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

Doctor Magnum: Live at Red Square

Read "Live at Red Square" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
March 13, 2013

Pianist Robert Glasper, in the All About Jazz segment “One LP," talked about Slum Village's Fantastic, vol. 2 (Good Vibe, 1999), produced by J Dilla: “J Dilla is probably the only producer I know that changed the way musicians actually play their instruments." Exhibit A is Glasper's own piano playing with both his acoustic and electric groups.Exhibit B could well be “Debbie Does Dilla (Waltz for Debby)," by the Albany, New York-based quartet Doctor Magnum. Glasper notes how ...

Album Review

Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: Melody Magic

Read "Melody Magic" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
March 13, 2013

Great classical themes have frequently attracted musicians from all musical genres because they provide substance, cachet, and robust platforms that allow artists to simultaneously salute and portray the melodies in a different, yet attractive light. Some of these attempts fail miserably, while others succeed admirably. For example, during the height of the 70's disco delirium, a chart-topping hit titled “A Fifth of Beethoven" (Walter Murphy, 1976--Private Stock Records) sold millions.With Melody Magic, guitarists Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo ...

Interview

John Beasley: Everyone Loves John

by Scott Mitchell
March 13, 2013

Keyboardist John Beasley (aka “The Bease" to friends and family) is a musician's musician and one of the busiest professionals in the game. His biography and list of credits are so broad and deep that they could fill an NFL playbook.If NASA or MIT were to invent a device that could measure creative and musical capacities, John Beasley would be one of the first artists to which they would hook it up.The short biography would read; ...

Live Review

Bobby McFerrin: London, UK, March 3, 2013

by John Eyles
March 12, 2013

Bobby McFerrinBarbicanLondon, UKMarch 3, 2013 One of the pleasures of going to a Bobby McFerrin concert is that you never quite know what you are going to get on any particular day. “Spontaneous Inventions" was not just an album title for McFerrin, it became a description of his performance philosophy--one that has delighted audiences across the globe for decades. McFerrin's freewheeling attitude on stage--going wherever the whim has taken him, be that to Bach, bebop, ...

Album Review

Kahil El'Zabar Quartet: What It Is!

Read "What It Is!" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
March 12, 2013

Since the early 1980s percussionist Kahil El'Zabar has led numerous dates as a leader, with much of his work issued by Chicago's Delmark Records. Some of his most impressive efforts for the label have featured collaborations with renowned artists, including New Thing-era luminaries such as Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre, Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, as well as peers like Ernest Dawkins, David Murray and the late Billy Bang. What It Is! covers relatively new territory though, with the AACM veteran serving ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Michelle Pollace

by AAJ Staff
March 12, 2013

Meet Michelle Pollace:Michelle Pollace is a composer and performing musician of Latin jazz, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Michelle's arrangements of jazz, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban standards are original, and her own compositions honor the roots of the music while adding a new voice. Her band's performances at the 2010 and 2011 San Jose Jazz Festivals were well received. She is just now releasing her latest CD, New Beginning, which highlights Michelle's piano work and also features ...

Album Review

Antonio Adolfo: Finas Misturas

Read "Finas Misturas" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 12, 2013

Pianist/Composer Antonio Adolfo is a bit of a musical mixologist. Throughout his four-plus decades in the music world, he's often found his way and made his mark by merging jazz language with the sonic sensibilities of his native Brazil; now, this very idea serves as a thematic umbrella that hangs over Finas Misturas. Adolfo takes a crop of classics and serves them up with Brazilian seasoning, adding new flavors without altering the base taste of each number. ...

Album Review

Laila Salins: Elevator Into The Sky

Read "Elevator Into The Sky" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 12, 2013

On Smash, pianist/composer Patricia Barber wrote songs quite reminiscent of the late American poet Anne Sexton's (1928-1974) poetry: abstract and almost, but not quite, inaccessible. On Elevator Into The Sky, Latvian-American singer/composer Laila Salins adapts poems by Sexton for her lyric book, backing them with a competent and far-reaching band. This project is as ambitious as easily imagined. Sexton's confessional free verses are not easily tamed musically. Salins approaches Sexton's craggy images by presenting them juxtaposed against pianist Jamie Reynold's ...

Album Review

The Dave Lalama Big Band: The Hofstra Project

Read "The Hofstra Project" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 12, 2013

As an academic, pianist Dave Lalama's resume includes being a founding faculty member of the prestigious Manhattan School of Music Jazz Program, as well as a current professor at Hofstra University where hundreds of students, colleagues and musicians have all been a part of his distinguished professional life. As a musician, his background includes performances with many legendary bandleaders, among them Woody Herman, Buddy Rich and Mel Lewis. The combination of having worked with so many talented musicians throughout his ...

Interview

Jorge Rossy: When Rhythm Becomes Harmony

by Marta Ramon
March 12, 2013

Jorge Rossy arrived at Berklee College of Music in 1990 to study trumpet, despite already being a professional drummer. In Boston, the front line musicians--most of them were his teachers at the school--would hire him to play important gigs. Even with this brief anecdote one can get an idea about the Spanish multi-instrumentalist's special charisma and faculties.Since then, he has played with lot of fine musicians around the world, including saxophonists Mark Turner, Chris Cheek, Seamus Blake and ...