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

Joe Hertenstein - Achim Tang - Jon Irabagon: Future Drone

Read "Future Drone" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 26, 2013

Now residing in New York City, Germany-reared drummer Joe Hertenstein employs musicians from Europe or the US and to some extent, merges the avant-garde strata and stylistic tendencies into an opportunistic creative forum. This trio outing is a prime example. Featuring Viennese bassist Achim Tang and American tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon, the album pronounces a shrewd conglomeration of avant- garde minimalism, and excitable free-jazz with nervy sensibilities. Hertenstein is a master at complementing his band mates' gait via meticulously designed ...

Album Review

Ido Bukelman / Daniel Davidovsky / Ofer Bymel: EFT II

Read "EFT II" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 26, 2013

The sophomore release of the Israeli Electro Free Trio--EFT-- continues where the impressive debut (OutNow Recordings, 2011) stopped. An aggressive and experimental hybridization of spontaneous, free improvised approaches, real-time electronics who draw inspiration from noise and industrial music, all spiced with references to progressive and metal rock. This tough blend of sounds was solidified in many live gigs during the last year. Now guitarist Ido Bukelman is the dominant player in the trio. He sketches the loose ...

Album Review

John Medeski: A Different Time

Read "A Different Time" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 25, 2013

Organ ace John Medeski dons the mask of a left-leaning jazzer teetering on the brink of the jam band precipice when he appears with his co-lead super trio, Medeski, Martin & Wood (MMW), or in any number of other contexts, but that's his public face; his private pianistic side is on display on the aptly title A Different Time. Medeski returns to his alone-at-the-piano roots here, looking back to a time when intimate, measured self-expression reigned supreme ...

Album Review

Nicolas Bearde: Visions

by Chris Mosey
March 25, 2013

First the good news: Nicolas Bearde, former back-up singer with Bobby McFerrin, is blessed with a deep, dark, romantic voice reminiscent of Lou Rawls and on this album, which seeks to blend soul with jazz, he is backed by some of the best studio musicians on the West Coast. Now the bad news: his voice here lacks both expression and range. On Errol Garner's “Misty" Bearde ducks the famous opening melody, where the words “Look at me..." ...

Extended Analysis

Kolonihaven Unikum: Saltö

by Jakob Baekgaard
March 25, 2013

It is undeniably a paradox that the age of musical digitalization has produced some of the most beautiful physical objects in the history of recorded music, but, perhaps, the mystery isn't as great as it seems.The endless possibilities of streaming and downloading have brought along a backlash, an increased feeling of impersonality, which had to result in a counter-reaction where the listener would have to engage with the music on a more personal level. There is a difference ...

Album Review

Barry Altschul: The 3dom Factor

Read "The 3dom Factor" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 25, 2013

Legendary drummer Barry Altschul, known for his historic collaborations with innovative and influential musicians as Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, knows much about the concept of freedom in music. To be free, as he states in the liner notes, one needs choices and a large vocabulary of musical choices. Atlschul has plenty of choices. He is associated with the avant-garde terrains of jazz but his own compositions maintain a deep love to bop structure and harmonic movement. He ...

Album Review

Naked: Get Naked

Read "Get Naked" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
March 25, 2013

There's no limiting the band Naked to one musical genre or one concept. This band inhabits the worlds of jazz, pop, folk and everything in between, exhibiting a keen sense of what's appropriate in every setting it finds itself. Naked is a mesmerizing unit, a collective whose musical syntax continues to suggest there aren't six musicians in the band but one. Mesmerizing and softly propulsive, Naked's Get Naked speaks to a unique combination of creative concepts and influences ranging from ...

Interview

Lionel Loueke: Creating His Own Lines

by R.J. DeLuke
March 25, 2013

Lionel Loueke, the guitarist from Benin in West Africa who brings to jazz music rich melodic and rhythmic sensibilities influenced from his homeland, always had an eye for inventing his own lines; injecting his own persona into the music even when it was against the rules. Even when he didn't yet realize the magical sounds he heard on recordings by the likes of George Benson, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass contained, in fact, improvisations.Now well established in the ...

Album Review

Lee Tomboulian: Imaginarium

Read "Imaginarium" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 24, 2013

Terry Gilliam's 2009 movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was a complex, complicated, fantasy tale. Lee Tomboulian's Imaginarium doesn't quite match Gilliam's ambitious, if flawed, breadth of vision--after all, Tomboulian constructs this particular Imaginarium with just a piano and an occasional accordion--but he still displays an impressive range of ideas on this enjoyable recording.Tomboulian leads a variety of bands, including the Brazilian/Uruguayan Circo and Whenevs (formerly Return to Whenever). This solo outing finds him drawing on a mix ...

Scumbles

The People Band, London, UK, March, 2013

by Sammy Stein
March 24, 2013

The People BandCafé OtoLondon, UKMarch 6, 2013Café Oto, Dalston, London was the setting for a performance by legendary free form group, The People Band. Formed in the 1960s and led by drummer Terry Day and pianist/multi-instrumentalist Mel Davis, the group has played on and off right through to the present day. The lineup for this gig included Day, drums and percussion; Davis, piano and keyboards; George Khan, saxophones and flute; Mike Figgis, ...