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

Eyot: Drifters

Read "Drifters" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
March 1, 2013

It's every serious group's desire to craft an identifiable, and as far as possible, a unique sound whereby just a few notes leave little doubt about who's playing. Serbian quartet Eyot achieved that with its splendid debut, Horizon (Ninety and Nine Records,2011), where minimalism and power went hand-in-hand in an intoxicating mix of jazz, art-rock, classical and Balkan folk melodies. Pianist Dejan Ilijic's compositions were defined by the layering and interweaving of rhythms and motifs, all but eschewing solos in ...

Album Review

Curtis Hasselbring: Number Stations

Read "Number Stations" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 1, 2013

Number stations are, apparently, shortwave radio stations that intermittently broadcast random series of numbers: a Cold War communication system that still lingers. Number Stations is an album by trombonist Curtis Hasselbring and his band, the wonderfully named New Mellow Edwards, that takes its inspiration from these mysterious transmitters.The tune titles are rather enigmatic, but help is at hand. The sleeve notes reveal that the titles “are hypothetically decoded from the numeric information stored in the composed music..." providing ...

Album Review

Shamie Royston: Portraits

Read "Portraits" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 1, 2013

Pianist Shamie Royston shares more than familial bonds with her husband/drummer Rudy Royston and employer/sister/saxophonist Tia Fuller; she clearly shares their oft-demonstrated belief that music is about expressing oneself by placing your own personality and experiences into and onto your art. In truth, every artist worth their salt, knowingly or not, adheres to this philosophy in some way, shape or form, but Shamie Royston uses it as a mission statement of sorts for her debut album. Portraits ...

Album Review

Ehud Asherie with Harry Allen: Lower East Side

Read "Lower East Side" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 1, 2013

In this day and age, when shock-and-awe maneuvers and new-thing sounds tend to get all the plaudits and press in jazz, it says a lot when a throwback duo date is widely admired by critics and fans alike. Such was the case with pianist Ehud Asherie's Upper West Side (Posi-Tone, 2012), which brought him into contact with like-minded saxophonist Harry Allen and presented a program of old chestnuts that were revived by their expert hands. Now, a year after that ...

Extended Analysis

Steven Wilson: The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) [Deluxe Edition]

by John Kelman
March 1, 2013

Even though Porcupine Tree began as a solo project for a young Steven Wilson in the late 1980s--and despite the British singer/guitarist/keyboardist remaining its primary composer through to The Incident (Kscope, 2009) and the recent live record from that tour, Octane Twisted (Kscope, 2012)--it's been some time since the group was truly representative of his aspirations, needs and desires. As he said in a 2012 All About Jazz interview: “When you have a group of musicians, you're inherently a democracy; ...

Extended Analysis

Charles Lloyd / Jason Moran: Hagar's Song

by John Kelman
February 28, 2013

Looking back at Charles Lloyd's sizable discography as a leader, what's becomes immediately clear is that the saxophonist has shared a number of special, long-term musical relationships with pianists: first, Keith Jarrett, in the quartet that brought Lloyd considerable fame and commercial success in the 1960s; and then Bobo Stenson, when he returned from nearly two decades of relative inactivity as a leader (some of it spent recording and touring with The Beach Boys) and began an association with ECM ...

Album Review

Ingrid Laubrock Anti-House: Strong Place

Read "Strong Place" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
February 28, 2013

With Strong Place, New York-based German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock moves one step further in cementing her place at the heart of the Big Apple's fertile Brooklyn scene. Already on a roll with her plangent contributions to a series of stunning music including Sleepthief's Madness of Crowds (Intakt, 2011), drummer Tom Rainey's Camino Cielo Echo (Intakt, 2012), Paradoxical Frog's Union (Clean Feed, 2012), reed iconoclast Anthony Braxton's Falling River Music and pianist Kris Davis' Capricorn Climber (Clean Feed, 2013), Laubrock lives ...

Extended Analysis

Orchestre National de Jazz: Piazzolla!

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
February 28, 2013

The Argentinian composer, bandoneón player and tango revolutionary Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was no stranger to jazz. As a music student in Paris in the mid-1950s, he was inspired by the joyous improvisation he witnessed in the effervescent Left Bank jazz scene. He would go on to collaborate with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (Summit/Reunion Cumbre, Erre, 1974) and vibraphonist Gary Burton (The New Tango, Atlantic, 1986). Indeed, Piazzolla integrated jazz sensibilities into his music over a span of decades. On the ...

Album Review

Marcos Pin Factor-E Reset: Barbanza

Read "Barbanza" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 28, 2013

Guitarist and composer Marcos Pin's seventh album, Barbanza, can readily be considered an Iberian project. The musicians are all from Spain, Pin's compositions and arrangements reflect the feelings evoked by his current homeland on the country's Barbanza Peninsula and the album was recorded in Portugal (although it was mixed and mastered in the USA). The ensemble, a ten-piece known as Factor-E Reset, has a sound that invites comparisons with the work of jazz legends with their own Iberian connections--but not ...

Album Review

Michael Wolff & Mike Clark: Wolff & Clark Expedition

Read "Wolff & Clark Expedition" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 28, 2013

This jazz piano trio date by world-class musicians is all about the groove. Drummer Mike Clark, revered for his slippery jazz-funk beats, hearkening back to this tenure with Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, is touted as one of the most sampled drummers of the digital age. However, he is first and foremost a jazz drummer, as his resume includes stints with a list of greats too lengthy in scope to cite here. Teaming with fellow jazz giant pianist, Michael Wolff and first-call ...