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

Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia

Read "Dysnomia" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
September 7, 2013

The script gets flipped in Dysnomia, where calculated syncopations are not generated from laptops or patched-in devices but produced by the post-minimalist acoustic trio Dawn of Midi, paying homage to electronica with 46 minutes of methodically composed music. But then again what is music? As defined by Merriam-Webster: it is a science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity--which is precisely what DOM delivers ...

Book Review

Larry Birnbaum: Before Elvis - The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll

by C. Michael Bailey
September 7, 2013

Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' RollLarry Birnbaum474 pagesISBN: 978-0810886285Scarecrow Press2013 “Rock 'n' Roll is just the blues sped up." That statement might have satisfied a generation of listeners who barely scratched beneath the surface of the genre, looking for its source. And it may have been propagated by a generation of wide-eyed romantics the same way the myth of Robert Johnson was. ...

Live Review

MONK'estra at SFJAZZ Center

by Harry S. Pariser
September 7, 2013

MONK'estraSFJAZZ CenterSan Francisco, CAAugust 22, 2013The music of the legendary Thelonious Monk (October 10, 1917-February 17, 1982) has rarely been heard in a big band setting. The second most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, Monk's music is nothing if not popular. While Ellington composed over a thousand songs, Monk penned only around seventy or so. His Big Band and Quartet in Concert, (Columbia, 1963), recorded at New York's Lincoln Center on December 30, 1963, remains ...

Album Review

Rodger Fox Wellington Jazz Orchestra: The Capitol Sessions

Read "The Capitol Sessions" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 7, 2013

In July 2012, trombonist Rodger Fox brought his Wellington Jazz Orchestra all the way from New Zealand to Los Angeles to record at the famed Capitol Studios, thus confirming Fox's confidence in the ensemble--one doesn't undertake a trip like that accompanied by musicians whose talents are less than exemplary--while producing an album that is superlative from start to finish, underlining the fact that splendid big bands can be found these days in every corner of the world. ...

Album Review

Avi Avital: Bach

Read "Bach" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 7, 2013

Johann Sebastian Bach never composed for the mandolin. And that never stopped any mandolin players from appropriating Bach's work, especially for lute. Punch Brothers' Chris Thile recently released his take on the first half of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (Nonesuch, 2013), and is merely the latest non-classical artist to take on the great German's canon. Berlin-based mandolinist Avi Avital tosses his hat into the ring with mandolin arrangements for violin, oboe and flute concerti. ...

Interview

Manu Katché: The Colors I See

by Adriana Carcu
September 7, 2013

Manu Katché is one of those few names familiar to a large audience of quite different musical orientations. Along his career he has played with some of the most representative pop, rock, country, jazz--and even classical--musicians. Katché's immense adaptability and emulative spirit, together with the harmonic roundness of tone on his instrument, make him to an outstanding presence on the world's musical scene. His most recent album Manu Katché (ECM, 2012), comes to illustrate the stylistic accuracy, musical fluency, and ...

Album Review

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Read "The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Jimi Hendrix Experience" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
September 7, 2013

Originally released in 2000 on Sony/Legacy, the Jimi Hendrix Experience box set featured 56 then-previously unreleased concert and studio recordings that spanned the late guitarist's career, covering the years 1966 through 1970. The box set has been hailed as one of the best multi-disc compilations ever released.The 2013 edition of the four-CD set has been expanded to include four additional tracks, including: a live performance of Bob Dylan's “Like A Rolling Stone," recorded at San Francisco's Winterland in ...

Album Review

Billy Bang: Da Bang!

Read "Da Bang!" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 7, 2013

Da Bang was recorded two months before violinist Billy Bang's battle with cancer ended in April, 2011. The album title is lifted from Bang's former FAB Trio band mate, drummer Barry Altschul. Indeed, Bang was an influential presence, partly due to his cutting-edge improvisational faculties. He was an artiste markedly comfortable in most any setting. On this outing, Bang covers modern jazz standards and contributes one original composition. The quartet gels on the late Don Cherry's “Guinea," which ...

Extended Analysis

Jan Bang: Narrative From The Subtropics

by Henning Bolte
September 6, 2013

For Norwegian electronic musician Jan Bang, the studio is no longer a perfectly isolated space to assemble and produce fictitious beautiful sounds--a boundary he has long since transcended. He not only brought studio equipment and techniques to the performing stage but he also started using them as tools in live improvisation. Together with fellow musician and companion Erik Honoré he established the Punkt-praxis of immediate live remix of musical performances by another (group of) musician(s). His approach has increased the ...

Album Review

Roberto Magris: Ready for Reed

Read "Ready for Reed" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 6, 2013

Italian-born Pianist Roberto Magris, never one to let labels stand in the way of tasteful and invigorating music, skates from funk to fusion, blues to bop and even ballads on this prismatic album with guest alto Sam Reed, a longtime trouper on the Philadelphia scene who cut his musical teeth with the likes of trumpeter Ted Curson, pianist Bobby Timmons and the redoubtable Heath brothers (Albert, Percy and especially saxophonist Jimmy). Reed, now well into his seventies, holds his own ...