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

Nicky Schrire: Space And Time

Read "Space And Time" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 5, 2013

New York City-based jazz vocalist Nicky Schrire has two albums to her credit. Freedom Flight (Circavision Productions, 2012) was well received by AAJ colleague Dan Bilawsky, who explained her fresh and well-scrubbed appeal thusly: “The London-born, South African-raised, New York-based vocalist bursts onto the scene with this dazzling debut, but she didn't simply materialize out of thin air. This worldly woman has been honing her skills at the Manhattan School of Music and studying with the crème de la crème ...

Album Review

Arrigo Cappelletti Quintet: Hot Music

Read "Hot Music" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 5, 2013

Pianist Arrigo Cappelletti's third album for UK-based Leo Records merges the best of many jazz propositions. With fellow Italians manning the frontline and the Norwegian rhythm section tendering sympathetic accompaniment, the musicians focus on melodic content, used as a vehicle for numerous song forms and extrapolations. Extremely tight and well-rehearsed, Cappelletti directs the quintet through knotty time signatures, spanning modern bop and sojourns into the free-zone. Other works combine softly woven horns, idiosyncratic thematic developments and motifs fashioned with controlled ...

Live Review

Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival 2013

by Mark Holston
September 4, 2013

Crown of the Continent Guitar FestivalBigfork, MontanaAugust 26-31, 2013“Either I'm imaging things, or this festival has grown just a little in the four years since I was here last," Pat Metheny laughed as he squinted into the glare of a brace of theater lights. An SRO crowd of over 900 ecstatic fans crammed into a high-arching, rectangular tent fit for an emir's wedding hooted and clapped in response. The guitar icon's telling comments during his recent concert ...

Album Review

Gregory Porter: Liquid Spirit

Read "Liquid Spirit" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 4, 2013

Gregory Porter has a lot to live up to. Widespread critical acclaim, Grammy nominations and reviewers suggesting that he's the next big jazz star, the man to bring jazz back to mainstream popularity, all lay a big artistic burden on his (admittedly quite broad) shoulders. Liquid Spirit is his third album and it heralds a move to a major label, Blue Note. Maybe that just raises expectations even higher. No matter--Porter meets, and even exceeds, such expectations.Porter's voice ...

Album Review

Buck Clayton Legacy Band: Claytonia

Read "Claytonia" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 4, 2013

Buck Clayton, an acclaimed trumpet soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra in the late 1930s and early '40s, had lip surgery in 1969 that all but ended his playing career. After setting the trumpet aside for good in 1979, he turned full-time to composing and arranging, and the Buck Clayton Big Band made its debut in 1986 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The year before, he had become friends with British bassist Alyn Shipton who offered words of ...

Album Review

Billy Cobham: Compass Point

Read "Compass Point" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 4, 2013

Few if any jazz-fusion drummers have been more influential than Billy Cobham, along with his modern jazz drumming for legends such as Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner and other notables. Yet touring has its trials and tribulations, noted in the album liners on this previously unissued 2-CD set, presenting live material from the drummer's 1997 show at the Compass Point Hotel in the Bahamas. With impending storms on the horizon and the only piano tuner in the vicinity not showing up ...

Multiple Reviews

Julian Lage: Living Lage

by Dan Bilawsky
September 4, 2013

It's good to be Julian Lage. The former wunderkind is all grown up and living large, playing with some of the best musicians on the planet; that makes perfect sense, considering he's also one of them. The young guitarist has done his homework, paid his dues and earned his stripes, and now he's spreading his wings and flying high. In 2013 alone, Lage hit the road in duo settings with fellow guitarists, like Nels Cline and Chris ...

Album Review

Jocelyn Pook: Untold Things

Read "Untold Things" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 4, 2013

Composer Jocelyn Pook is one of the great treasures of the music world. The breadth and depth of influences and instrumentation incorporated into her work is almost unprecedented. Known primarily for her groundbreaking and imaginative soundtrack work for films and TV--seamlessly weaving into her work aspects of classical, world, electronic and early music in order to create a singular vision--she has forged a unique musical language where her compositions sound at once ancient and modern. Works such as The Merchant ...

Catching Up With

Gene Ess: Blending Passionate and Pensive

by Jud Branam
September 4, 2013

Fresh off the release of Fractal Attraction (Simp, 2013), which blends traditional combo jazz lineups and approaches with a unique take on vocal jazz, Gene Ess is a man with a lot on his mind as it pertains to career, place--and music in general. Ess is enthusiastic about his love of jazz, classical and rock music, but is also pensive about the tough state of the music economy and the prospects for working jazz. He's also excited about ...

Record Label Profile

Losen Records: New Norwegian Sounds

by Jakob Baekgaard
September 3, 2013

Mention the phrase “the Norwegian sound" and many listeners will get an image in their head. An image of a natural, deep echoing sound influenced by the mountains and hills of the Norwegian landscape. Such an image is, of course, a cliché, but to some critics it has stuck and distorted the rich fertility of the Norwegian jazz scene. Just like a postcard doesn't represent the true image of a country, it would be wrong to assert ...