 1980. He is on hundreds of recordings with everyone from Art Blakey, Cassandra Wilson, Jack Dejohnette, to Ravi Coltrane. He has 13 CDs as a leader, the latest being Ancestral Devotion (Plaxmusic, 2009). I first played with Lonnie Plaxico in 1999 on some gigs with trombonist Robin Eubanks. Lonnie barely ...

Extended Analysis

The Road to Red

by John Kelman
October 20, 2013

Another massive King Crimson box, hot on the heels of the 15-disc, 40th Anniversary Series Larks' Tongues in Aspic: The Complete Recordings (DGM Live, 2012), which brought new meaning to the word heavy by collecting every known note--ranging from low to hi-fi--played by the then newly forged, five-piece edition of a group that, in addition to sole founding member Robert Fripp, also featured violinist/keyboardist David Cross, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, drummer Bill Bruford and, most significantly, percussionist and all-around madman x-factor ...