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

Atolon: Concret

by John Eyles
February 2, 2013

Atolón is a Barcelona trio consisting of Ferran Fages and Alfredo Costa Monteiro--who, as a duo, are known as Cremaster--plus trumpeter Ruth Barberán. The single 35- minute track was recorded at Can Felipa, in Barcelona, in January 2011. Although recorded by Another Timbre proprietor Simon Reynell, the album is actually released on the St. Petersburg-based Intonema, despite Reynell's label previously having released recordings by the three, notably the excellent Lúnula (2009) by Octante, which is Atolón plus Portuguese double bassist ...

Bailey's Bundles

String Theory 2013: Mark Kleinhaut & Hristo Vitchev

by C. Michael Bailey
February 2, 2013

Six strings or seven...twelve frets give or take a couple. That is what the guitar is. Mark Kleinhaut and Hristo Vitchev are two guitarists whose vision expands the role of the guitar in both composition and improvisation. They explore, Kleinhaut with immediate improvisation and Vitchev with directed performance, the length and breadth of guitar playing with no regard to genre or the passage of time. Mark Kleinhaut & Neil Lamb Jones Street Invisible ...

Interview

Jef Lee Johnson: It's Been So Long Since I've Seen with My Eyes

by Phil DiPietro
February 1, 2013

[ Editor's Note: This 2002 article was republished in memory of Jef Lee Johnson who died at age 54 on January 28, 2013. ]Jef Lee Johnson is a true American original and a true American gift to the musical world. Guys like Jef are the embodiment of every reason to use the phrase, “He's got more talent in his pinkie than so and so has in his entire body!" Problem is, especially lately, relatively dawdling critics like myself ...

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Extended Analysis

Yelena Eckemoff: Glass Song

by Dan Bilawsky
February 1, 2013

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff got a late start as a full-fledged jazz recording artist but she's making up for lost time. Eckemoff entered the artistic world as a young classical pianist in the Soviet Union, but she chose to put her work on hold for a spell while raising her children. Eventually, she returned to the piano with renewed creativity energy, but only after leaving her native land. In order to make the move, Eckemoff and her husband had to temporarily ...

Album Review

Ilia Skibinsky: The Passage

Read "The Passage" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 1, 2013

The youthful saxophonist/composer Ilia Skibinsky strikes a thoughtful pose, gazing down at his horn on the nicely designed cover of his debut, The Passage. The substitution of a much older visage would have been believable, given the depth and beauty of the playing, and the writing on the set's nine original compositions.Born in Russia, but moving with his family to Israel in 1993, where he performed with the best of his adopted country's jazz artists, Skibinsky succumbed to ...

Album Review

Scott McLemore: Remote Location

Read "Remote Location" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
February 1, 2013

While musicians relocate all the time, moving from the vibrant New York scene to more remote environs might seem an odd choice. After eight years in NYC playing with artists including guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Tim Berne, drummer Scott McLemore relocated with wife Sunna Gunnlaugs to her native Iceland following the pianist's decade-plus American stay. McLemore's second album as a leader, Remote Location is his first with an all-Icelandic lineup, suggesting there's plenty of talent on this small island ...

Multiple Reviews

Workshop improvisers in action: James O’Sullivan, Tom Soloveitzik, Jerry Wigens

by John Eyles
February 1, 2013

Every Friday evening since November 1999, a variable number of musicians--from six to twenty-six--has gathered together in south London for over two hours to improvise together in various combinations from duos upward. Originally convened by AMM drummer Eddie Prévost, and still led by him most weeks, this Workshop has featured hundreds of musicians since 1999 and has apparently never attracted exactly the same combination of players twice. Although its Friday evening sessions are only open to participants not ...

Album Review

Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: Melody Magic

Read "Melody Magic" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 1, 2013

In the same adventurous spirit as Polkastra's “I Do" The Wedding Album (Ancalagon, 2013), a spirit that transcends genre, style, and even musical phyla, guitarists Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo, using the vehicle of the Hot Club gypsy swing jazz to transform a recital ranging from Beethoven and Bizet to The Beatles and Sting. Vignola provides the lion's share of arrangements, save for the Beatles' medley of “If I Fell" and “Here, There and Everywhere," which was arranged by guitarist ...

Album Review

Eberhard Weber: Résumé

Read "Résumé" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 1, 2013

Composer/bassist Eberhard Weber has been one of the heritage artists to define and exemplify the standards of Manfred Eicher's ECM Records. Résumé continues the tradition of both the label and Weber with an unusually structured collection of live performances culled from more extended pieces. This global collection of bass solos, culled from live Jan Garbarek Group performances between 1990 and 2007, has been edited and engineered into a natural and flawless flow; each track takes its title from the host ...

Extended Analysis

Mark Masters Ensemble: Ellington Saxophone Encounters

by Greg Simmons
January 31, 2013

It could be argued that the core of bandleader Duke Ellington's wonderful textural sound was the way he harmonized his reed section, with great woody chords and lush polyphonic melodies. That reed section, with the great Johnny Hodges leading on alto, stalwarts like Paul Gonsalves on tenor and Harry Carney on baritone, as well as shorter-term itinerants like the incomparable tenor player Ben Webster, was one of the most well-oiled machines in jazz history. It was glorious. So ...