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.

Multiple Reviews

Insubordinations celebrates Swiss-Portuguese connections

by John Eyles
March 10, 2013

Since its inaugural release in 2006, the Swiss Insubordinations label and net label has issued over sixty albums, dedicated to improvised and/or electroacoustic music, as free-of-charge downloads and as limited editions on CD or CDr. Refreshingly, all Insubordinations releases remain fully downloadable under creative commons license. If that were not enough, Insubordinations is also an association that organises concerts, and co-ordinates the Insub Meta Orchestra (IMO), an ensemble of thirty-five or more improvisers gathered from Switzerland and beyond. ...

Album Review

Jovino Santos Neto: Piano Masters Series, Volume 4

Read "Piano Masters Series, Volume 4" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 10, 2013

Adventure Music's Piano Masters series is all about balancing consistency and individuality. The consistency connects to the instrument(s) on hand--high-end Fazioli pianos--and the quality of the recordings. The individuality, obviously, comes with the artist whose hands grace the piano. So far, the work of Benjamin Taubkin, Philippe Baden Powell, and Weber Iago has come to light through separate volumes in this noteworthy series; now, it's Jovino Santos Neto's turn to find himself behind a Fazioli.Neto, who is best ...

Scumbles

Street Music UK

by Sammy Stein
March 10, 2013

Late at night while walking recently through Covent Garden, London, I was stopped in my tracks by the sweetest voice I had heard in a long while. Signaling my friend, we set off to find the source.All we could see was a crowd of dancing people but we managed to squeeze in and found the source of the singing was a diminutive figure of a girl with blonde hair, a backing track playing on a CD player and ...

Behind the Lens With...

Behind the Lens With Arkady Mitnik

by Arkady Mitnik
March 10, 2013

Meet Arkady Mitnik:Born in former USSR, Arkady combines his professional career of Engineer with his main hobby of jazz photography.Gear:A number of Olympus E-cameras with top Zuiko lenses, Canon G-12 as well as analogue (film) OM-1 OM-2 and Mamiya 645.Teachers and/or influences?Leonid Levit from Ukraine, Alik Beliavtsev.I knew I wanted to be a photographer when...Well, to be honest, I never knew it, and still do not ...

Album Review

Bobby Selvaggio: Way Of Being

Read "Way Of Being" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 10, 2013

Bobby Selvaggio's Way Of Being epitomizes a restless sound, one that belies the alto saxophonist's unflappable nature. His latest release builds upon the groove-heavy folk/pop/funk sound of Grass Roots Movement (Arabesque, 2011).This disc, his seventh as a leader, is split evenly between the electric Grass Roots Movement quartet and an acoustic Shake Trio. Both groups sizzle with the saxophonist's ultra-nimble and penetrating sound. The veteran of Joe Lovano's band and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Selvaggio's music is a ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Andy Quin

by AAJ Staff
March 10, 2013

Meet Andy Quin:Born in London, Andy started playing the piano at the age of four and aspired to be a concert pianist. He had given his first radio and TV broadcasts by the age of eleven; however, in his early teens, an interest in composition sparked a change of direction and although continuing classical studies, he developed his skills in rock, jazz and popular music.Having turned down a scholarship to the RCM, he studied at Keele ...

Album Review

Charles Lloyd / Jason Moran: Hagar's Song

Read "Hagar's Song" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 10, 2013

Saxophonist/composer Charles Lloyd's 16 albums for ECM since the late 1980s represent a body of work as important as the influential recordings he made for Columbia and Atlantic in the 1960s. Lloyd's recordings with his latest quartet, Rabo de Nube (2008), Mirror (2010), Athen's Concert (2011) and, now, Hagar's Song, stand together as a special chapter in Lloyd's ECM story for the often transcendental quality of the music. Pianist Jason Moran has been an integral part of Lloyd's quartet since ...

Album Review

The Creole Choir of Cuba: Santiman

Read "Santiman" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
March 10, 2013

The music of Cuba is its most characteristic contribution that the world is familiar with. If there is one word that can be used for describing its musical legacy, that would definitely be diversity. The island has gone through numerous epochs and European and African influences have blended into distinguishable mixes that have determined its cultural richness and broad heritage. And with the thawing of the Cold War and the popularity of the Buena Vista Social Club, Cuban music has ...

Extended Analysis

Tommy Flanagan / Jaki Byard: The Magic of 2

by C. Michael Bailey
March 9, 2013

The story of this previously unreleased performance by pianists Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard at San Francisco's famous Keystone Korner begins with its unusual distributing label, Resonance Records. The original brainchild of studio owner George Kalbin, the label exists as part of the larger endeavor, the non-profit Rising Jazz Stars Foundation, dedicated to the discovery and cultivation of the next generation of jazz stars. This aspect of the RJSF produced recordings by “newer" artists: Andreas Oberg's My Favorite Guitars (2008), ...

Album Review

Tine Bruhn: Nearness

Read "Nearness" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 9, 2013

A curve ball can be the cause of consternation but it can also go the other way, ending up as a serendipitous game changer. Such was the case with the initial meeting between vocalist Tine Bruhn and pianist Johnny O'Neal. Both figures first encountered one another in the summer of 2011, when Bruhn's steady pianist backed out of a gig on short notice and sent O'Neal as his replacement; they've been working together ever since. Bruhn and ...