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.

Extended Analysis

June Tabor / Iain Ballamy / Huw Warren: Quercus

by John Kelman
May 28, 2013

Awaiting release for more than seven years, Quercus is not the first time ECM has branched into the realm of traditional British music combined with jazz improvisation. Unlike the rawer and more unfettered freedom of producer Steve Lake's inspired pairing of singer Robin Williamson with improvisers including violist Mat Maneri, bassist Barre Phillips and Swedish traditionalist Ale Möller on recordings like The Iron Stone (2007), however, Quercus is a more refined, elegant and dark live recording that pairs renowned British ...

Album Review

Phisqa: Phisqa

by Ian Patterson
May 27, 2013

Jazz has come far in Ireland in the last decade or two, leaving behind the trad-jazz on a Sunday image for an altogether more contemporary scene. In part, this is due to the increasingly cosmopolitan face of the country's cities, and in no small measure to the influence of Dublin's Newpark Music Centre, the only educational institution in Ireland to offer jazz studies. Phisqa is a case in point; the quintet members hail from Peru, South Africa, Italy, Venezuela and ...

Interview

Marco Eneidi: Pallettes of Color & Sound

by Anna Poczatek
May 27, 2013

Marco Eneidi seems to become a forgotten artist. Which is odd, at the very least, because his improvisation workshops are attended by the first seat of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, and because, in just the past few years, the saxophonist has played with artists including pianist Cecil Taylor, guitarist Joe Morris, reed multi-instrumentalists Roscoe Mitchell, Peter Brötzmann and Ken Vandermark, cornetist Butch Morris, and drummers/percussionists Andrew Cyrille, Michael Zerang, Paul Lovens, and Han Bennink.Yet, despite his rare musical skills, ...

Book Excerpts

Love for Sale and Other Essays

by Clifford Thompson
May 27, 2013

This article appears from the story “For Bean" Love for Sale and Other Essays by Clifford Thompson (Autumn House Press, 2013). I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a semi-detached brick house in Washington, D.C. The house from which it was not detached belonged to my aunt and uncle; my great-aunt and great-uncle lived in the house on the other side of them; and still another aunt and uncle were up the street. People ...

Album Review

Natalie Cressman & Secret Garden: Unfolding

by Dave Wayne
May 27, 2013

Imagine what it would be like to grow up in a household in which both parents are exceptional jazz musicians, a childhood completely immersed in live music and performance. Natalie Cressman, daughter of vocalist Sandy Cressman and trombonist Jeff Cressman, has had just such an upbringing, and her debut album Unfolding indicates that she is making the most of it. Still in her early 20s, and a student at the Manhattan School of Music with a couple of years' worth ...

Extended Analysis

Drew Gress: The Sky Inside

by John Kelman
May 27, 2013

Bassist Drew Gress returns with the same quintet with whom he's been recording since 2005's 7 Black Butterflies (Premonition). Don't fix it if it ain't broke, they say, and if, with the addition of trumpeter Ralph Alessi to the core quartet that also recorded 2001's Spin & Drift (Premonition (and with Craig Taborn replacing original pianist Uri Caine), then 7 Black Butterflies' followup, The Irrational Numbers (Premonition, 2007), made even clearer that the ubiquitous bassist--who counts guitarist John Abercrombie, pianist ...

Album Review

Wheelhouse: Boss Of The Plains

Read "Boss Of The Plains" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 27, 2013

Listening to the improvising trio Wheelhouse, one might get the distinct sensation of being inside of a dream.One of two inaugural releases for saxophonist Dave Rempis' Aerophonic Records label, Boss Of The Plains, documents the evolution of Rempis, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, and bassist Nate McBride}}'s collaborative trio. This band, which was formed in 2005 to present each player's compositions, gradually morphed into this wholly improvisatory chamber jazz format.Rempis first came to national attention as Ken Vandermark's ...

Album Review

Matt Parker: Worlds Put Together

Read "Worlds Put Together" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 26, 2013

Saxophonist Matt Parker is an old soul. You can hear that in his music. On his debut release Worlds Put Together, he channels Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon. It's just that this jazz geezer happens to be 33 years old.Like Lester Young, he creates music without typecasting it as “jazz." It's just that his enunciation, inflection and accent are dead giveaways that mark him as a jazzman.Parker's music recalls the period of the late-1960s ...

Jazz Emerges

Part 6: The Basses of Our Music

by William Carter
May 26, 2013

Listen to bassist Pops Foster with the Luis Russell Orchestra from 1929, playing “Jersey Lightning." Also on this record are New Orleans men Henry “Red" Allen, Albert Nicholas and Paul Barbarin. Virtually all of the New Orleans bass players depicted in this post played in an energetic, percussive style very similar to Foster's:

Fundamental: Historians and scholars have long believed the world's first jazz band to have been that of Buddy Bolden, whose powerful ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Sarpay Ozcagatay

by AAJ Staff
May 26, 2013

Meet Sarpay Özçağatay:Sarpay Özçağatay born in Ankara, Turkey, is a talented flutist, EWI player, composer, performer, and bandleader. Sarpay has performed with many jazz musicians and legends such as Ron Carter, Kevin Eubanks, David Fiuczynski. Terri Lyne Carrington, Eric Gould, Greg Osby, Steve Turre, and many more. He studied classical flute performance at Hacettepe University State Conservatory in 2002. After his studies at the conservatory he became more interested in jazz. He attended jazz ...