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

Albare: The Road Ahead

Read "The Road Ahead" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 10, 2013

Moroccan born guitarist Albere (Albert Dadon) emigrated to Australia at the age of 27 and blossomed into a celebrated jazz guitarist who also directs the Melbourne Jazz Festival amid other jazz-related endeavors. Here, he focuses on melodic textures via a breezy gait, employing a synth guitar and six-string electric while exhibiting an unhurried or building-block approach to soloing. To some extent Albare is a polite guitarist who doesn't plunge into super-speed technical gymnastics. The majority of these pieces are executed ...

Album Review

The Idan Raichel Project: Quarter to Six

Read "Quarter to Six" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 10, 2013

Since emerging at the helm of his Project roughly a decade ago, Israeli composer, keyboardist and bandleader Idan Raichel has spirited through rarified air: He co-wrote a song for racial harmony with Israeli President Shimon Perez, and performed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial inaugural ceremony in Washington, DC. He performed “Gift of Acceptance" with collaborator India Arie at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Awards ceremony in Oslo (Norway). In 2011, Raichel was voted musician of the decade in ...

Album Review

Justin Morell: Justin Morell Dectet - Subjects and Compliments

Read "Justin Morell Dectet - Subjects and Compliments" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 10, 2013

Guitarist Justin Morell has succumb to his inner conflict between jazz and classical musics and composed a dozen pieces bowing to each in what may best be considered a jazz suite. This is not Gunther Schuller's “Third Stream" or the Modern Jazz Quartet's chamber jazz. It is a little bigger than that. Morell leads one of those provocative ensembles that is neither a big band or a small combo.There is orchestral magic between seven-and eleven-member groups that cast ...

Live Review

2013 Thelonious Monk Institute Competition

by Franz A. Matzner
October 9, 2013

The saxophone is the most iconic of jazz instruments. Its image is all that is needed to invoke the music's essence, its history intimately entangled with the cultural arc of American music and urban culture. Its masters are the most recognized outside jazz circles and its sound most closely identified with the art form. To many, jazz is defined by the sax and the sax defined by jazz. For that reason, it was fitting that this year's Thelonious ...

Album Review

Larry McKenna: From All Sides

Read "From All Sides" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
October 9, 2013

Larry McKenna's tenor saxophone playing is addictive. It's like driving a Maserati: you're probably going to want to take it on the road again and again, because it is so elegant and finely engineered. A product of the late swing band era (he did a turn with Woody Herman), McKenna has kept rigorously on a course that started with Lester Young and culminated with Stan Getz. He has honed that genre to such perfection that today he provides the gold ...

Live Review

Limerick Jazz Festival 2013

by Ian Patterson
October 9, 2013

Limerick Jazz Festival Various Venues Limerick Ireland September 26-29, 2013 There's a lot to be said for laying strong foundations. By the time the Limerick Jazz Society got it together to put on the city's inaugural jazz festival in 2012 it already had 30 years experience of hosting local and international jazz acts. That's three decades building relations with venues and sponsors, local and national musicians and media, volunteers and supporters, and of course ...

Album Review

Tim Berne's Snakeoil: Shadow Man

Read "Shadow Man" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
October 9, 2013

When Tim Berne released his ECM debut, Snakeoil in 2012, it quickly garnered some of the best reviews of the saxophonist/composer's career, ending up on a number of year-end best of lists. And why not? With a group already together for a couple years (as Los Totopos), Snakeoil represented a major step forward for Berne, both compositionally and in terms of band concept. All-acoustic, Snakeoil also benefited from label head/producer Manfred Eicher's attention to detail and transparency. Snakeoil, in addition ...

Live Review

Monterey Jazz Festival 2013

by Larry Taylor
October 9, 2013

Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey, California September 28-30, 2013 Like a lavish banquet, one can't indulge in the whole spread, but only savor favorites. That was the case with the lineup at the 56th annual Monterey Jazz Festival which ran at the Monterey Fairgrounds in Northern California. Topping the fare were Wayne Shorter, Diana Krall and Joe Lovano. For three days, from afternoon to late evening, great jazz was performed by the best ...

Album Review

Patti Larkin: Still Green

Read "Still Green" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 9, 2013

Singer-songwriter Patty Larkin is one of the best of her kind. She belongs to a league of artists who redefined the poetic and instrumental boundaries of the folk singer-songwriter genre such as Greg Brown, Bruce Cockburn and Richard Thompson. She is a wise lyricist and inventive guitarist who can encapsulate a profound emotional experience in few concise, poetic sentences, delivered suggestively with her warm vocals and colored with hypnotic, guitar-based soundscapes. Still Green, her 13th album, was ...

Album Review

Tom Dempsey: Saucy

by Glenn Astarita
October 9, 2013

Highly-regarded New York City session guitarist Tom Dempsey's sixth solo endeavor pays homage to the classic organ combo format, topped with a piquant sense of swing. Tuneful and capacious, the guitarist's dark- toned sound nicely parallels with organist Ron Oswanski's warm phrasings, synchronous progressions and sleek solos. Dempsey's Wes Montgomery-like chord solos and soul-jazz riffs are a constant, as the band occasionally raises the pitch on a program, featuring his original works and modern jazz standards. They don't break new ...