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.

Interview

Alex Norris: King Band Geek

by George Colligan
September 26, 2013

[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]When I was a young middle school trumpet player in Columbia, MD, Alex Norris was kind of a musical legend around Howard County. Not only was he arguably the best trumpeter in the state, but he could play funk electric bass, and he could also play guitar like Jimi Hendrix! We both attended Peabody Conservatory together, and Norris was highly responsible for much of my musical ...

Album Review

Kanji Ohta & The Jazz Family with Jimmy Heath: Our Jazz Family

Read "Our Jazz Family" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 26, 2013

The music that appears on Our Jazz Family was meant to serve as an aural commemorative keepsake-of-sorts. Pianists Kanji Ohta and Toshiko Kiryu celebrated their fifteenth wedding anniversary by putting on a concert with their family and friends in 2002. The concert was recorded and kept as a private memento at first, but ten years later, as the couple celebrated their silver anniversary, they decided to share what they had made a decade earlier. The music that ...

Reassessing

Dizzy Gillespie: Dizzy’s Big 4

by C. Michael Bailey
September 26, 2013

Dizzy Gillespie Dizzy's Big 4 OJC 1975/2013 Concord Music Group kicked off their Pablo Records 40th anniversary celebration with the releases of John Coltrane: Afro Blue Impressions (Pablo, 1963/2013) and Sarah Vaughan: Sophisticated Lady: The Duke Ellington Songbook (Pablo,2013) both supplemented by improved programming. These releases have been followed by additional straight remasters of: Zoot Sims And The Gershwin Brothers (Pablo, 1975/2013), Art Tatum: Solo Masterpieces, Volume 1 (Pablo, 1975/2013), and, now, Dizzy's Big ...

Album Review

Pram Trio: Visitor Parking

Read "Visitor Parking" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 25, 2013

An abandoned vintage perambulator--a pram--discovered on the streets of Toronto inspired the Canadian threesome to take as a name for their group the Pram Trio. Pictured on the cover of their debut album, Visitor Parking, the pram seems to have seen better days. It suffers rust and corrosion. If it ever possessed a sun shade, it is long gone. But the group that took its name from the antiquated pram is anything but old fashioned. There sound, on the opener, ...

Multiple Reviews

Introducing Hevhetia Records: The Norwegian Connection

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 25, 2013

Hevhetia Records is a new Slovakian label based in Košice which aims to present the local and East European musical spectrum with a focus on jazz and experimental, alternative music. Since its inception in 2005 this label has released over seventy albums, including recent ones by local pianist Ondrej Krajnak dedicated to the seminal Czechoslovakian pianist Ernest Oláh, marking his 70th birthday, and the Polish duo of double bassist Adam Kawalewski and pianist Piotr Wyleżoł. These two ...

Interview

Mike Clark: East Bay Funk

by George Colligan
September 25, 2013

[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]I remember the first time I heard the classic Herbie Hancock album Thrust (Columbia, 1974). It was on the radio, if you can believe it. The song “Actual Proof" burned into my brain: I had been a fan of Herbie's, especially of the Headhunters, of songs like “Chameleon" and “Watermelon Man," but this was different. It was so electrifying, so ultra-sophisticated, so mesmerizing. It was a ...

Album Review

Tierney Sutton: After Blue

Read "After Blue" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 25, 2013

Joni Mitchell and jazz have long engaged in mutualism. Mitchell subtly absorbed the ideals of this music, which were then filtered into her work, and she built musical relationships with some of the finest jazz musicians to walk this Earth; the list of her collaborators--bassist Charles Mingus, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, guitarist Pat Metheny and numerous others--is long and staggering. Jazz, on the other side of the relationship, benefitted from her body of work and interpretive skills. Everybody from pianist Keith ...

Album Review

Rocket Science: Rocket Science

Read "Rocket Science" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
September 25, 2013

It isn't rocket science except when it is, indeed, Rocket Science. This renowned group of improvising superheroes delivers an audacious take on electric- acoustic chamber music. Rocket Science is a quartet assembled by trumpeter Peter Evans, who is probably best known for his work in the disobedient quartet Mostly Other People Do The Killing. He also leads a trio, quartet, quintet, and octet and can often be heard in the company of Mary Halvorson, Nate Wooley, Mats Gustafsson, and Agusti ...

Album Review

Judy Wexler: What I See

Read "What I See" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
September 25, 2013

When they excavated the world-famous La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, scientists discovered an other-worldly array of fossilized treasures. Who would have thought that, millennia ago, in the middle of Tinseltown, saber-toothed tigers and mammoths were sashaying down Rodeo Drive? In an analogous way, What I See from Judy Wexler yields surprisingly terrific finds, primarily from material that has been available right in front but overlooked. A very fine vocal talent also surfaces.With this, her fourth CD, ...

Album Review

Matt Parker: Worlds Put Together

Read "Worlds Put Together" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
September 25, 2013

Genre bending saxophonist Matt Parker's debut album, Worlds Put Together, is a collection of mostly short pieces that crackle with originality and are imbued with an urgent and imaginative spontaneity. These are not mere sketches for expanded and more developed future compositions. They are conceptually crystalized, complete yet free-flowing and raw works that pack a visceral and intellectual punch.The atmospheric “Lists," for instance, opens with bassist Alan Hampton's mystical and resonant bowing over drummer Reggie Quinerly's intriguingly dark ...