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.

Extended Analysis

Chris Kelsey & What I Say: The Electric Miles Project

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
August 3, 2013

Trumpeter Miles Davis' post-Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970), pre-hiatus (1975-1981) electric music--dense, loud, dark, funky, vast--has posed problems for musicians. The Yo Miles! collective, led by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and guitarist Henry Kaiser, gamely approached it as a repertoire: these are songs, they seemed to say; let's just play them (and so they did, on albums like Upriver, Cuneiform, 2005). Bassist/impresario Bill Laswell, meanwhile, approached the releases of the period as post-performance collage, woven together from miles of Ampex tape; ...

Live Review

Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2013

by Henning Bolte
August 3, 2013

Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2013Copenhagen, DenmarkJuly 12-14, 2013The annual Copenhagen Jazz Festival, with more than a thousand concerts during ten days--spread over more than hundred places and stages across the city--is a special, unique affair. Like other big jazz festivals, it also has its headliners--big names, mostly American, like Terence Blanchard, Richard Bona, Chick Corea, Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Marcus Miller and David Murray--but the main thing is the numerous concerts at smaller or bigger places inside or ...

Album Review

Aske Drasbaek: Old Ghost

Read "Old Ghost" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 3, 2013

Danish reed player Aske Drasbæk, member of the contemporary Danish jazz quartet Orpheus and Det ny bigband, began to play the baritone saxophone only three years ago. It happened after he discovered the music of Lars Gullin by accident and immediately fell in love with the great Swedish baritone saxophonist's full, round sound. A year later, Drasbæk bought an old baritone sax and began practicing the big horn in attempt to find his own sound and explore its possibilities.

Album Review

Nicolas Masson / Roberto Pianca / Emanuele Maniscalco: Third Reel

Read "Third Reel" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 3, 2013

This Swiss-Italian trio of well-travelled musicians benefits from ECM Records' fabled sonic ambiance, largely brought to fruition by distinct audio engineering processes, owing to spatial characteristics and great depth. Its sound is categorically different than customary jazz, jazz-rock or avant- garde-tinted productions. Whether it's the artists' subtly creative exercises that are introspective and understated, or guitarist Roberto Pianca's hardcore rock guitar voicings manning the helm, the band is also at ease when lightly navigating across rolling hills and winding paths. ...

Album Review

Colossus: Colossus

by Jack Bowers
August 2, 2013

Colossus is the name of the album and the band, a seventeen- piece ensemble formed in 2012, comprised of present and former students at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and co-led by trumpeter Dave Chisholm, trombonist Mike Conrad and saxophonist Levi Saelua. While the music is decidedly contemporary, its essential components--melody, harmony, rhythm, improvisation--are the same as those that have defined jazz from its inception. In other words, it is modern with almost none of the sometimes ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

August 2013

by Mr. P.C.
August 2, 2013

Dear Mr. P.C.:Why do guys want to play tunes really fast? Like, I'll call “It Could Happen to You," but instead of having a nice swinging groove they want to play it at 280 beats per minute or something. Then they say it's an “east coast" thing, which I guess is supposed to mean I can't understand because I always lived on the west coast. Why do people play faster on the east coast? Nice and Easy

Album Review

Kurtis Adams: Collage

Read "Collage" reviewed by Victor Verney

by Victor Verney
August 2, 2013

Saxophonist Kurtis Adams could scarcely have chosen a more apt title for this release, an eclectic-minded assemblage drawn from a wide variety of musical genres, including classical.The opening “Blue Fox," has a distinctly West Coast “Cool School" feel, a style to which Adams has rendered homage elsewhere. Here, Adams gives a sense of what Gerry Mulligan might have sounded like had he played tenor.The following “The Ocean" immediately makes a dramatic shift to Chopin, indicative of ...

Extended Analysis

Myriad 3: Tell

by Dave Wayne
August 2, 2013

Three young guys in suits. Piano trio with a “band" name. Canadian. All original compositions except for “C Jam Blues." Wait, “C Jam Blues"? What? No indie rock covers? Well, then there's no way these guys could be Canada's answer to The Bad Plus. No electronics or sampling. Well, then Myriad 3 are not Canada's answer to EST, either. Yet, fans could be forgiven for thinking about those two groundbreaking piano trios while listening to Myriad 3's engaging and thought-provoking ...

Album Review

Scott Neumann Neu3 Trio: Blessed

by Mark Corroto
August 2, 2013

As it is written, in the end we will all stand naked before our God. Be it Yahweh, Gitchi Manitou, Sam Walton or, in drummer Scott Neumann's case, Elvin Jones, there is no time better than right now to make preparations.His bags get packed to meet the his maker on Blessed. The denuded state can be referred to, in musical terms, as his stripped-down saxophone/bass/drums trio with saxophonist Michael Blake (who also plays melodica) and bassist Mark Helias. ...

Album Review

Barbacana: Barbacana

Read "Barbacana" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 2, 2013

Barbacana is a UK-based group of interest on a number of levels. Chief among them is the presence of the very busy and talented keyboardist Kit Downes. Along with his namesake progressive jazz trio, Downes has worked in the prestigious company of European greats Django Bates and Julian Arguelles, as well as with American alto legend Lee Konitz. His compositions account for about half of the material on this self-titled debut and demonstrate his multi-genre influences. That said, Barbacana is ...