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.

Live Review

Festival Da Jazz: St Moritz 2013

by Bruce Lindsay
August 1, 2013

Festival Da JazzSt. Moritz, SwitzerlandJuly 18-22, 2013How To Run A Jazz Festival 101. Get a big hall, put on some big names: get a small room, put on some smaller names. Stars in the big spaces, up and comers in the little ones. There's a commercial and economic logic to it, maybe even an artistic logic. The Festival Da Jazz does different: get a small room, with space for 150 people, put on some big names. Chick ...

Album Review

OWL Trio: OWL Trio

Read "OWL Trio" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 1, 2013

In hindsight, the creation of OWL Trio seems to have been inevitable, but its participants still needed a little help to see what was staring them in the face all the while; bassist Orlando le Fleming, saxophonist Will Vinson and guitarist Lage Lund have been playing together in each others bands and in various other groupings since they met, yet it took the divine intervention of photographer-cum-record producer Jimmy Katz to bring them together as one on record.

Album Review

Billy Bang: Da Bang!

Read "Da Bang!" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 1, 2013

The list of prominent jazz violinists is not a long one. Start with Stéphane Grappelli and his legendary Hot Club de France swing recordings with gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Then there's Stuff Smith and his innovative electrolyzing of the instrument; Joe Venuti; the late Polish firebrand Zbigniew Seifert; and the still-active, post-bop/fusion player Jean-Luc Ponty.It's a short list, but it's one that's not complete without the name Billy Bang, who passed away in 2011.Billy Bang--born William ...

Album Review

Tedeschi Trucks Band: Made Up Mind

Read "Made Up Mind" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 1, 2013

Since the assimilation of the Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks bands into the eleven-member Tedeschi Trucks Band, the group has worked, creatively speaking, non-stop. The band debuted with 2011's Revelator (Sony Masterworks) followed by the live set, Tedeschi Trucks Band Live: Everybody's Talkin' (Sony Masterworks, 2012), and its requisite tour, reviewed within these electrons. The band releases its second studio recording with a hint that it has acquired its musical sea legs, forging ahead with a confidence ...

Live Review

Sligo Jazz Project 2013: Days 4-6

by Ian Patterson
August 1, 2013

Sligo Jazz ProjectVarious VenuesSligo, Ireland July 16-21, 2013 After three action-packed days at Sligo Jazz Project, with SJP founder/bassist Eddie Lee and drummer David Lyttle's world premiere of The Barinthus Suite providing an unforgettable highlight, the first signs of attrition amongst the students were beginning to show. The non-stop nature of the SJP is one of its attractions, and there were absolutely no complaints about value for money; world-class tuition, workshops, master classes and individual ...

Album Review

Kojato and the Afro Latin Cougaritas: All About Jazz

Read "All About Jazz" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
August 1, 2013

As with any music that is soundly constructed around African rhythms, All About Jazz is impossible to listen to without being captivated by the infectious beats geared for dancing and grooving. Kojato and the Afro Latin Cougaritas have been able to expand upon a distinctive Afro-beat, dancehall, funk, and soul fusion, igniting a cadenced explosion brimming with positive vibrations. The group is led by vocalist Kojo, who has a hip vocal style resembling Gil Scott Heron in his ...

Album Review

Mike Wofford: It's Personal

Read "It's Personal" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
July 31, 2013

Pianist Mike Wofford can boast decades of high-caliber sideman gigs: notably with vocalists Ella Fitzgerald (for whom he served as music director), Mel Tormé and Sarah Vaughan, as well as drummer Shelly Manne, saxophonist Phil Woods, guitarist Joe Pass and others. His studio work is amply represented on records by a dizzying variety of artists. And his frequent collaborations with his wife, flutist Holly Hofmann, have been warmly received. Solo sets are not unknown in Wofford's lengthy discography but, on ...

Album Review

Convergence Quartet: Slow And Steady

Read "Slow And Steady" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
July 31, 2013

It might just be that the third record from the Transatlantic Convergence Quartet is its best yet. Recorded live at north London's Vortex at the conclusion of a short British tour, the band was firing on all cylinders. Not that its previous two outings were in any way remiss. Live In Oxford (FMR, 2007) documented a foursome still getting to know each other, while Song Dance (Clean Feed, 2010) delved into a dizzying range of options for common ground. Comprising ...

Live Review

Garana Jazz Festival 2013

by Adriana Carcu
July 31, 2013

Garana Jazz FestivalWolf's MeadowGarana, RomaniaJuly 11-14, 2013For four days each summer, a village in the Western Carpathians becomes the Mecca for the Romanian jazz fans, and an ever-growing number of Europeans. For the 17th time the Bohemian colony Garana (Wolfsberg is its German name) has hosted an event of growing importance in the European jazz landscape. Each year thousands of music lovers take the paths of the mountain to gather at the Wolf's Meadow, some ...

Album Review

Tyler Mire Big Band: Enter the Atmosph-Mire

Read "Enter the Atmosph-Mire" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 31, 2013

Originally televised back in the black-and-white 1960s, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone broadcast an episode--now classic--in which miniature alien spacemen land and terrorize a woman who is frightfully alone in her farmhouse. The cover art depicting happy little “musician-nauts" walking in space notwithstanding, Enter the Atmosph-Mire does no terrorizing. It does, however, shoot for, hit, and display the stars.Dallas-based trumpeter/composer/arranger Tyler Mire (pronounced “Meer") has enlisted a cadre of Big D's best here and hands them a musical ...