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.

Take Five With...

Take Five With Remy Le Boeuf

by AAJ Staff
November 8, 2012

Meet Remy Le Boeuf: Remy Le Boeuf was born in Santa Cruz, California, and in 2004 he moved to New York City where he and his twin brother, Pascal, perform regularly with Le Boeuf Brothers-a modern jazz group known for blending jazz with classical, indie-rock, and electronic influences. On their latest album In Praise of Shadows (Nineteen-Eight Records), the Le Boeuf Brothers expand upon the jazz tradition by continuing to sculpt their compositions after the initial recording process, ...

Album Review

Andras Schiff: Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Clavier

Read "Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Clavier" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 8, 2012

Johann Sebastian Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier) BWV 846-893, is a collection of two sets of 24-pairs of preludes and fugues composed in every major and minor key between 1722 and 1742, while Bach was in appointment at Kothen and Leipzig, respectively. Ostensibly for teaching and practice, the whole of Das Wohltemperierte Clavier has been a touchstone of harpsichordists and pianist since the advent of recording. In 1955, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould recorded Bach's Goldberg ...

Album Review

Kalle Kalima & K-18: Out to Lynch

Read "Out to Lynch" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 8, 2012

Berlin-based, Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima continues to project his aural impressions of the world of movies. This time he focuses on the eccentric characters and locations from the films of David Lynch, following his abstractions of director Stanley Kubrick on Some Kubricks of Blood (TUM, 2009). Kalima is not attempting to re-score or rearrange the original soundtracks from these films. Instead, he exposes his feelings while watching these films, in some cases twenty years later, and filters these initial feelings ...

Album Review

Caroline Davis: Live Work & Play

Read "Live Work & Play" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
November 7, 2012

It's easy to become jaded in an ocean of music where many recordings sound so much alike. But every now and then something piques even great curiosity, as is the case with Live Work and Play , the captivating debut by saxophonist/composer Caroline Davis. Her abilities as a musician and leader signal not just another new voice, but one that is acutely focused, reminiscent of another striking female Chicagoan, saxophonist Matana Roberts. The factors that have shaped ...

Catching Up With

Lee Konitz: What True Improvising Is

by Bob Kenselaar
November 7, 2012

Lee Konitz is legendary as one of the great individualists in jazz, an art form that has always placed an extraordinary high value on individualism and unique forms of expression. “I've pretty much dedicated myself to trying to figure out what true improvising is," he says, “as opposed to playing what you know and getting loose with it. I probably have a bit of a unique place in being able to fool around with famous tunes the way I do."

Album Review

Fredrik Nordstrom: String

by James Pearse
November 7, 2012

On his tenth leader recording, String, adventurous Swedish saxophonist Fredrik Nordstrom pairs his jazz trio (sax, bass, drums) with a string trio (violin, viola, cello) in an attempt to tackle ten of his original compositions and arrangements.As well as writing and arranging albums under his own name, Nordstrom is an experienced co-leader and sideman, which is reflected in his confident and thoughtful playing style. He has performed extensively in his native Sweden and across Europe with world-class musicians ...

Album Review

David Virelles: Continuum

Read "Continuum" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 7, 2012

Pianist David Virelles adopts an unusual strategy for his second album and first on Pi Recordings. Eschewing the piano pyrotechnics which illuminated his debut, Motion (Justin Time, 2008), he opts for an exploration of Cuban folklore and its manifestation through poetry, storytelling and art. Inspired by Afro-Cuban religious practice, Virelles has created a set of episodic tone poems and throbbing rhythms. Consequently there are only glimpses of the talent which has seen him named as one of four young pianists ...

Album Review

Selvhenter: Frk. B. Fricka

Read "Frk. B. Fricka" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 7, 2012

The Danish all-women Selvhenter quintet (often a quartet in live performance) may be the most exciting outfit to emerge from Scandinavia in recent years. This band, part of the art collective eget værelse and the alternative scene of Copenhagen, has alreadt been active for five years, performing with influential outfits like the Swedish-Norwegian trio The Thing and Japanese drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki's Orquesta libre. Selvhenter honed a sound all its own--an uncompromising, boundless energetic one that blends the aesthetics of experimental ...

Live Review

2012 Umea Jazz Festival: Umea, Sweden, October 24-28, 2012

by John Kelman
November 7, 2012

Umeå Jazz Festival Umeå, Sweden October 24-28, 2012 Nestled about 20 kilometers from the coast of the Baltic Sea in northern Sweden, connected by the Ume River, sits Umeå (pronounced: ooo-me-oh), a town of about 120,000 (including the surrounding region). Small it may be, but since 1968 it has hosted an annual jazz festival that takes place the last week of October and acts as kind of final big splash before the winter and long nights ...

Opinion

The Importance of Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas

by C. Michael Bailey
November 7, 2012

Into my heart on air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. --A.E. Houseman, A Shropshire Lad (1896) Vince Guaraldi A Charlie Brown Christmas Concord Music Group 2012 (1988)