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

Bruno Heinen Sextet: Tierkreis

Read "Tierkreis" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
April 6, 2013

Karlheinz Stockhausen's compositions seldom make it into a jazz musician's list of jam session favorites. Pianist Bruno Heinen might just change that with his interpretation of Stockhausen's 1974-75 composition “Tierkreis," twelve pieces based on the signs of the zodiac and written originally for twelve musical boxes. The Bruno Heinen Sextet's debut album, Tierkreis, keeps some of the musical boxes and enlivens each piece with jazz instrumentation and sensibility.The London-based Heinen, bassist Andrea Di Biase and drummer Jon Scott ...

Extended Analysis

Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective

by C. Michael Bailey
April 6, 2013

If a musical note has a soul, Duane Allman could slide up to it and hold it beneath a Coricidin bottle in a tremolo seizure of sonic perfection until it screamed. Whether it is the whiplash introduction to “Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" or the most perfect electric blues performance recorded on “One Way Out," Allman had a certain radioactive intuition that translated into fire, grace and passion. Like Schubert, Allman made hay while the sun was shining, ...

From Far and Wide

Saving Old Records to L.A. Throwback Bands

by Fradley Garner
April 6, 2013

Library of Congress Acts to Save Old RecordingsMore than half of the oldest sound recordings, including some masters by George Gershwin, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, have been lost over the years, according to the Library of Congress. Patrick Loughney, chief of the library's audiovisual conservation division, believes the nation has developed a “cultural amnesia," forgetting how much of its history was captured in recorded sound.The library has revealed an ambitious plan to help libraries and ...

Album Review

Ensemble 5: Solstice

Read "Solstice" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 6, 2013

Drummer Heinz Geisser's robust discography for Leo Records implies an active mind on the loose via his firm footing in the avant spectrum. He now expands his Collective 4tet to Ensemble 5, offering a combination of youth and experience coalescing into an idea factory of sorts. No two pieces sound distinctly alike, which is not always the case with many other free-reign albums of this ilk. With a broad baseline laid out, the unit's fluctuating momentum, blustery choruses, sinuously designed ...

Album Review

Karen Souza: Hotel Souza

Read "Hotel Souza" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
April 6, 2013

There is a 19th Century short story by author Frank Stockton entitled, The Lady, or the Tiger? The hook of that work is the teaser leave-you-hanging ending: is there a Lady or the man-eating Tiger behind the door that is selected and “opened." With Hotel Souza, her second CD, Buenos Aires-based vocalist Karen Souza leaves little to the imagination. This hotel has musical rooms of exquisite talent, beauty, elegance and intimacy.Displaying sensuality without a cloying phoniness, Souza delivers ...

Take Five With...

Take Five WIth Viktorija Pilatovic

by AAJ Staff
April 6, 2013

Meet Viktorija Pilatovic:In October 2012, jazz singer, composer and arranger Viktorija Pilatovic, just 23 years old, performed her original composition, “We Could Solve That," with internationally renowned bassist Victor Wooten in Valencia, Spain's iconic Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia performing arts complex. Her skills were quickly noticed when she arrived at Berklee Valencia in September of 2012 to pursue her Masters in Contemporary Studio Performance on a full ride scholarship.Viktorija was invited to perform at ...

Album Review

Jean-Luc Cappozzo & Geraldine Keller: Air Prints

Read "Air Prints" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
April 6, 2013

The collaborative art of French trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo and vocal artist and flutist Géraldine Keller is a sophisticated play with air. Air breathes, gusts, atmospheric waves or windswept labyrinths and the spaces between these air bursts. Cappozzo and Keller subject the ether to their spontaneous whim, often surrender themselves to the surprising fancy of the ether. Cappozzo-- known from his intimate collaborations with fellow countrymen, bass masters Joëlle Léandre and Claude Tchamitchian, drummer Edward Perraud or American ...

Live From Philadelphia

March 2013: Billy Hart Quartet

by RJ Johnson
April 5, 2013

Billy Hart QuartetPhiladelphia Art AlliancePhiladelphia, PAMarch 20, 2013The music of the Billy Hart Quartet demonstrates a thorough amalgamation of intriguingly disparate musical elements which retains both the mastery of a group of accomplished veterans and the perpetually transformative nature of a leader dedicated to a lifetime of artistic pursuits. The ensemble, consisting of drummer Hart, bassist Ben Street, pianist Ethan Iverson and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, has been Hart's working band since ...

Album Review

Frank Lowe: The Loweski

Read "The Loweski" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 5, 2013

Producer Michael Anderson has unearthed yet more music from the ESP-disk vaults to complement tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe's Black Beings (ESP-disk, 1974), the session which announced the Memphis-born reedman's arrival as leader on the NYC jazz scene. Recorded at the same date, reputed to be from Ornette Coleman's Prince Street loft, The Loweski adds another 37-minutes of quintessential fire music to his legacy. Lowe was a very different proposition then to his mature persona, coming out of late period John ...

Extended Analysis

Dewa Budjana: Dawai In Paradise

by Dave Wayne
April 5, 2013

Though Dawai In Paradise is the first U.S. release by guitarist Dewa Budjana, careful study of the liner notes indicates that the Bali native has been playing jazz at a very high level for quite some time. Listening to this polished gem of an album, it's readily apparent that Budjana is no neophyte. In fact, he's a seasoned session guitarist and a permanent member of Gigi (Teeth), a well-established and quite popular Indonesian rock band.The tracks that comprise ...