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

Eliane Elias at Birdland

by Ernest Barteldes
June 13, 2013

Eliane EliasBirdland New York, NYMay 31, 2013 On the fourth night of her weeklong residence at Birdland, pianist Eliane Elias opened her set with an original number, its bluesy nature recalling the work of recently deceased pianist Dave Brubeck. The number gave her quartet--bassist Marc Johnson, guitarist Steve Cardenas and drummer Mauricio Zotarelli--plenty of opportunity to stretch out, with quite a few improvised moments. Elias' quartet continued with “There Will Never Be Another ...

Live Review

Joshua Redman Quartet with The Knights: New York, NY, June 4, 2013

by Dan Bilawsky
June 12, 2013

Joshua Redman Quartet with The KnightsThe Town HallBlue Note Jazz FestivalNew York, NY June 4, 2013 For a couple of years, it looked like the Big Apple had lost its big jazz festival mojo. New York maintained more than its fair share of jazz gatherings in 2009 and 2010, with the 92nd Street Y's straight-ahead Jazz In July, the (far) left of center Vision Fest, and the uber-popular Winter Jazzfest in play, but ...

Album Review

Lotte Anker/ Rodrigo Pinhero/ Hernâni Faustino: Birthmark

Read "Birthmark" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
June 12, 2013

After releasing a trio of stellar recordings with pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, the last being Floating Islands (ILK, 2009), Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker returns with a new trio. She teams up with the Portuguese players Rodrigo Pinhero (piano) and Hernâni Faustino (double bass), best known as members of RED Trio with drummer Gabriel Ferrandini. Like her American trio, this encounter is marked as an interactive improvisational session. A very cooperative session. Much, no, all of ...

Live Review

Cyrus Chestnut Trio + Stefon Harris: Tempe, AZ, May 31, 2013

by Patricia Myers
June 12, 2013

Cyrus Chestnut Trio and Stefon HarrisTempe Center for the ArtsTempe, AZMay 31, 2013Pianist Cyrus Chestnut has perfected the art of musical surprise, creating dialogues between his own hands as well as with his colleagues. He launched his Tempe, Arizona concert by stating, “We like to play the notes we've never played before." He most assuredly did that for a full two hours, supported by bassist Eric Wheeler and 19-year-old drummer Evan Sherman, soon joined by ...

Album Review

Alex Jonsson 3: The Lost Moose

Read "The Lost Moose" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
June 12, 2013

Danish guitarist Alex Jønsson--currently resides in Gothenburg, Sweden-- recently graduated from the acclaimed Danish Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, but already has a defined and focused aesthetics on his first release as a leader. Jønsson, together with reed player Lars Greve and drummer Christian Windfeld, has managed to create a recording of immediate, light and highly melodic songs, all embodying a reserved Nordic melancholy and thoughtfulness. These songs border on a pop songs sensibility, and it ...

Album Review

Jeff Williams: The Listener

Read "The Listener" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 12, 2013

It may be a poor-man's explanation, but here it goes: bebop begat hard bop begat the freer post-bop. Free jazz emerged among them. What next? Jeff Williams' The Listener. The greater freedom of post bop compared to its predecessor is given more freedom, but not so much that the music descends into the ravenous particles of John Coltrane In Japan (Impulse!, 1973). So, where does that leave us? Williams often programs solos against the ...

Album Review

Manu Codjia / Geraldine Laurent / Christophe Marguet: Looking For Parker

Read "Looking For Parker" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
June 11, 2013

It's very much a trio of equals that recorded Looking For Parker, but alto saxophonist Géraldine Laurent sometimes muscles her way out front. This is partly just the nature of the horn, and partly because she plays the same instrument as Charlie Parker, to whose music the record is dedicated. And most of all, Laurent, more than her band mates, clearly derives from the bebop lineage initiated by Parker.The record begins, almost literally, looking for Parker in the ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Kathy Sanborn

by AAJ Staff
June 11, 2013

Meet Kathy Sanborn:Kathy Sanborn is an American singer, pianist, producer and composer. Based in California, Sanborn has released four albums. Her latest jazz album, Six Degrees of Cool, has recently reached Amazon's MP3 Vocal Jazz Bestseller list. Sanborn's upcoming release, Sultry Night, is set to drop on September 2013.John Shelton Ivany of the National News Bureau says: “Kathy Sanborn is able to convey emotional truths with a sound no one else can produce; a quavering joy ...

Album Review

Sophie Agnel/ John Edwards/ Steve Noble: Meteo

by Mark Corroto
June 11, 2013

The liner notes said it best, ..."listening is a form of improvisation." To be sure, no two listeners come away from Meteo with the same experience. This single track (38:25) live recording from the 2012 Festival Météo in Mulhouse France is a first time meeting of the French pianist Sophie Agnel and the British rhythm section of John Edwards (bass) and Steve Noble (drums).While rhythm is often an intramural device, here it is a highly personal interchange between ...

Album Review

John O'Gallagher: The Anton Webern Project

Read "The Anton Webern Project" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 11, 2013

Here's to avant-garde jazz. Unruly and ill-behaved, the seeds planted by saxophonists Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and carried forward by reed multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton and melded with trumpeter Miles Davis's Post-bop, gave rise to a brand of jazz that, while not the complete chaos of free jazz, nevertheless possessed such an inventive spirit that begged the listener to hear “what comes next." Layer this spirit with a cogent theme and an entirely new dimension to the music is revealed. ...