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

Maucha Adnet & Helio Alves: Milagre

Read "Milagre" reviewed by Dr. Judith Schlesinger

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
March 16, 2013

Many people think Maucha Adnet is the most soulful Brazilian vocalist performing today; certainly her voice is warm, textured, and sexy, and her delivery is passionate, classy, and informed by a keen musical intelligence. (Fellow singers will also appreciate her great diction and pitch, awesome breath control, and masterful way with a triangle). The great Antonio Carlos Jobim knew all this, choosing to perform and record with Adnet for the last decade of his life.Adnet and the fine ...

Extended Analysis

Jimi Hendrix: People, Hell and Angels

by Doug Collette
March 16, 2013

The eye-catching metallic tone of the packaging, not to mention the scrupulous annotation in the accompanying booklet, belie the seemingly motley collection of twelve tracks comprising Jim Hendrix's cryptically-titled People Hell and Angels.Nevertheless, this slightly less-than hour of music documents the period in which the iconic musician, in an earnest attempt to progress beyond The Jimi Hendrix Experience, proceeded from the adventurous Electric Ladyland (Reprise, 1968) into more stylistically diverse territory during 1969 and the early part of ...

Meet the Staff

Meet Daniel Lehner

by AAJ Staff
March 16, 2013

I currently live in: New York, NYI joined All About Jazz in: 2010What made you decide to contribute to All About Jazz? I actually submitted my first review, which was the Undead Jazz Festival 2010, to the AAJ message boards. I saw they had a section for concert reviews so I decided I'd relay my experiences of the festival. I had never previously written a review of a concert before, but I found it to greatly ...

Album Review

Pharez Whitted: For The People

Read "For The People" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 16, 2013

Saxophonist Pharez Whitted has had an unusual recording career. Fourteen years separated Mysterious Cargo (Motown Records, 1996) from Transient Journey (Owl Studios, 2010), as Whitted dedicated himself to jazz education and sideman appearances with the likes of drummer Elvin Jones, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and pianist Ramsey Lewis. In this context, For the People comes after a relatively short interval. With the same top drawer Chicago musicians as on Transient Journey, Whitted leads the sextet through originals mostly rooted in the ...

Live Review

Tierney Sutton Trio: Half Moon Bay, California, February 27, 2013

by Bill Leikam
March 16, 2013

Tierney Sutton TrioDouglas Beach HouseHalf Moon Bay, CaliforniaFebruary 23, 2013On that late afternoon at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, February 27, 2013, Tierney Sutton brought with her pianist and keyboardist Mitchel Forman, and guitarist and bassist Kevin Axt to put on an exhilarating concert for a full house. The afternoon lay warm and clear over the Pacific Ocean as a seemingly endless stream of people climbed the stairs to the second floor of the ...

Album Review

The Beginners: Two Years Later

Read "Two Years Later" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
March 16, 2013

The band's name is a typical piece of shy Swedish understatement. Its two leaders, guitarist Erik Söderlind and saxophonist Andreas Gidlund, are anything but beginners; they have a great deal of experience on the local jazz scene. Söderlind has attracted attention for his collaborations with veteran keyboards player Kjell Öhman and his studio work. Gidlund led soul singer Jennifer Brown's backing band and has played with the likes of guitarist Ulf Wakenius and saxophonist Scott Hamilton. Neither ...

Album Review

Wolfgang Schlüter Quartet & NDR Bigband: Visionen

Read "Visionen" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 16, 2013

Visionen may be the best big band recording that went largely unheard in 2012. The music itself was hiding in plain sight, available for purchase from the usual on-line mega-stores (i.e. Amazon.com) and download sights (i.e. iTunes), but the record received scant attention in jazz circles, and the majority of the attention it did receive came from sources fairly close to home for this Hamburg-based project. Wolfgang Schlüter--Germany's elder statesman of the vibraphone--and his highly interactive band, ...

Album Review

Triptet: Figures in the Carpet

Read "Figures in the Carpet" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
March 16, 2013

Triptet's music is hard to categorize within one particular genre. The Seattle based group's second release, Figures in the Carpet, is a unique cross between the hypnotic ambience of synth-pop and avant-garde jazz's complex and dissonant harmonies. Elegiac and mystical motifs and free-flowing spontaneity endow the album with a thematic unity.The deconstructed lullaby “Surfactants," for example, opens with wistful chimes over waves of robotic drone and other sonic effects. French hornist Greg Campbell, with his vibrato-filled sound, joins ...

Extended Analysis

Trio Con Tromba's Treasure Trove of Previously Unreleased Recordings

by Florence Wetzel
March 15, 2013

The term lagom is essential to the Swedish soul. There's no direct translation into English or any other language, but positive connotations of the word include “in balance" and “just the right amount," with the Swedish proverb Lagom är bäst translated as “Enough is as good as a feast." An aural equivalent of lagom can be found in the sublime four-CD set Trio Con Tromba (with Uppsala Chamber Soloists). A chamber-jazz group active in the eighties, Trio Con Tromba ("Trio ...

Album Review

David Weiss & Point Of Departure: Venture Inward

Read "Venture Inward" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 15, 2013

Fans of trumpeter David Weiss may be a bit confused when they take a look at this album. At quick glance, it reads like a re-tread of Weiss' Snuck In (Sunnyside, 2010), which has a near-identical line-up playing a near-identical program, but there's a good reason for that: both albums were actually recorded a day apart in completely different environments. Snuck In--and companion piece Snuck Out (Sunnyside, 2011)--capture Weiss' Point Of Departure band (mostly) live at New York's Jazz Standard ...