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

Gilad Edelman: My Groove, Your Move

Read "My Groove, Your Move" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
October 11, 2013

Gilad Edelman is the son of Marc Edelman, the brains and will behind Sharp Nine Records, a fiercely independent label which has produced some of the finest straight-ahead jazz records of the past fifteen years. Despite limited resources and operating in the midst of the industry's severe downturn, Sharp Nine has released impressive recordings by significant, well-traveled artists like pianists David Hazeltine and Tardo Hammer, tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, alto saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith, the bands Planet Jazz and One For ...

Live Review

David Bromberg at City Winery

by Mike Perciaccante
October 11, 2013

David Bromberg City Winery CD Release Party & Live Performance New York, NY October 1, 2013 One might describe David Bromberg as kind of a musical chameleon. Others might disagree. Bromberg is equally adept at playing classic gutbucket blues, ragtime, country, folk, jazzy blues, bluesy jazz, rock and standards. That's pretty diverse. On the other hand, each and every one of these musical genres can be classified as Americana. Bromberg, then, is either amazingly ...

Album Review

Brass Mask: Spy Boy

Read "Spy Boy" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
October 11, 2013

It is somewhat rare to encounter a brass band in modern jazz these days, but saxophonist and composer Tom Challenger's octet, Brass Mask, is an intriguing example of a brass driven band. The eclectic nature of the band is underlined by the cover of the album: Spy Boy, which suggests the contours of a man holding a saxophone surrounded by a rainbow of feathers. The music is just as sprawling and colorful as the cover and the ...

Album Review

Bill Mays Inventions Trio: Life's a Movie

Read "Life's a Movie" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 11, 2013

For pianist Bill Mays' Inventions Trio, the third time is indeed a charm, as it would be difficult to find music more charming than that performed by Mays, trumpeter Marvin Stamm and cellist Alisa Horn on Life's a Movie, the trio's third album together (and first for Chiaroscuro Records). This is “chamber jazz" of the highest order, with the classically trained Horn complementing perfectly the jazz-inflected sorties of Mays and Stamm in a program whose beauty is equaled only by ...

Album Review

Kaleidoscope Jukebox: Infinite Reflection

Read "Infinite Reflection" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 11, 2013

Infinite Reflection by Kaleidoscope Jukebox doesn't really go on forever. But at 75 minutes, it is an overflowing, thick mix of trip-hop, hip-hop and globetrotting sounds, masterminded by multi-instrumentalist, DJ and producer Clint Carty (who has remixed music for Thievery Corporation, Loopez, Second Sky and others). “I wanted this to be unique in name, vibe and emotional receptivity. Music which is just as much felt as it is heard," Carty explains. “It's soul music in the biggest sense. I write ...

Extended Analysis

Jakob Bro: December Song

by Henning Bolte
October 10, 2013

December Song is the final part of a trilogy which started with Balladeering (2009) and continued with Time (2011). It started with the fivesome of Jakob Bro himself, Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz, Ben Street and the late Paul Motian. When Time was recorded in September 2011 at Avatar, Thomas Morgan subbed for Ben Street. Paul Motian could not make it anymore. He passed away soon after. Notwithstanding he can be sensed on both Time and December Song very clearly. To ...

Album Review

Peter Brendler and John Abercrombie: The Angle Below

Read "The Angle Below" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 10, 2013

Peter Brendler and guitarist John Abercrombie have developed their playing partnership over a number of years, but The Angle Below is their first duo recording. Brendler--"the guy on the bass" as he's described in Neil Tesser's sleeve notes--is the nominal leader but he refers to the album as a collaboration. He's not wrong. He may be the driving force behind the project, the man who sorted out the studio, booked the dates, contacted the press and made the coffees, but ...

Album Review

Mats Gustafsson: Shift

by John Sharpe
October 10, 2013

Having co-opted reed iconoclast Mats Gustafsson to pen the enthusiastic liners for their prosaically-named Two Nights in April (Ayler Records, 2010), young Swedish trio Correction goes one better on Shift by persuading their countryman to actually participate in the session. Over its five year existence, the threesome of pianist Sebastian Bergström, bassist Joacim Nyberg and drummer Emil Astrand-Melin has forged a cohesive group identity, built on freedom within a recognizably modern jazz idiom. Gustafsson convinces as the perfect guest, adding ...

Reassessing

Oscar Peterson & Stephane Grappelli: Skol

by C. Michael Bailey
October 10, 2013

Oscar Peterson and Stephane Grappelli Skol OJC 1979/2013 Music impresario Norman Granz (1918-2001) was a cagey so-and-so. When he inaugurated Pablo Records in 1973, he already had a catalog of recordings and an immediate pool of exceptional performers who also happened to be under his management (often making his acquaintance through Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic program). With this combination of fortunes, Granz was able to release some 350 recordings in 15 years, before ...

Multiple Reviews

Libor Smoldas: Intuition and Dreamtime

by Chris Mosey
October 10, 2013

Libor Smoldas is one of the best jazz guitarists the Czech Republic has produced in recent years. He plays extremely fluent, straight ahead music in the Jim Hall tradition, with overtones of Kenny Burrell. He is more relaxed, less intense than his contemporary, David Doruzka, best known of the current crop of Czech jazz guitarists. Smoldas smiles a lot when he plays. On graduating from the Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, unlike Doruzka, ...