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

The Mac Chrupcala Trio: One More For The Road

Read "One More For The Road" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
October 4, 2013

Pianist-composer, band leader and producer Mac Chrupcala has worked extensively in the southern New England and eastern Canada area for most of his career, and has recently added the southwest Florida (North Port) community to his stomping grounds. A leader of big bands and a veteran player with thirty-five recordings to his credit, Chrupcala's new working trio with bassist Jim Cammack and drummer Bernard Purdie presents One More For The Road, an album that offers stellar interpretations of well- known ...

We Travel the Spaceways

The Dude Abides

by Mark Corroto
October 4, 2013

To paraphrase Jeffrey Lebowski, aka The Dude (or El Dudarino, if you are not into the brevity thing), “I've had a rough night, and I hate the fucking Grateful Dead, man." Actually, The Dude said the “Eagles" (and I guess I'm obliged to agree with him), but for me the Dead seem to always get under my skin. Someone is always saying to me, “you dig jazz, check out this Dead concert from..." and then they name some ...

From the Inside Out

Six Stops Around the Whirled

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 3, 2013

Fort Knox Five 10 Years of The Fort Knox Five Fort Knox Recordings 2013 “All good things come in five, baby...You can't get around no prime number, you dig?" Some music just makes you feel good. You can't explain it but some music makes you feel like life's a party and you're invited. (It's that “can't explain it" part which drives writers crazy.) 10 Years of The Fort Knox Five spills like a ...

Album Review

Meir Shitrit: Way

by Dan McClenaghan
October 3, 2013

Isreali-born and now San Diego-based guitarist Meir Shitrit's Way sounds like a recording that guitarist Bill Frisell might have made, had he been born and raised in Israel. Frisell's often mulit-layered sets are, more often than not, a celebration of Americana--though certainly there are tangents and hybridizations in the discography. Meir's debut is a well-crafted, multi-ethnic hybrid centered mostly on his Middle Eastern roots, featuring his virtuosic work on guitars, bouzouki, saz, bass, and lap steel guitar. Throw into the ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

October 2013

by Mr. P.C.
October 3, 2013

Dear Mr. P.C.: What do musicians mean when they say they're “using space" in their solos? --John H. Dear John: Obviously if they're “using" space, they're doing something to it. And in music, pretty much the only thing you can do to space is fill it with a bunch of notes. Of course, space is infinite, and even Coltrane's “sheets of sound" approach couldn't fill it completely. Defeated, Trane devoted his later ...

Album Review

Markus Gottschlich: Of Places Between

Read "Of Places Between" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 3, 2013

Pianist Markus Gottschlich is anything but a traditionalist, yet tradition, or more accurately, traditions, play a major role in his music; he doesn't believe that a single tradition must be addressed in isolation. In Gottschlich's world, songo and samba can meet and marry ("Invitation"), Billy Strayhorn's music can stray a bit, taking a detour to Jamaica ("A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing"), and peaceful, insomnia-fueled reverie can take form around an awakening rhythm section bent on exploring the topic of ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Janis Siegel

by AAJ Staff
October 3, 2013

Meet Janis Siegel: Over the past four decades, the voice of Janis Siegel, a nine-time Grammy winner and a seventeen-time Grammy nominee, has been an undeniable force in The Manhattan Transfer's diverse musical catalog. Alongside her career as a founding member of this musical institution, Siegel has also sustained a solo career that has spawned almost a dozen finely-crafted solo albums and numerous collaborative projects, amassed a large international fan base and garnered consistently high critical praise. Janis continues ...

Album Review

Op Der Schmelz: Live

by Glenn Astarita
October 3, 2013

This multinational quartet casts a surfeit of moody and climactically oriented movements, captured for this disc live at a venue in Luxembourg. Gushing with shifty theme-building exercises, New York- based pianist Roberta Piket often serves as the director of operations via her sympathetic comping, cascading chord voicings, and animated free-bop improvisational passages, yet overall, it's a democratic engagement. Even though the band primarily resides in the free-zone, they do not forsake melodic content. The program here is uncluttered ...

Album Review

Becky Archibald: Midnight At Monteton

Read "Midnight At Monteton" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
October 3, 2013

Becky Archibald is an extremely talented lady. Relatively new to jazz, her composing and arranging skills at best warrant comparison with those of such great names as Marty Paich and Mary Lou Williams. Though they are all her own and bang up to date. A native of Anderson, Indiana, she sums up her life to date in an attractive blend of panache and self-effacement: “Becky Archibald was born, took piano lessons, grew up, went to college, went ...

Album Review

Patrick Cornelius: Infinite Blue

Read "Infinite Blue" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
October 3, 2013

Veteran New York saxophonist and composer Patrick Cornelius delivers his fourth album as leader with Infinite Blue, a gem of a recording that sparkles with an A-list of players interpreting eight new originals and one cover tune in one audacious session of music. Not really an unusual feat for this three-time winner of the ASCAP Young Composer Award (2005-2007), the music on this album features a variety of hard bop elements as well as intricate tender ballads providing a fair ...