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

Tim Carey: Room 114

Read "Room 114" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 16, 2012

Dedicated to his father, Seattle-based composer, educator and bassist Tim Carey's debut, Room 114, is a very intimate affair. Carey has been a professional musician for the past nine years and during that time he has honed his skills with such luminaries as trombonist Julian Priester, as well as, creative ethnic jazz ensembles. This combination of intimacy and expansiveness comes across on the opening “Waiting for One." Carey's romantic, Latin-influenced rhythmic embellishments contrast nicely with Brendan Odonnell's ...

Film Review

Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day

by Nenad Georgievski
December 15, 2012

Led Zeppelin Celebration Day Three P Films Limited 2012 Many biographies and history books reveal that in the early autumn of 1968, in a stuffy London rehearsal room, guitarist Jimmy Page gathered together a group of newly found musical colleagues--singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham--to whom he called out a sequence of chords. Seconds later the studio room reverberated to the sounds of “Train Kept ...

Album Review

Reinhold Schmolzer & Orchestraconteur: Miraculous Loss of Signal

Read "Miraculous Loss of Signal" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
December 15, 2012

Reinhold Schmölzer is a vivid impressionist, a trait he makes evident as a composer, arranger and drummer on his debut, Miraculous Loss of Signal. He is as eloquent in his writing as he is in his arrangements, letting his Orchestraconteur express itself in all its majesty while opening the door for soloists, who go out on trails that are free, yet stay within the compass of the tunes which can weave in and out of idiomatic patterns. The result is ...

Album Review

Michael Blake: In the Grand Scheme of Things

Read "In the Grand Scheme of Things" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
December 15, 2012

The beginning of an unusual release, “Road to Lusaka" is the first track from Canadian-born, New York-based saxophonist Michael Blake's In the Grand Scheme of Things. While maybe not as widely known in some circles, Blake is a masterful practitioner of the art form who is at ease working in or outside of the mainstream with a discography that includes a number of recordings and credits with the Lounge Lizards, the Jazz Composers Collective and others. Sumptuous ...

Live Review

Scott Feiner & Pandeiro Jazz: New York City, NY, December 01, 2012

by Ernest Barteldes
December 15, 2012

Scott Feiner & Pandeiro JazzZinc BarNew York, NYDecember 1, 2012Rio de Janeiro-based, New York-born pandeiro master Scott Feiner constantly seeks different approaches for the genre he arguably created when he incorporated his instrument--a trademark of sambas and chorinho--into a more contemporary jazz format. Since the release of his debut, Pandeiro Jazz (Delira Musica, 2006), he has fronted drummer-less quartets (bass, guitar, saxophone) that explore alternate sonic textures with a Brazilian feel, but also defined by ...

Album Review

Eivind Aarset: Dream Logic

Read "Dream Logic" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 15, 2012

The ingredients are all electric on guitarist Eivind Aarset's Dream Logic: plugged-in guitar and bass; programming; samples; dictophone; and electronics. The resulting atmospheric layering of sound with subtle dynamics and inorganic drones could be described as sterile, but what a beautiful, mysterious sterility it is.The Norwegian guitarist has contributed to several ECM Records recordings, including trumpeter Jon Hassell's Last Night the Moon Came Came Dropping Its Clothes on the Street (2009) and trumpeter Arve Henriksen's Cartography (2008), to ...

Album Review

Stephen Gauci: Thunk!

by Mark Corroto
December 14, 2012

If the subject of an album of covers songs is pianist Thelonious Monk, then the approach invariably is reverence or its opposite, insolence. Bands either worship at Monk's alter or attempt to out-Monk Monk by counterfeiting eccentricity or outlandishness. To quote the great man, “You've been making the wrong mistakes."One band not making those wrong mistakes is saxophonist Stephen Gauci's quartet. Its eight Monk covers begin with a bold confidence and ply a determined vigor to this famed ...

Album Review

Drew Paralic: Wintertime Tunes Of Drew Paralic

Read "Wintertime Tunes Of Drew Paralic" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 14, 2012

While the cold chill of winter seems to jump out of the cover of composer/arranger Drew Paralic's EP-length ode to the snowy season, the music contained within isn't really icy fare. Paralic puts together a brief set of wintry originals that are as inviting as a fire place on a late December evening. The Brooklyn-born composer doesn't play a lick of music on this 26-minute recording, but he retains top billing. He earns it by bringing a ...

Live Review

2012 Voodoo Experience: New Orleans, Louisiana, October 26-28, 2012

by Mike Perciaccante
December 14, 2012

2012 Voodoo Experience City Park New Orleans, LA October 26-28, 2012 While an epic and catastrophic storm bore down on the Northeast coast of the U.S., a “storm" of another type descended upon New Orleans (a city not unfamiliar with catastrophic storms). New Orleans' 14th Voodoo Experience was a musical celebration featuring world-class food, art and interactive opportunities scattered throughout the city's fabled City Park.The festival amusement park area included a Ferris wheel, ...

Live Review

Second “Louie” Awards Gala: New York, NY, December 4, 2012

by Daniel Kassell
December 14, 2012

Louis Armstrong House Museum 2012 GalaThe Manhattan PenthouseNew York, NYDecember 4, 2012While waiting their turn to play as the Louis Armstrong Centennial Band, trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, banjoist James Chirillo, tubaist David Ostwald and drummer Marion Felder enjoyed a great meal before the Second Annual Louis Armstrong House Museum Gala on December 4, 2012 on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. MC Michael Cogswell--21-year Director of the Museum and a former musician--recognized everyone ...