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.

Extended Analysis

Sten Standell: Music Inside The Language

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 3, 2013

Swedish pianist Sten Sandell is one of the key figures in the Scandinavian free jazz and improvisation scene: a visionary and experienced musician who has developed a profound musical language. He is a member of the Gush trio, with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and drummer Raymond Strid, celebrating this year its 20th year of activity, and leads his own trio, with bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and collaborates with other innovative European improvisers as saxophonists Evan Parker and John ...

Album Review

Madeline Eastman + Randy Porter: A Quiet Thing

Read "A Quiet Thing" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 3, 2013

When Bay Area vocalist Madeline Eastman released Bare: A Collection Of Ballads (Mad-Kat, 2001), it was a bit of a departure from her previous recorded work. By that point, she was a decade into a critically acclaimed recording career and she had established herself as an adventurous, risk-taking, creative artist with albums like Point Of Departure (Madkat, 1990), featuring trumpeter Tom Harrell, and Mad About Madeline! (Madkat, 1991), with pianist Cedar Walton, saxophonist Phil Woods and guest vocalist Mark Murphy. ...

Multiple Reviews

Norwegian Sound Poems: Kristoffer Lo and Bjorn Thevik

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 3, 2013

These two debut solo albums of innovative Norwegian musicians--Kristoffer Lo and Bjørn Thevik feature long and nuanced sound poems, created with minimal means. Kristoffer LoAnomieGigafon2013 Tuba player Lo, a member of the art-rock trio PELbO and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, is using only his tuba, amplified via a big bass amplifier and few pedals. With these minimalist means he creates an hour long, intense and atmospheric musical universe of ...

Album Review

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: Live at Jazzfest Saalfelden

Read "Live at Jazzfest Saalfelden" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 3, 2013

Of the twelve current projects in which bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten works, his Chicago Sextet is the one that, perhaps, most foretells his future as a jazz impresario. Like bassist Dave Holland, who made his reputation with trumpeter Miles Davis and in the band Circle, before championing (almost exclusively) his own bands both large and small, Flaten has begun to open his own seminary of music.A mainstay of the now infamous Scandinavian bands Atomic and The Thing, Flaten ...

Album Review

Neil Welch: Twelve Tiny Explosions

Read "Twelve Tiny Explosions" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 3, 2013

It's good when an album title tells it like it is. Twelve Tiny Explosions is Seattle tenor saxophonist Neil Welch's third solo saxophone album and consists of a dozen tunes, each of which can be described as an “explosion." Welch's technical ability on his instrument of choice, sheer power and inventive musicality combine to create a challenging, mind-blowing and often rather lovely battery of sounds.As with his Boxworks (Table & Chairs, 2011), Welch fashions every sound from his ...

Album Review

Marc Riordan Quartet: Binoculars

Read "Binoculars" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 3, 2013

Question: when is a pianist-led recording also a drummer's record? That query, as it relates to pianist Marc Riordan's Binoculars, is not poised as a Zen koan, because there is an answer.The correct response: when the pianist is a drummer.Riordan, an up-and-coming percussionist in the Chicago music scene, can be heard in bands led by bassist Jason Ajemian, saxophonist Aram Shelton and cornetist Josh Berman, and the prog/punk band Wishgift. In the improvising unit Tres Hongos, ...

Extended Analysis

Rim Banna: Revelation Of Ecstasy & Rebellion

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 2, 2013

Palestinian singer-songwriter Rim Banna has performed in recent years in Tunis and Egypt, where the the Arab Spring began and where artists took a crucial role in the collective struggle to topple down repressive regimes and politicians. In her tours she sensed the rebellious spirit and wanted to trace its origins in Arabic poetry. Banna chose “Arabic Mystic poems from ancient to modern times, performed in the age of rebellion" of Tunisian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian and Andalusian writers in ...

Album Review

Paul Baxter Quartet: Monuments

Read "Monuments" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 2, 2013

The understated monochrome cover of the Paul Baxter Quartet's debut album Monuments is both honest and misleading. Honest, because the UK-based quartet is understated: no gimmicks, nothing flash, no attempt to craft any sort of archly irrelevant image. Misleading, because its rather dull exterior fails to hint at the delights to be found inside, for this is an album filled with musical delights as well as a few scary moments.The characteristic bite and energy of the Quartet's music ...

Album Review

Carlos Alves "Zingaro": Live At Total Meeting

Read "Live At Total Meeting" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
February 2, 2013

The cover to Live At Total Meeting depicts a maze, and that's a good metaphor for free improvised music. No-one knows where they are going or how they will get there. Even whether they have arrived or not is open to dispute. How the participants achieve resolution (of a sort)--negotiated, as it often is, without verbalization--is part of the enduring fascination of such sessions. For sure, the risks are less when veteran improvisers like the Portuguese violinist Carlos Alves “Zingaro" ...

Album Review

North America Jazz Alliance: The Montreal Sessions

Read "The Montreal Sessions" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 2, 2013

A producer's wish to recapture the sound of an accordion legend's band set the ball in motion for this recording. Producer Peter Maxymych wanted to “recreate a sound that was heard in clubs and other venues in the 1960s and '70s." Maxymych goes on to note that “accordion was the lead instrument in those groups and the music was inspired by Art Van Damme, who led a quintet with vibes, guitar, bass and drums." Van Damme, who worked for NBC ...