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

Slobber Pup: Black Aces

Read "Black Aces" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 9, 2013

Keyboardist Jamie Saft, guitarist Joe Morris, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Balazs Pandi bring merciless new meaning to the phrase “heavy rock quartet." Saft and Morris first met at the New England Conservatory twenty years ago; Saft and Pani are bandmates in Metallic Taste of Blood; and Saft has worked with Dunn on several projects led by John Zorn. Other bands with whom individual Pups have collaborated include Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, Mr. Bungle and The Melvins.Black Aces ...

Catching Up With

Trent Austin: Pulling an Ace from the Musical Deck

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 8, 2013

New England-based trumpeter, Trent Austin is indeed a Renaissance Man--multi-genre performer, business owner, trumpet/brass equipment designer, clinician and teacher. He's also one of the most beloved and respected--by the greatest of players and up-and-coming players--in each of those activities. I caught up with Austin as he plans to head out on tour in October with the brilliant clarinetist, Ken Peplowski and the Capitol Jazz Orchestra. All About Jazz: On behalf of All About Jazz, thanks for taking time ...

Album Review

The Chris Parker Trio: The Chris Parker Trio

Read "The Chris Parker Trio" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 8, 2013

Drummer Chris Parker has a to-die-for résumé. Over the past four decades, he's worked with everybody from the The Brecker Brothers to Miles Davis and Laura Nyro to Lou Rawls, taking a genre-blind approach to drumming that continues to serve him well. As a sideman, he's made his mark time and again with a who's who of music giants, but he also knows a thing or two about leading a band. Parker's trio, with bassist Ameen Saleem ...

Profile

Monnette Sudler: Daring To Dream

by Suzanne Cloud
October 8, 2013

She's not working. She's too sick. And it hurts to the bone that she can't play the way she used to because she has Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) lung disease and is waiting for a lung transplant. Nobody knows what causes this scarring and stiffening of the lung tissue, hence the idiopathic part of the name, but as the lung thickens, breathing becomes labored and more difficult--oxygen has a hard time finding its way into the bloodstream. All researchers know ...

Album Review

Erik Friedlander: Claws & Wings

Read "Claws & Wings" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 8, 2013

How does one deal with the loss of a loved one? For many artists, expressing remorse through their work is a normal, sometimes necessary, part of the grieving process. Creative improvising musicians, like renowned cellist Erik Friedlander, are no exception.Lynn Shapiro, Friedlander's wife of 22 years (and an award winning choreographer and writer in her own right), died in November 2011 after a long bout with breast cancer. Just days after her passing Friedlander tore a ligament in ...

Extended Analysis

39 Steps

by John Kelman
October 8, 2013

John Abercrombie has rarely played with pianists, at least in his own groups and throughout his extensive discography as a leader for ECM Records that began with the immediate classic, 1975's Timeless. Other than a brief reunion with that record's group for 1984's Night, the veteran guitarist has, in fact, only recorded with one other piano-based group, the quartet responsible for Arcade (1979), Abercrombie Quartet (1980) and M (1981)--all featuring another intrepid improviser, Richie Beirach, and slated for released in ...

Album Review

Jessy J: Second Chances

Read "Second Chances" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
October 8, 2013

It's a paradox that what distinguishes Jessy J was the very thing she did not put enough emphasis upon; being a female Latin jazz artist. Through three albums of solid, if standard, smooth jazz grooves enlivened somewhat by more distinctive outbursts of originality the lady known as Jessica Spinella stumbled with the blandly generic Hot Sauce (Heads Up, 2011).In every musician's career a time comes when they must choose to follow a path to success chartered by others ...

Album Review

Cacaw: Stellar Power

Read "Stellar Power" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 8, 2013

Cacaw evolved from an acoustic trio as a mechanism for keyboardist Landon Knoblock to merge his compositions with electronics, and a result of his affiliation with drummer Jeff Davis and saxophonist Oscar Noriega in a band that performed the music of jazz piano great, Andrew Hill. Time marches on, as Cacaw underscores its musicality with a hybrid avant-jazz and space-rock playbook like a Star Trek sojourn into a time warp emanating from the netherworld. It's all in good fun however, ...

Album Review

Jimmy Masters: When Trees Speak

Read "When Trees Speak" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
October 8, 2013

Bassist Jimmy Masters from Virginia Beach, VA has been playing the bass for the better part of thirty years and has countless recordings as a side man to his credit. Though he continues to be a fixture in the local jazz scene and a regular at the Havana Nights Dining & Jazz club in Virginia Beach, Masters celebrates his emergence on the national stage as leader presenting a debut of sharp original compositions on the very accessible When Trees Speak. ...

Interview

John Hollenbeck's September Songs

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
October 7, 2013

John Hollenbeck's productivity would be astonishing in its own right, but the uniformly high quality of this high output places the drummer among the top tier of jazz (and not only jazz) musicians. Hollenbeck's recordings, compositions and performances defy certain expectations. He can be as seriously intellectual as a stereotypically stuffy classical musician, but his music is interlaced with humor and fun. As befits a 21st century drummer, he is rhythmically complex but the music is underlain with a deep ...