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

Gina Kronstadt: Come Over

Read "Come Over" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
September 16, 2013

Everybody wants to be a star and everybody wants their turn in the spotlight. The recent documentary 20 Feet From Stardom focused on the struggles of background singers to emerge from the shadows. Gina Kronstadt can surely identify with that struggle.Whatever motivated Kronstadt's debut, Come Over, she demonstrates she's ready for her close-up. A veteran studio and concert performer, the Los Angeles based singer and songwriter can boast of an impressive resume performing on film soundtracks, television commercials, ...

Album Review

Harris Eisenstadt: Golden State

Read "Golden State" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 16, 2013

Toronto-born drummer, composer Harris Eisenstadt is headquartered in the fertile artistic environs of New York City, and each new release divulges his thirst for ingenuity. He's emerged as an important voice within progressive jazz circles while gathering the crème de la crème of artists to help support his visions. Thus, Golden State is a polyrhythmic presentation that unites jazz and an ultra-modern chamber perspective, featuring poll-winning flautist Nicole Mitchell and bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck. Recorded in California, the album title refers ...

Album Review

Phil Grenadier Bruno Raberg Duo: Plunge

by Dave Wayne
September 16, 2013

The advent of new technologies has enabled musicians to interact in hitherto unheard-of ways. It's routine now to read about recordings that were assembled from sessions recorded by individual musicians in different studios, on different continents. Music composing software has changed the way musicians think about their compositions and opened up new possibilities for the performance and reproduction of music scores. Computer-based digital editing tools have permitted entirely new ways of assembling and rearranging music, eliminating the painstaking process of ...

Live Review

Down With Jazz 2013

by Ian Patterson
September 16, 2013

Down With JazzMeeting House SquareDublin, IrelandSeptember 6-8, 2013 Father Conefrey must be turning in his grave. He's surely cursing the cruel fates, for jazz you see, is alive and kicking in Dublin. On New Year's Day 1934 Father Conefrey led a 3,000-strong protest on the streets of Mohill in County Leitrim denouncing the evils of this syncopated music. 'Down with Jazz,' 'Out With Paganism' proclaimed the banners. Jazz, Fr. Conefrey ranted, emanated from “the savages ...

Album Review

The Weave: The Weave

Read "The Weave" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 15, 2013

From the perspective of an east of England jazz writer, it can seem like Manchester has the north east's jazz scene to itself, with Liverpool, its near neighbour, putting up little in the way of competition. It's not that Liverpool is un-musical--it is after all the home city of Gerry And The Pacemakers--but its impact on UK jazz isn't as emphatic as that of its musical rival. Enter The Weave, a Liverpool septet, with its rather wonderful self-titled debut album. ...

Live Review

Scott Feiner & Pandeiro Jazz at Zinc Bar

by Ernest Barteldes
September 15, 2013

Scott Feiner & Pandeiro Jazz Zinc Bar New York, NY August 30, 2013 At a rare New York City performance, Rio de Janeiro-based pandeiro player Scott Feiner showcased a set of solely original material from his upcoming independent release A View From Below. Backed by a trio rounded out by Vitor Gonçalves (keys) and Guilherme Monteiro (guitar), he kicked things off with the title track, a fast-paced tune that blended his ...

Album Review

Barbacana: Barbacana

Read "Barbacana" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 15, 2013

This Anglo-French quartet dishes out a profusion of surprises on each track. Youthful vigor and ingenuity are staples for these musicians who generate a multidimensional platform, with inferences from progressive rock, jazz-rock and avant-garde-like adventurism. The album represents another young band presented by UK-based Babel Records that teeters on the leading-edge of what could be considered a nouveau jazz-framed outlook, where artists expand previously established limits. They blastoff with “Animation," a piece that could ring in a new ...

Album Review

Mika Pohjola, Dan Loomis, Kyle Struve: Trio Hour

Read "Trio Hour" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
September 15, 2013

Mika Pohjola is a man of many talents. He runs the New York-based Blue Music Group--"the small label with big music." He has collaborated on albums of religious and traditional Finnish, Swedish music, given classical recitals, accompanied vocalists Jill Walsh and Johanna Grüssner and gigged with diverse jazz aggregations. It would be a shame if any of this got in the way of his achievement with this album, which presents him with a chance to stand up ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery's Loom: Wake An Echo

Read "Wake An Echo" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
September 15, 2013

Cinematic, soundtrack, and similar film related words are often used to describe Chicago bassist Matt Ulery's work. Ulery's compositions are certainly inspired by the 7th art and over the course of six years, and as many albums, they have achieved a complex texture that induces a sublime and pleasant synesthesia. Listening to his 2013 Wake An Echo immediately one cannot help but imagine motion pictures flashing on a screen so that the seven originals that comprise the disc, are in ...

Album Review

Billy Bang: Da Bang!

Read "Da Bang!" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 15, 2013

The final recording of the late violinist Billy Bang from February 2011, days before his final performance in the TUMfest 11 in Helsinki, is a celebration of his life as musician. Bang chose for this recording compositions of innovative musicians in the history of jazz--Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins-- that were part of his quintet repertoire for years. His trusty quintet supports his musical ideas and improvisations beautifully, and the album booklet features touching and insightful ...