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

Michael Blanco: No Time Like The Present

Read "No Time Like The Present" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 29, 2013

A talented in-demand Broadway/jazz bassist, Michael Blanco's No Time Like The Present announces his second album as leader presenting a collection of refreshing new jazz originals offered by a dynamic quintet that features veteran saxophonist John Ellis and New York guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg among the cast. The two-time recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award, designs a sparkling session of riveting modern-style jazz not to be missed. Though it's Blanco's compositional skills that carry the date on this ...

Album Review

Curtis Hasselbring: Number Stations

Read "Number Stations" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 29, 2013

Many avant-garde composers, leaders or conductors employ various mechanisms to instruct the band for a specific composition. Here, longtime New York City alternative composer, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring integrates an all-star lineup for pieces inspired by a random series of numbers, based on shortwave radio stations. Hasslebring iterates that these pieces are hypothetically decoded and provide cryptic instructions for the musicians. However, the album is anything but cryptic as the leader bridges the jazz-rock idiom with New York City downtown scene-like ...

From the Inside Out

Requiems, Remodels & Remembrances

by Chris M. Slawecki
March 28, 2013

Michael BurksShow of StrengthAlligator Records2012 Michael “Iron Man" Burks grew up playing guitar. A quick study, he soon began leading the blues, rhythm and blues and soul house bands that backed O.V. Wright, Johnnie Taylor and other stars as they passed through the R&B circuit near his Arkansas hometown. Then, Burks put his own career aside for two decades to make sure his daughter had an attentive, ...

Album Review

Kyle Eastwood: The View From Here

Read "The View From Here" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 28, 2013

Kyle Eastwood's boyhood in Carmel, California, may have been where and when he began his love of jazz, but as an adult his love of France seems to impact more and more on his music. Eastwood's sixth album, The View From Here, doesn't always show this influence explicitly but it's there nonetheless and it's giving the bassist's music a distinctive and delightful vibe.As an album title, The View From Here doesn't share the Francophile origins of previous Eastwood ...

Album Review

Ryan Keberle + Catharsis: Music Is Emotion

Read "Music Is Emotion" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 28, 2013

Music can be defined, analyzed and categorized, but those formal processes do little to help demystify the effect it can have on people. That's because music's power isn't directly related to the science behind the sound; music truly makes its mark through emotional connectivity, and trombonist Ryan Keberle is keenly aware of this. In just over a decade, Keberle has become one of the most in-demand trombonists on the scene, and he's done so by using his ...

Live Review

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Mesa, AZ, March 8, 2013

by Patricia Myers
March 28, 2013

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton MarsalisMesa Arts CenterMesa, AZMarch 8, 2013The 25th anniversary concert by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis was an homage to the past, sparked by elements of modernism with a mix of standards by Duke Ellington, Gerry Mulligan and Chick Corea, plus originals by band members.The repertoire ranged from the 1920s to the 1960s, with an emphasis on swing played by 15 of the ...

Album Review

Kris Davis: Capricorn Climber

Read "Capricorn Climber" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 28, 2013

Relocating from her native Canada to New York City, pianist Kris Davis has infused her imposing talents into New York City's unconventional, downtown-like scene. She once again aligns her compositional and improvisation expertise with like-minded artists, who frequently transition the jazz idiom into a boundless vista. Hence, the album projects a topsy-turvy and rather oscillating aura, featuring the musicians' use of counterpoint, space, and emphatic exchanges. They mix it up, while also stretching themes to the hilt amid several introspective ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Kevin Whalum

by AAJ Staff
March 28, 2013

Meet Kevin Whalum:Thanks for the love throughout my career, friends! I've felt it all. Through my solo work, my work with my brother, Kirk Whalum and so many others, I'll continue to seek new moments to capture for you. Bless you all.Instrument(s):Voice.Teachers and/or influences?Teachers: Dr. Wendell P. Whalum; Dr. Uzee Brown, Jr.Influences: Too many to count.I knew I wanted to be a musician when......I ...

Album Review

Nilson Matta: Nilson Matta's Black Orpheus

Read "Nilson Matta's Black Orpheus" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 28, 2013

Brazilian bassist Nilson Matta has, like all artists, has drawn inspiration for his music from a variety of sources--of which a play and a movie serve as the influence for the moving Black Orpheus. Antonio Carlos Jobim's compositions for the 1957 Vinicius de Moraes Brazilian play Orfeu da Conceicao and the 1959 Black Orpheus movie that went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is beautifully and tastefully reimagined here with the benefit of an all-star ...

Profile

The Not So Strange and Bizarre Life of Mike Taylor

by Duncan Heining
March 27, 2013

Composer-pianist, Mike Taylor, lies buried in a touchingly simple grave in a cemetery in Southend. His body was found on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in January 1969. It was assumed that he had committed suicide. He was 30 years old and didn't leave much of a legacy--a couple of albums now highly prized, a CD of his tunes and songs recorded by the New Jazz Orchestra a few years after his death, and one or two tracks written ...