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

Preta Gil: New York, NY, June 16, 2013

by Ernest Barteldes
June 22, 2013

Preta GilBrazilian Film Festival at Central Park SummerstageNew York, NYJune 16, 2013 Backed by a simple four-piece band (drums, guitar, bass, keys), Rio de Janeiro-born Preta Gil took the stage with her “Meu Corpo Quer Voce" ("My Body Wants You"), a hit single for her in Brazil. The audience--mostly formed by expats from her country--quickly caught on and sang along with her. Probably aware that many of those present would not recognize her ...

Album Review

Dave Liebman/Michael Stephens: Lineage: Rock and Pop Classics Revisited

Read "Lineage: Rock and Pop Classics Revisited" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 22, 2013

Saxophonist Dave Liebman was yet another musician drawn into the orbit of trumpeter Miles Davis, contributing to the always innovative master band leader's extraordinary and ground breaking--but underappreciated and even maligned at its time of release--On the Corner (Columbia Records, 1972), as well as Dark Magus (Columbia Records, 1974) and Get Up With It (Columbia Records, 1974). Then, like so many others--saxophonists Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane, pianist Herbie Hancock, drummers' Tony Williams and Elvin Jones, to name just a ...

Live Review

Jerry Vivino and the LA/NY Jazz Trio: Half Moon Bay, CA, June 9, 2013

by Bill Leikam
June 22, 2013

Jerry Vivino and the LA/NY Jazz TrioDouglas Beach HouseHalf Moon Bay, CaliforniaJune 9, 2013Three top-flight jazz musicians--saxophonist/flautist Jerry Vivino (soprano, tenor, and baritone), the ever-inspiring pianist Mitchel Forman and stand-up bassist Kevin Axt (touted as being Los Angeles' busiest bassist)--presented themselves on a breezy, sunny afternoon at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, aka the Douglas Beach House. As these three jazz musicians took the stage, they carried with them deep histories and experiences, having ...

Album Review

Anna Webber: Percussive Mechanics

Read "Percussive Mechanics" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 22, 2013

First she was a flutist, then a saxophonist, now an outstanding jazz and new music composer. Canada's Anna Webber follows up her debut, Third Floor People (Nowt Records, 2010), with Percussive Mechanics, a skirmish between contemporary composed music and jazz improvisation.As a player, she has recorded with Stephon Harris's Blackout--Urbanus (Concord, 2009)--and has also performed with Jason Moran, Tony Malaby, and John Hollenbeck. It is Hollenbeck that is the touchstone for her compositions here. Webber plays with the ...

Album Review

Berserk!: Berserk!

Read "Berserk!" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 22, 2013

What, you might ask, qualifies a record as Berserk? In this case, going Berserk! combines a string of cunning abstracts, tinted with goofy metrics, blistering progressive-rock etudes, anti-pop, heavy metal and ghostly ambient electronics effects. The masterminds are Italians, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari and bassist Lorenzo Feliciati. Perhaps the leaders overdosed on energy drinks, given the sheer power and zany underpinnings they bring to the table.With alternating personnel including, New York City-based keyboard wizard Jamie Saft and ex-King ...

Extended Analysis

Greek Rhapsody: Instrumental Music From Greece 1905-1956

by Skip Heller
June 21, 2013

A couple years back, Tompkins Square issued an unforgettable box set called To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929, which collected a type of Eastern music that had gone unanthologized, largely because it came from places long since gone from the world map, played on instruments to which most Westerners have never paid much attention. Name three oud players. I dare you.Greek Rhapsody (Dust-To-Digital) surveys rebetika, the international style prominent among Greeks throughout the ...

Live Review

Jazzdor Berlin 2013: Berlin, Germany, June 5-8, 2013

by Henning Bolte
June 21, 2013

Jazzdor Berlin 2013Kesselhaus in der KulturbrauereiBerlin, GermanyJune 5-8, 2013The Jazzdor festival is part of Berlin's still highly attractive cultural and artistic climate of the post- wall era. The seventh edition of this four-day festival took place during the first week of June, 2013 at the Kesselhaus of a former brewery in the well known eastside Prenzlauer Berg district. The festival is an offshoot of Jazzdor Strasbourg, situated in the north-eastern Alsace region of France, the ...

Album Review

The Dixie Ticklers: Standing Pat

Read "Standing Pat" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 21, 2013

The Dixie Ticklers play New Orleans jazz. The band's press release puts it even more emphatically: debut album Standing Pat is “an in depth study of New Orleans jazz." If that phrase sends out alarm bells and anxieties about overly-reverential treatments of tired old trad standards, fear not. Because Standing Pat isn't really an in depth study; it's a fresh take on the music from a bunch of young British jazzers who mix reverence with a happy disregard for slavish ...

Album Review

Dewa Budjana: Dawai In Paradise

Read "Dawai In Paradise" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 21, 2013

Eminent guitarist Dewa Budjana's fifth solo album offers a medley of compelling stylistic components steeped in Indo-fusion, jazz fusion, progressive rock and indigenous components of his Indonesian roots. The album also includes older material, spanning 2002 through 2005, featuring US jazz heroes including drummer Peter Erskine, the late bassist Dave Carpenter, and many others who generate a world-beat focus. Budjana's technical gifts cannot be undermined, yet his primary motivation is based on song-form amid broadly entertaining values. The guitarist toggles ...

Album Review

Christy Doran: Mesmerized

Read "Mesmerized" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
June 21, 2013

Guitarist Christy Doran's New Bag has negotiated its share of rough waters during its sixteen-year journey. While the ship was severely rocked by the death of drummer Fabian Kuratli in 2008 and the departure of vocalist Bruno Amstad after 12 years in 2011, Doran has soldiered on. His compositions ultimately define New Bag's personality, rather than the individuals in it at a given time dominating. The dynamic Amstad was a hard act to follow, but on the band's eighth recording ...