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

ReDiviDeR: ReDiviDeR meets I Dig Monk, Tuned

Read "ReDiviDeR meets I Dig Monk, Tuned" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
September 27, 2013

Jazz/creative music fans who dig palindromes and anagrams had to wait a long time between trumpeter Miles Davis' Live Evil (Columbia, 1971) and ReDiviDeR's debut Never Odd or EveN (Diatribe Records, 2011). Forty years must be an eternity for addicts of words that spell the same way backwards as they do forwards. In addition to the wordplay, ReDiviDeR's debut announced the arrival of an exciting two-horn, no-chord band on the Irish jazz scene. Inspired by modernists such as bassist Charles ...

Extended Analysis

Ornette Coleman / Bachir Attar / The Master Musicians of Jajouka:The Road to Jajouka

by Ian Patterson
September 27, 2013

Bringing together Moroccan traditional trance musicians with free spirits such as saxophonists Ornette Coleman and John Zorn, bassist/producer Bill Laswell, guitarist Marc Ribot, DJ Logic and drummer Billy Martin has instant appeal. It sounds like an andrenaline-pumping, trippy exercise on paper and for much of the journey it's just that. And it's all for a good cause too, that's to say, the preservation and promotion of an ancient musical form. Yet the story behind the Master Musicians of Jajouka almost ...

Album Review

Joey DeFrancesco: One for Rudy

Read "One for Rudy" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 27, 2013

The “Rudy" singled out for favor on this new CD by organist Joey DeFrancesco's admirable trio is the legendary recording engineer Rudy van Gelder who engineered, mixed and mastered the album at his studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. DeFrancesco, whose mastery of the Hammond B3 is universally recognized and unquestioned, wrote the groovy homage to van Gelder that wraps up the album, elsewhere stepping aside to make room for such able tunesmiths as Miles Davis, Eddie Heywood, Gordon Jenkins, Freddie ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Brian Prunka

by AAJ Staff
September 27, 2013

Meet Brian Prunka:Prior to moving to Brooklyn in 2003, Brian was living and performing in New Orleans, where he spent his formative years honing his musical skills while being immersed in the jazz community. Although his background was in jazz, rock and blues, Brian has always found himself drawn to a wide range of music without regard to boundaries. In the late '90s, fate introduced him to the oud, and he had an instant and profound connection with ...

Album Review

Carol Morgan: Retroactive

Read "Retroactive" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 27, 2013

After two well-behaved, straight-ahead, and positively reviewed recordings-- Opening (Blue Bamboo Music, 2010) and Blue Glass Music (Blue Bamboo Music, 2011)--Texas-cum-New York City trumpeter Carol Morgan decides to take a walk on a wilder side with Retroactive: a mostly electronic affair prominently featuring guitarists Mike Stern and Chris Cortez as well as one Jeff Sipe (Apt. Q258) on drums. Always a serious music maker, Morgan lets her copious red hair down and has fun. Her open bell ...

Album Review

Samuel Blaser Consort in Motion: A Mirror to Machaut

Read "A Mirror to Machaut" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 27, 2013

Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser's largely mellower and investigative Consort in Motion differs from his acclaimed quartet's often hard- hitting and somewhat deviously entertaining persona for the hatOLOGY record label, partly due to French guitarist Marc Ducret's electrifying assaults. Thus, A Mirror to Machaut sheds additional light on Blaser's approach to composition, that coincides with a band personnel shift after drumming legend Paul Motian's passing in November, 2012. Blaser tackles the work and ideologies of pioneering medieval composer ...

Album Review

Tierney Sutton: After Blue

Read "After Blue" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 26, 2013

Tierney Sutton is the calm current flowing through the turbulent water of jazz vocals, making big changes and important recordings without stirring the water too much. Her creative presence and influence cannot be denied when listening to Gretchen Parlato, Becca Stevens and Renee Yoxon among many others. Sutton's musical metaphysics is grounded in cool yet penetrating exploration using the traditional jazz instrumentation and songbook, transforming both in the bargain. On After Blue, Sutton steps away from the “standard" Great American ...

Extended Analysis

Luis Perdomo: Links

by Andrew Luhn
September 26, 2013

It's traditional in almost all genres of music that the innovators are always given the most attention. This holds true in jazz as right now as artists like Robert Glasper, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Darcy James Argue are praised for being bold innovators in the world of jazz. While innovation and boundary- pushing are necessary in the development of jazz, there is also great value in doing something traditionally, but executing it perfectly. Especially in jazz, which is so focused on ...

Album Review

Giovanni Mazzarino Latin Sextet: Retrato

Read "Retrato" reviewed by Francesco Martinelli

by Francesco Martinelli
September 26, 2013

There's something very appealing for me in Giovanni Mazzarino's piano style, as well as his way of thinking. Hailing from Sicily-- whose greatness in history and culture is equal only to the amount of problems it finds itself up against--like his famous namesake, the scheming Cardinal, the schemes he's scheming and the dreams he's dreaming seems always related to enrich the cultural life of his island.A recent tour in Latin America with some the musicians included in this ...

Album Review

Stacey Kent: The Changing Lights

Read "The Changing Lights" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 26, 2013

Stacey Kent is a jazz success story--not just in terms of her talent, but also in terms of her international popularity, with her previous three albums clocking up a total of over 500,000 sales. What makes her so successful? The Changing Lights, her tenth album, demonstrates all of the qualities.There's the material, a mix of originals and standards: the arrangements, all but one by Jim Tomlinson, which act to highlight Kent's vocal qualities: the musicians, a veritable who's ...