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

Rich O'Brien: Hot Potato

Read "Hot Potato" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 6, 2012

Bassist Rich O'Brien is part of the Bristol music scene-a vibrant and creative group of musicians based in and around this west of England city. O'Brien can be found at the soulful and funky end of the musical spectrum, with his debut album, Hot Potato, mixing jazz, R&B, funk and soul into an enjoyable if undemanding set of original compositions.O'Brien acknowledges the influence of bassist Marcus Miller and Soulive on his playing and writing. There are also suggestions ...

Interview

Randy Napoleon: Playing for the Jukebox Crowd

by Trish Richardson
November 6, 2012

When guitarist Randy Napoleon titled his latest effort, The Jukebox Crowd (Gut String Records, 2012), the jukebox he referred to was not some nostalgic 1950s era one that sits idly in a corner. Rather, she is a much sleeker, hipper, and more modern version. She is cool and, of course, jazzy, and she commands center stage. One trait she does share with her older cousin is that she is filled with songs that are worth paying to hear.According ...

Album Review

Carrie Wicks: Barely There

Read "Barely There" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 6, 2012

Vocalist Carrie Wicks' debut was 2010's I'll Get Around To It (OA2 Records). She slipped her original composition, the disc's title tune that she cowrote with bassist Ken Nottingham, onto the CD, along with a bunch of well-chosen songs from the 1940s and '50s, with Elvis Costello's timeless “Almost Blue" nudged in there, too. It all fit. It was a classic jazz outing featuring a deep-in-the-tradition singer, with exquisite accompaniment headed up by pianist Bill Anschell-a top debut of the ...

Live Review

Anat Cohen at Kennedy Center Jazz Club

by Franz A. Matzner
November 6, 2012

Anat Cohen has received no shortage of accolades of late and her rise is a testament to her stunning capacities on clarinet and saxophone. She is no stranger to Washington, DC audiences either, packing clubs and concert halls from Bohemian Caverns to the Sixth and I Synagogue. Most recently, Cohen filled the Kennedy Center's Jazz Club, where she helped highlight the modernistic trajectory that pianist Jason Moran is charting for the Center's jazz program as its new artistic director.

Album Review

Joe Henderson: In 'N Out

Read "In 'N Out" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
November 6, 2012

Music Matters is extending its reissue run of classic Blue Note records, which has led them to tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson's 1964 session In 'N Out. His third album as a leader for the label, In 'N Out mixes aggressive hard bop with more searching ballads on its way to turning into a musically diverse, first-rate performance. The rhythm section of the opening title track has John Coltrane written all over it, and with drummer Elvin Jones and ...

Album Review

Alex Riel Special Quartet: Full House

Read "Full House" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
November 6, 2012

In 1963, at the tender age of 23, Alex Riel became the house drummer at Montmartre-the Copenhagen jazz club-backing such US giants as Dexter Gordon, Paul Gonsalves, Don Byas, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Kenny Dorham and Archie Shepp. In 2010, he returned to the legendary Scandinavian venue which had recently reopened as a jazz club after being many other things over the years, including a hairdressing salon. Now he was the star of the show, doyen of Danish ...

Album Review

Out to Lunch: No One Left Behind

Read "No One Left Behind" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
November 5, 2012

Out to Lunch's No One Left Behind is comparable to collage- an art technique which integrates incongruent fragments, textures and visual forms into a cohesive work. Led by multi-instrumentalist David Levy, the New York-based ensemble at a cursory glance, might be a considered just another experimental jazz funk band. Yet there's clearly more to be gleaned on proven on their third release. Levy's work with musicians and projects such as Verve Remixed 3 (Universal Records, 2005) is ...

Album Review

Animation: Transparent Heart

Read "Transparent Heart" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 5, 2012

With his second release for this UK-based progressive record label, award-winning saxophonist/composer/bandleader Bob Belden nurtures and perhaps challenges a youthful cast of musicians who are graduates from his alma mater, the University of North Texas. Moving further east, however, the premise for the production, resides within Belden's impressionistic sensibilities of Manhattan. Belden's jazz-fusion applications paint a sinister viewpoint of the Big Apple, where intermittent rays of light slice through foreboding alleyways and busy thoroughfares. Here, the ensemble melds ...

Live Review

Live From Old York: Juan Martin, Chantel McGregor, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Andy Fairweather Low & Wilko Johnson

by Martin Longley
November 5, 2012

Juan Martin's Musica Alhambra Quintet National Centre For Early Music October 10, 2012 Spanish guitarist Juan Martin lives in Málaga, Andalucia, deep in flamenco country. He's also very familiar with UK concert stages, spending much of his time in London. Although stating that his Musica Alhambra project represents a rare meeting between flamenco and Arabic music, this isn't actually such a flighty concept given the embedded connections dating back to Moorish days. Collaborations between ...

Album Review

Dave Pell: Remembers John Kirby and Big Small Bands

Read "Remembers John Kirby and Big Small Bands" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 5, 2012

Historical recreations of music are nothing new. Every tribute recording ever released is one. In the 1980s and '90s, classical music went through its “period instrument-performance practice" phase, where the entire Baroque, Classical and early Romantic repertoires were recreated using instruments and metronomic markings from the 18th and 19th Centuries. In the late 1950s, jazz was going through an interesting transition that had its genesis a decade earlier in Miles Davis' famous Birth of the Cool (Capitol, 1957). In 1949, ...