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

Miki Hirose: Scratch

by Dan Bilawsky
April 10, 2013

Japanese trumpeter Miki Hirose joined the ranks of the relocated in 2003, when he adopted New York as his home; he's been making his presence felt ever since, working with Latin groups, big bands, genre-stretching small groups, and more. He's also logged time with risk-taking heavyweights, like organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, and two elder statesmen of the saxophone--Frank Wess and Benny Golson--but he's made his mark on his own terms, with his own music. A Day In New York (JAZZ ...

Album Review

Carl Bartlett, Jr.: Hopeful

Read "Hopeful" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 10, 2013

Alto saxophonist Carl Bartlett, Jr. was pushing his late twenties when he figured it was high time that he put out a CD. Hopeful resulted, and the Queens, New York native proved he was more than ready for the task. Opening boldly, with a five minute sax solo--the disc's title tune--the young artist announces his arrival. It is a pensive and reverent jazz exploration, and perhaps something of a prayer, and it sounds as if he may have been able ...

One LP

Christian Scott: Clifford Brown, The Beginning of the End

by William Ellis
April 10, 2013

I choose a Clifford Brown album called The Beginning and the End (Columbia, 1973). It chronicles this guy's experience from the beginning of his musical career until a recording the day before he actually died. It's strange, because when I first got the record I didn't really know what the record was about or why they put it together. I just remember hearing this amazing trumpeter and trying to mimic his version of 'Donna Lee,' and I can ...

Live Review

Jazz in Church 2013

by Adriana Carcu
April 10, 2013

Jazz in ChurchBucharest, Romania March 21-24, 2013 From the very first edition, Jazz in Church has convinced through professionalism and a musical excellence, which are sure to place it soon among the best-rated European festivals. By putting together an illustrious lineup and demonstrating exquisite selectivity, the organizers inaugurated a location that emulates an existing European tradition. For four nights the cupola of the Lutheran Church in Bucharest hosted concerts of superlative creativity and interpretative quality. Four ...

Album Review

David's Angels: What It Seems

Read "What It Seems" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
April 10, 2013

The Swedish quartet David's Angels has proven in its debut release, Substar (Kopasetic, 2010), its ability to encompass emotionally charged issues with expressive, storytelling musical articulations. The sophomore release puts this approach in a more demanding test. What It Seems chronicles the demise of a meaningful love affair and its protagonist, singer-songwriter Sofie Norling making the peace process with its emotional implications-- the feeling of betrayal, loneliness, anger but also the needed sense of liberation. Norling's songs ...

Live Review

Vossa Jazz 2013

by John Kelman
April 10, 2013

Vossa JazzOslo, NorwayMarch 22-24, 2013Every festival hopes to have a signature, that certain something that differentiates it from all the rest and makes it a desired destination, but few have as many things going for it as the annual Vossa Jazz Festival, now in its 40th year. It certainly may seem like an unlikely place for such a world-class jazz festival; the tiny town of Voss, administrative center of a larger municipality that's home to ...

Album Review

Chris Clark Quintet: Cedar Wisely

Read "Cedar Wisely" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 10, 2013

This quintet was assembled for the recording of this album by young saxophonist Chris Clark, incorporating the talents of veteran saxophonist Peter Epstein who is also the department head for the University of Nevada, Reno where Clark also studied. With his debut effort as a leader, Clark enacts a concentrated focus on the compositional aspects, and largely executes a bottom-up mode of operations, instilled with mood-evoking themes, spanning multiple musical influences. The bulk of the program is based on probing ...

Live Review

Yusef Lateef: Celebrating 75 Years of Music at Roulette in Brooklyn

by Scott Krane
April 9, 2013

Rarely in the history of contemporary American music has one artist iconized as many aspects of organized sound as Yusef Lateef who appeared in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday night, April 6, at the new Brooklyn version of the Manhattan performance space, Roulette, near the new Barclay's Arena. In a two-hour performance billed, “Yusef Lateef: Celebrating 75 years of music," the 92-year-old remnant of modern jazz displayed the breadth of his musical imagination in a four-part concert.The Grammy Award-winning ...

Album Review

Dave Douglas Quintet: Time Travel

Read "Time Travel" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
April 9, 2013

Time Travel is the follow-up to 2012's Be Still, the critically acclaimed debut of trumpeter Dave Douglas' new Quintet. Since co-founding Greenleaf Records with label manager Michael Friedman in 2005, Douglas has issued a number of eclectic projects on the imprint, but few have been as surprising as last year's release, which featured folk singer Aoife O'Donovan. Dedicated to his late mother, the elegiac album was comprised of contemplative spirituals--an acquired taste for fans of Douglas' adventurous post-bop, since O'Donovan's ...

Album Review

Antoine Beuger, Jurg Frey: Dedalus

by John Eyles
April 9, 2013

Dutch flautist Antoine Beuger and Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey are two of the leading lights of the highly influential Wandelweiser group, whose music (according to another key member, Radu Malfatti) is about “the evaluation and integration of silence(s) rather than an ongoing carpet of never-ending sounds." Dedalus features two compositions by Beuger and one by Frey, recorded live on two days in April 2012, at L'Ancienne Brasserie Bouchoule space at Les Instants Chavirés in Montreuil, Paris. In total, the album ...