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

Satoko Fujii ma-do: Time Stands Still

Read "Time Stands Still" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
June 2, 2013

When asked why she has lead or co-lead so many different projects (23 at last count), pianist Satoko Fujii replied “It's like food. I don't like just Japanese food, but also Italian food, French food and so on, and I would soon get tired if I just ate Japanese food." If her ma-do quartet were to have a culinary equivalent it would certainly be tasty: something spicy with rich complex flavors. It's almost as if Fujii has so many ideas ...

Film Review

Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker

by Wade Luquet
June 2, 2013

James Booker Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker Lily Keber 2013 Ask jazz fans outside of New Orleans if they have heard of James Booker and most will lean back, rub their chin and say they know they have heard the name. Unless you lived in Europe in the seventies and eighties, where he was loved--or were lucky enough to hear him or play with him in his hometown of New Orleans--the name ...

Album Review

Jutta Hipp: Lost Tapes: The German Recordings 1952-1955

Read "Lost Tapes: The German Recordings 1952-1955" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 2, 2013

German-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003) was enticed to travel to New York in 1955 by jazz writer/historian Leonard Feather. She was signed by Alfred Lion to Blue Note Records where she very quickly--within an eight month period--recorded three albums for the label: At the Hickory House, Vol. 1 (1955); At the Hickory House, Vol. 2, and Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims, a teaming with the tenor saxophonist which was her most successful album. Then it was over. Hipp ...

Album Review

Julien Colarossi: Note to Self

Read "Note to Self" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
June 1, 2013

Since moving to Ireland in 2007, Italian guitarist Julien Colarossi has established himself as one of the busiest hands for hire on the Dublin jazz/contemporary music scene. He can be found in the band of singers Riona Sally Hartman and Edel Meade, and in the quintet Phisqa, whose eponymous debut fuses Peruvian rhythms--courtesy of drummer Cote Calmet--with modern jazz. He's a member of the 17-piece Hot House Big Band and also plays in Colours Afrobeat Foundation. Colarossi's debut as leader ...

Extended Analysis

Michael Feinberg: The Elvin Jones Project

by Dave Wayne
June 1, 2013

Electronic boops and beeps are the first thing you hear on bassist Michael Feinberg's The Elvin Jones Project. This could either be a good sign or a bad one. Fortunately it's the former, and it acts as an effective reminder that drummer Elvin Jones was a pioneering and exploratory musician whose legacy extends well beyond his years with the legendary John Coltrane Quartet. If he had, say, quit drumming after leaving Coltrane's band, Jones would still be recognized as a ...

Extended Analysis

Pat Metheny: Tap - John Zorn's Book of Angels | Vol. 20

by Nenad Georgievski
June 1, 2013

Literary, anything and everything can and will happen in composer John Zorn's constantly evolving musical world. Within that world, surprise and exploration are an important ingredients, as much as the cross-styling or the plethora of approaches for the different kinds of collaborative compositions he has created for the players involved. This surprising crossed paths of Zorn and guitarist Pat Metheny, as one of the performers/interpreters of his Book of Angels series (a subset of Zorn's ongoing Masada saga), is a ...

Album Review

Moss Project: What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?

Read "What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 1, 2013

As Bo Diddley so wisely stated, “You can't judge a book by looking at the cover." Moss Project's What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes? may look like a book, and a very beautiful one at that. It may feel like a book--it may even smell like a book. But it's a CD. Actually, it's a CD with a book attached.Guitarist Moss Freed leads Moss Project. He originally formed the band when he was studying at ...

Album Review

Carline Ray: Vocal Sides

Read "Vocal Sides" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 1, 2013

Vocalist Carline Ray has a musical reach that extends to the beginning of jazz. Her father played in James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra in the early years of the 20th Century. Juilliard-trained (as her father was) Ray sang and played guitar and bass in a variety of formats in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Erskine Hawkins, all in the late '40s and early '50s. She has enjoyed a lifetime in jazz, both performing and learning. With the singer in ...

Extended Analysis

Moss Project: What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?

by Jakob Baekgaard
May 31, 2013

The idea of creating a gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of the arts, is not something new. Classical composer Richard Wagner envisioned his operas as a meeting between music, literature and the visual expression of painting; since Wagner, many artists have tried to unite the different artistic languages into a total work of art. While some artists, like Wagner, find their way into the gesamtkunstwerk through a grand philosophical idea, guitarist Moss Freed developed his concept through a natural, ...

Album Review

Kin Trio: Breathe

Read "Breathe" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
May 31, 2013

The Kin Trio--saxophonist Sunjae Lee, bassist Andre St. James, drummer Tim DuRoche--call what they do “minimalist bebop." An apparent oxymoron, given that bebop has such maximalist tendencies (exhibit A is trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's dizzying “Bebop"). They don't mean to be taken so literally, of course. The Kin-men have ably absorbed the sparer offshoots of the bebop impulse--like alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, swinging in an understated way in a similarly piano-less setting on ...