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

Sidney Bechet & Mezz Mezzrow: The King Jazz Records Story

Read "The King Jazz Records Story" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
April 9, 2013

Three decades before Norman Mailer in 1957 drew attention to the social phenomenon of the “white negro," Mezz Mezzrow claimed to be just that. To use his own terminology, he was “a voluntary negro." Actually an American Jew, he played clarinet in the 1930s and 40s, often, as here, alongside Sidney Bechet. He supplemented his meager earnings as a musician by supplying marijuana to fellow jazzmen, including--famously--Louis Armstrong. He sold so much that for a while a ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Jens Persson

by AAJ Staff
April 9, 2013

Meet Jens Persson: Started playing the alto saxophone when I was about 14. The music was mostly swing and bebop in the beginning but has developed over the years.I play in all kinds of bands: swing, reggae, free improv, big bands and more.I have my own group, Perssons Sexa (Perssons Six), which plays my original music.I really enjoy playing all kinds of music.Instrument(s):Saxophone.Teachers and/or influences?I've had ...

Album Review

Splashgirl: Field Day Rituals

Read "Field Day Rituals" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 9, 2013

This Scandinavian trio recorded its fourth album in Seattle, WA featuring resident violaist Eyvind Kang and synth performer Timothy Mason lending their wares during various segments. An atmospheric engagement projecting a sense of antiquity, it's often what the musicians don't play that establishes the premise for the artful and rather haunting song-forms executed throughout their cunning playbook. Nestled within slow to moderate pulses, veiled with dark ambient characteristics and judicious use of electronics, the band renders a syndicate of otherworldly ...

Interview

Ralph Bowen: The Power Play

by Diana Kondrashin
April 9, 2013

Ralph Bowen was born in Canada but he has pursued a jazz career in the United States for over 20 years, as tenor saxophonist, composer and arranger. He strikes neatly with his recordings as a leader, just like it was done last year with Total Eclipse, an album recorded with his quartet: organist Jared Gold, guitarist Mike Moreno and drummer Rudy Royston. Bowen has a spotless reputation in the U.S. jazz community, but remains virtually unknown to international audiences. Bowen ...

In The Biz

Why Don't People Listen to Your Music?

by Mike Rubini
April 9, 2013

My name is Mike Rubini, and I'm pursuing a career in music. I have worked for All About Jazz as a social media consultant. This new column will focus heavily on a well-researched and thoughtful critique of major issues facing independent musicians and an in-depth analysis of the processes that can be used to understand the state of jazz music today. This article was translated from Italian. Music is communication. I believe communication is more ...

Meet the Staff

Meet Hrayr Attarian

by AAJ Staff
April 8, 2013

I currently live in: Oak Park, IL I joined All About Jazz in: 2006 What made you decide to contribute to All About Jazz? I have grown up on jazz and it has been one of my passions. At one point in time I had considered being a full time writer. When I decided to merge my two avocations I was looking for an appropriate outlet. My wife found All About Jazz one evening and brought ...

Album Review

konstruKt w/Peter Brotzmann: Eklisia Sunday

Read "Eklisia Sunday" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 8, 2013

The Turkish free jazz outfit KonstruKt might be considered the most evolved improvisational band working in jazz today. Founded, not in the hotbeds of jazz, London, New York, Chicago, Wuppertal, or Krakow, their isolation is the key to their success. Well, isolation and observation. Although this band was formed in 2008, their free jazz ears date back to the 1960s. The band has absorbed the lessons of John Coltrane's Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1967), Peter Brötzmann's Machine ...

Album Review

Gilad Atzmon And The Orient House Ensemble: Songs Of The Metropolis

Read "Songs Of The Metropolis" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
April 8, 2013

The metropolis is central to the life of a jazz musician. It's where the work is, where the conservatories are, where the music emerged and developed. Gilad Atzmon, the saxophonist and composer who's been described as the hardest working man in UK jazz, writes that Songs Of The Metropolis is “A pursuit of the sound of the city." It's a pursuit that takes him to seven of the world's most famous cities, to a small English seaside town and to ...

Live Review

Thomas Stronen's Time is a Blind Guide & Elephant9: Oslo, Norway, March 20-21, 2013

by John Kelman
April 8, 2013

When you've got some time to kill between two festivals--in this case, Burghausen, Germany's B-Jazz Festival and Vossa Jazz in Voss, Norway, the following weekend--there are few better places to do it than Oslo, a city that supports live music better than most cities in the world, with the possible exception of New York. Oslo's residents don't seem to care much whether it's a Saturday night or a Wednesday night; if there's a good show going on, you can count ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Yoni Kretzmer

by AAJ Staff
April 8, 2013

Meet Yoni Kretzmer:Before moving to New York City in 2010, Jerusalem born tenor saxophonist and composer Yoni Kretzmer was an active member in the growing Tel Aviv nu-music scene leading various groups such as New Dilemma (chamber/free jazz string quintet) and Far From Home (free/folk quintet with two acoustic guitars). For the premier of New Dilemma at the Jerusalem/Khan Theater, Tel Aviv Jazz Festival Producer Barack Weiss wrote for NANA, “It has been a long time since I ...