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

Dom Minasi Septet: The Bird, the Girl and the Donkey II

Read "The Bird, the Girl and the Donkey II" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
December 11, 2012

Following the successful realization of the powerful, free jazz collective headed by Dom Minasi on The Bird, The Girl And The Donkey (Re:konstruKt, 2010), the guitarist decided to expand his collective from a quintet to a septet. He kept the same attitude: intense, muscular and fiery playing from the first second till the last, but with varied dynamics and more power. The title of the second volume, The Bird, the Girl and the Donkey II--a live recording ...

Album Review

Benedikt Jahnel: Equilibrium

Read "Equilibrium" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
December 10, 2012

He may be better known internationally to ECM fans for his participation in the pan-cultural Cyminology, but German pianist Benedikt Jahnel has been devoting just as much attention to his multinational trio featuring Spanish bassist Antonio Miguel and American drummer Owen Howard. Releasing the trio's debut in 2008 on Viennese guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's Material Records imprint, Jahnel's work with Max.Bab has rendered superficial comparisons to Esbjörn Svensson, but if the world is looking for someone to pick up the mantle ...

Album Review

Joan Torres: Before

by James Nadal
December 10, 2012

Fledgling musicians coming up in these accelerated techno times can benefit from pursuing individual projects without having to rely on major labels or other people to make decisions for them. Joining this crop of young lions is bassist Joan Torres, who is out to make it on his own terms with All is Fused, without ever relinquishing control or quality.Having honed his skills through Boston's Berklee College of Music programs while studying and playing in Puerto Rico, it ...

Album Review

Jeremie Ternoy Trio: Bill

by Eyal Hareuveni
December 10, 2012

Pianist Jérémie Ternoy's trio has developed a unique aesthetic. Lyrical--almost ethereal--and highly suggestive music loaded with spaces and breath, this French pianist trio's third recording, coming four years after Bloc (Zig-Zag Territoires, 2008), highlights the trio's warm and close interplay, as well as its rich language. Bill is framed by eight pictures/compositions, each one sketching a clear pattern that sets its thematic development and scope of invention. Within these patterns, the compositions blossom organically, with great reserve ...

Album Review

Gato Libre: Forever

by Dave Wayne
December 10, 2012

Gato Libre is the most unexpected manifestation of the multifaceted collaboration between trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii. This understated quartet of bass, acoustic guitar, trumpet and accordion creates a sound world that is totally unique: serene, atmospheric, and seemingly contrary to the duo's other collaborative musical ventures. Gato Libre's music isn't a fusion or cross-cultural adventure, though it seems to have started out that way. Instead, Tamura, Fujii and their colleagues have devised a music that exists sui ...

Interview

Branford Marsalis: Confident MF Playin’ Tunes

by R.J. DeLuke
December 10, 2012

Musicians evolve, and so do bands, if they're allowed to stay together long enough to develop their musical relationships--that certain chemistry. Such is the case with Branford Marsalis, the outstanding saxophonist who has been through so much in his storied career. It's also the case with his band, which he has kept together, with few personnel changes, for more than a decade. They are a tight unit that continues to ripen. That band, and its saxophonist, are going ...

Extended Analysis

Kurt Rosenwinkel: Star of Jupiter

by John Kelman
December 10, 2012

How time flies. While he's been busy with a number of other projects--his collaboration with the Portuguese Orchestra de Jazz de Mataosinhos on the ambitious Our Secret World (Wommusic, 2010) and the intimate, standards-laden Reflections (Wommusic, 2009)--it's been four years since guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel last released a small group record focusing largely on new original music. 2008's The Remedy (Wommusic) was an exhilarating live recording from New York City's The Village Vanguard, and if his subsequent releases have been as ...

Album Review

Hal Galper Trio: Airegin Revisited

Read "Airegin Revisited" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 9, 2012

Hal Galper's Airegin Revisited is exhilarating. The pianist has been working at his artistry for more than a half century, and he is moving surely into the “elder statesman of jazz" category, riding the furious wave of several distinctive and idiosyncratic trio recordings. Galper, like alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and pianist Martial Solal, has gone deeper into the music than seems possible, taking a great many standards and unleashing them, reshaping the familiar tunes with his unwavering vision into a ...

Live Review

Charles Owens Quartet: New York, NY, November 18, 2012

by David A. Orthmann
December 9, 2012

Charles Owens QuartetSmalls Jazz ClubNew York, NYNovember 18, 2012In 1994, Charles Owens, then a student at the New School, talked then-owner Mitch Borden into letting him run the Sunday afternoon jam session at Smalls, a fledgling basement club that had rapidly become an important incubator of young talent. The tenor saxophonist eventually earned the coveted Friday night slot, and held it for some seven years before recording Charles Owens Quartet, Live at Smalls Vol. 1 ...

Opinion

Fado em Si Bemol: Fado... With a Pinch of Jazz

by Ana Francisca Gonçalves Pereira
December 9, 2012

Jazz reinvents itself every day, in any way, like a chameleon transforms Itself to match its surroundings. It is thanks to this ability that jazz's place in the world has been firmly cemented; from a musical point of view, there seem to be no physical or spiritual boundaries to what musicians can arrange with this ever-evolving genre, even if that means going against convention or even breaking with tradition.It comes as no surprise, then, that more ...