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.

Film Review

Fours

by Dan Bilawsky
February 24, 2013

Savion GloverFoursHalf Note Records2012Tap titan Savion Glover has been known to bring in the noise and the funk, but this DVD is about bringing out the jazz. Glover, the dancer/actor/choreographer who sits at the top of the tap pyramid, has long been inspired by this music and the figures that make it. He's tipped his toes into jazz waters on various occasions over the years and this document makes it clear, to ...

Album Review

Kait Dunton: Mountain Suite

Read "Mountain Suite" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 24, 2013

The seeds for this project were planted when pianist/composer Kait Dunton jotted down a few measures of music while sojourning in the Canadian Rockies, but this passionate music actually sprung to life inside a recording studio in Pasadena, California. Dunton, a Los Angeles-based artist pursuing a doctorate at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, gathered a USC-associated dream team together to bring this project to fruition, but this is anything but an all-stars-carrying-the-young-kid session; there is no ...

Film Review

U2: From the Sky Down

by Nenad Georgievski
February 24, 2013

U2From the Sky DownDocumentary Partners2012Music documentaries get more viable and interesting as more and more renowned film directors grab their chance to prove themselves in the genre. Apart from ordinary documentaries that only provide biographical data or sketches, some of them serve as a modern day visual novels, delivering emotionally enriching experiences and storytelling. Music history has proven interesting and fertile ground. Twenty years ago the music world saw major changes in ...

Album Review

Johannesson, Schultz and Berglund, featuring Jacob Karlzon: Cause And Effect

Read "Cause And Effect" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
February 24, 2013

Events from a momentous three-year musical period greatly influenced this album: in 1967 the death of John Coltrane; the release, two years later, of In A Silent Way (Columbia, 1969) by his former boss, trumpeter Miles Davis; and the demise of rock icon Jimi Hendrix in 1970. The line-up is Max Schultz, one of Sweden's best guitarists, former Herbie Hancock protégé Peter Johannesson (drums), the very gifted pianist Jacob Karlzon, and bassist Dan Berglund, formerly a mainstay ...

Album Review

Grateful Dead: Dave's Pick's Volume 5: Pauley Pavilion, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 11/17/1973

Read "Dave's Pick's Volume 5: Pauley Pavilion, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 11/17/1973" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
February 24, 2013

Each successive Grateful Dead archive release illuminates a new perspective on the history of a band whose career may be the most colorful in the history of rock and roll. Dave's Picks Volume 5 catches the iconic group on the cusp of two crucial junctures in one of the most prolific stages of its time together.Recorded at UCLA in November 1973, the Dead plays with uncommon poise and good humor, whether skipping lightly through succinct performances such as ...

Album Review

Marbin: Last Chapter of Dreaming

Read "Last Chapter of Dreaming" reviewed by Sammy Stein

by Sammy Stein
February 24, 2013

Marbin--Israeli saxophonist Danny Markovitch and Israeli-American guitarist Dani Rabin--began as a duo in 2007, but now regularly plays with percussionist Justyn Lawrence and bassist Jae Gentile.Last Chapter of Dreaming is the group's fourth album if its first is considered to be Paul Wertico's Impressions of a City (Chicago Sessions, 2009), where the duo was the “Mid East" contingent of the ex-Pat Metheny Group drummer's Mid East / Mid- West Alliance, but Marbin (Self Produced, 2009) was its true ...

The Mort Report

I Was Too Stoned to Perform: A Love Story, Kinda

by Mort Weiss
February 23, 2013

It was some time in the early 1960s and this story finds me, still Mort Wise, and my band--still named the Wisemen--having just signed a contract with World Artist Management services, a very happening company whose roster had names like Red Skelton, Ray Charles, Jacqueline Fontaine and many others. I would be one of the many others to begin with, at the time, after working the toilets and rough and tumble out of the way places like the Bank Club ...

Album Review

Jon Lundbom's Big Five Chord: No New Tunes

Read "No New Tunes" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
February 23, 2013

Certainly not straight-ahead jazz, decidedly not fusion, and not really free-jazz either, guitarist/composer Jon Lundbom and his Big Five Chord have taken a decidedly idiosyncratic path that simultaneously eschews and embraces all of these sub-genres, while largely rejecting their collective stylistic baggage. This judiciously iconoclastic individualism is what one can expect from Lundbom, a musician whose activities encompass indie rock (with Wolf and the Wayside), avant-garde classical music, and in-depth jazz-based investigations of the music of singer/songwriters Merle Haggard, Rufus ...

Book Review

Glen Boyd: Neil Young FAQ - Everything Left to Know About the Iconic and Mercurial Rocker

by Doug Collette
February 23, 2013

Neil Young FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Iconic and Mercurial RockerGlen Boyd400 pagesISBN: 978-1617130373Backbeat Books2012Glen Boyd's Neil Young FAQ contains plenty of good information and a fair amount of insight into the work of “The Iconic and Mercurial Rocker" referred to in the subtitle. Unfortunately, a somewhat amateurish writing and editing style too often undermine those virtues.Generally a chronological examination of the Canadian musician's ...

Album Review

Steve Slagle: Evensong

Read "Evensong" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 23, 2013

Saxophonist Steve Slagle is a consummate leader often pegged as a sideman; with a résumé that includes stints with big band legends like Woody Herman and Lionel Hampton, left-of-center trailblazers like pianist Carla Bley, Latin giants like Ray Barretto and modern day marvels like tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, it's easy to see why some people may look at him as a side dish, but outings under his own name mark him as main course material. His outstanding ...