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

Marc Ducret: Tower vol. 3

Read "Tower vol. 3" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 19, 2013

Each one of French guitarist Marc Ducret's Tower series albums has featured different lineups and instrumentation. With Tower vol. 3, he employs a three-man trombone attack with percussion and piano performers; as stated in the album liners, the band “plays comments on the music already played." Therefore, the musicians redevelop and dissect previous works appearing on the first two volumes. At times polytonal via the divergent instrumentation mix, the trombonists' powerful choruses supply interesting contrasts as the band takes on ...

Jazz Ed

Gary Bartz: Students Are Learning But They Are Learning Backwards!

by Joan Gaylord
August 19, 2013

"This is folk music. It is good that we have it in the schools, but we need to get it back more into the street--that's where it came from." When saxophonist Gary Bartz is not headlining his own band or touring with McCoy Tyner, he is a professor in the Jazz Studies department of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. His students are among the most talented and best prepared musicians of their generation. However, Bartz is convinced ...

Album Review

Nicky Schrire: Space And Time

Read "Space And Time" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 18, 2013

The art of singing goes well beyond the act of singing. To simply sing, one need only open the mouth and let the music come forth, but that's the act. The art involves pitch perfect delivery, clear and crisp diction, control, creativity, flexibility, and the ability to completely inhabit, own, and sell a song; in short, all the skills that Nicky Schrire possesses. Schrire, a young South African vocalist based in New York, turned more than a ...

Film Review

The Who: Live in Texas '75

by Doug Collette
August 18, 2013

The WhoLive in Texas '75Eagle Rock2012In their performing prime, between 1969 and 1971, The Who were the most thrilling performers rock had ever known (and may remain so). The original quartet remained exciting through 1975 when The Who: Live in Texas '75 was filmed, though in the flood of kinetic energy exploding from the band at this point in their career, there are, in retrospect, hints they had already reached their peak. ...

Album Review

Karolina Strassmayer and Drori Mondlak: Small Moments

Read "Small Moments" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
August 18, 2013

Altoist Karolina Strassmayer and drummer Drori Mondlak's second release as co-leaders Small Moments is a collection of lean and gripping original compositions that the superlative quartet embellishes with their sophisticated and inventive spontaneity.One of the unifying themes of this engaging album is a melodic and contemplative narrative sense. The intimately nocturnesque “Seven Minutes in Heaven" conjures up the urban romanticism of city nightlife. Strassmayer's ardently undulating saxophone shimmers with muted colors in the intriguingly dark ambience. The rhythm ...

Book Review

David Byrne: How Music Works

by Nenad Georgievski
August 18, 2013

How Music WorksDavid ByrneHardcover, 352 pagesISBN: 1936365537Canongate Books Ltd.2012By definition, a renaissance man suggests a highly cultivated man of many accomplishments, someone who has a broad base of knowledge and interests, and is skilled in multiple fields or multiple disciplines. As a musician, singer, actor, film director, designer, producer, writer, activist, David Byrne is the definition of a modern day renaissance man. Byrne is a maverick thinker with ...

Live Review

TONICA 2013

by Emilie Pons
August 18, 2013

TONICA Guada Expo Conference Guadalajara, MexicoAugust 1-11, 2013Jazz freaks exist everywhere, Mexico included. Although Guadalajara has no official jazz club, it does have TONICA, a not-for-profit organization and foundation that helps the local youth of and around Guadalajara, and promotes jazz music--or, more generally speaking, improvised music. TONICA, which is an intelligent reference to the tonic, the most important note in a musical piece, seems on its way to powerful social and artistic change ...

Album Review

Rendezvous: Another Round Please

Read "Another Round Please" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
August 18, 2013

All instrumental music is not jazz and some might argue electronica isn't music at all as much as it is the ultimate triumph of machine over man. To be certain, much of electronica, trance, house and trip-hop is little more than synthesized beeps, bleeps and burps over a drum track as it whizzes by your ears leaving little to no lasting impression.Rendezvous is a little bit more enterprising than your ordinary techno band. Itai Simon and Hagai Izenberg ...

Album Review

Nick Hempton: Odd Man Out

Read "Odd Man Out" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 17, 2013

So, just who is the Odd Man Out? It's not exactly one of the great enigmas of modern times, but it's something to ponder. Not for too long, though, for time will be much better spent enjoying the music. Odd Man Out is the third album from saxophonist Nick Hempton and his band and it represents a notable step forward for what was already an impressive and hugely enjoyable ensemble.So what's changed since Hempton's second album The Business ...

Book Review

John Densmore: The Doors Unhinged

by Doug Collette
August 17, 2013

The Doors Unhinged: Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes On TrialJohn Densmore296 pagesISBN: 1479263133CreateSpace2013Notwithstanding the all-too-genuine ambivalence that permeates The Doors Unhinged, John Densmore may not have done any favors for himself or the legacy of his band by writing the book. It's difficult, nigh impossible, to truly doubt the earnest intent at the heart of the writing, but in expanding the story of the legal and philosophical squabbles between ...