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

Ryan Cohan: The River

Read "The River" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
July 19, 2013

Looking back, there must be hundreds or perhaps thousands of album titles that designate some reference to a river, regardless of their genre. But talented pianist Ryan Cohan does impart a distinctive stylization within the grand scope of this thoroughly modern jazz oeuvre, inspired by a recent U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of East Africa, and intersected with his Chicago roots. His septet seamlessly binds soul blues, African pop, and the jazz idiom, via concise, razor-sharp arrangements, often executed with the ...

Extended Analysis

Daryl McKenzie Jazz Orchestra: It's About Time / Scallywag / Slammin' Joe's

by Jack Bowers
July 19, 2013

Delightful discourses from Down Under, courtesy of three high-flying albums by trombonist Daryl McKenzie's intrepid Jazz Orchestra from the merry old land of Oz (more widely known as Australia). The first, It's About Time, was recorded in 2007, the others (Scallywag, Slammin' Joe's) in 2010, when the band was roughly eight years old. Yes, big-band jazz is alive and well in places as far removed from its birthplace as Melbourne, and McKenzie offers irrefutable evidence not only to prove the ...

Album Review

Delbert McClinton and Glen Clark: Blind, Crippled & Crazy

Read "Blind, Crippled & Crazy" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
July 19, 2013

In 1972, Texans Delbert McClinton and Glen Clark had already been a part of the Texas music scene for ten years. They recorded Delbert & Glen (1972) for Koch, inaugurating two careers, McClinton's being the more fruitful. That recording produced “B-Movie Boxcar Blues," which found its way onto The Blues Brothers' Briefcase Full Of Blues (Atlantic, 1978), jettisoning McClinton's already considerable popularity. The two singers team up again, forty years later, for Blind Crippled and Crazy, demonstrating that the formula ...

Album Review

Ligro: Dictionary 2

Read "Dictionary 2" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 19, 2013

Recorded in Jakarta (Indonesia) in 2011, Dictionary 2 presents the first international release from one of Indonesia's most acclaimed jazz-rock fusion trios: Drummer/percussionist Gusti Hendy, bassist Adi Darmawan and guitarist Agam Hanzah. (Hendy doubles as a member of Indonesia's pop-rock sensations GIGI.)Dictionary 2 burns with enough kinetic energy to traverse the entire distance of Ligro's unique “east meets west" jazz-rock guitar fusion, which sounds strongly influenced by Robert Fripp and Bill Bruford, and their progressive guitar and drum ...

Album Review

Duduka Da Fonseca Trio: New Samba Jazz Directions

Read "New Samba Jazz Directions" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 18, 2013

Drummer Duduka Da Fonseca wasn't the first to fuse the rhythmic patterns of Brazil's samba and bossa nova with jazz language and mannerisms, but he's done more with that combination than anybody before him. In the liner notes for New Samba Jazz Directions, Da Fonseca notes that drummer Edison Machado-- working with pianist Dom Salvador and bassist Sergio Barrozo in the mid'60s--merged the rhythmic dialects of these art forms first, setting an example for many younger Brazilian drummers that yearned ...

Profile

Graham Bond: Wading in Murky Waters

by Duncan Heining
July 18, 2013

Organist and saxophonist Graham Bond was the most important and influential musical pioneer to emerge from British jazz in the 1960s. High praise indeed, but in his case it is warranted. His legacy might be defined less by the music he recorded and more by the impact he had on subsequent generations of musicians. However, that impact is such that one can with every justification suggest that he and his ORGANization invented jazz-rock. The success Bond craved and believed was ...

Album Review

Chris Schlarb: Psychic Temple II

Read "Psychic Temple II" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 18, 2013

Multi-instrumentalist/composer Chris Schlarb rarely does things by halves. Psychic Temple (Sounds Are Active/Asthmatic Kitty, 2011) was the exotic fruit of over a 1000 hours of studio time and an opus that involved twenty nine of California's most progressive musicians. Wordless choir, strings, horns, acoustic and electric instruments combined with drone and subtle electronics to create an utterly sublime sonic meditation--the final word in folk-jazz ambient music. However, with Schlarb, music is always in a state of transition. So it is ...

Bailey's Bundles

Single-Malt Big Band - Scottish National Jazz Orchestra

by C. Michael Bailey
July 18, 2013

The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra was established by tenor saxophonist and director Tommy Smith in 1995. Since that time the band has devoted itself to re-imagining the music of past jazz greats, that include Weather Report, Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. Far from mere imitation, SNJO projects brim with creativity, shining bright and loud. This big band has been no stranger to All About Jazz, their very fine Spartacus Records Miles Ahead (Spartacus, ...

Extended Analysis

BoB: a Palindrome

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 18, 2013

The roll call of great bass players from Detroit includes Ron Carter, Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins. Robert Hurst, another Motor City musician, has for the past several years made a compelling case for his name on that list.Hurst picked up the bass at age 14 and was soon performing with Detroit trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who had previously been a member of Ray Charles' band. Hurst subsequently met drummer Jeff Tain" Watts, who invited the bassist to join ...

Album Review

Russell Schmidt: Anachromysticism

Read "Anachromysticism" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
July 18, 2013

Pianist/composer Russell Schmidt takes acoustic jazz right to the edge of where it is supposed to be. Intelligent, melodic, and harmonically grounded, Schmidt's sound is fresh and invigorating. Schmidt is a faculty member at the School of Music, University of Utah. Anachromysticism is his second recording, following 2007's Season Of Change (Orchard Records). Where Season Of Change was a trio recording of standards, Anachromysticism is ten original compositions for a dual saxophone-fronted quintet. Schmidt imagines music in ...