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

Torben Waldorff: Wah-Wah

Read "Wah-Wah" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
November 5, 2012

Danish guitarist Torben Waldorff's sixth album as a leader is a collection of elegant, subtle and intensely melodic compositions that simultaneously sound innovative and accessible. Wah-Wah is also his first without a saxophonist, leaving him alone in the frontline. His, long and satisfying solos are often tinted in muted colors as his intricate improvisations remain within the melodies' frameworks. His tasteful, complex and intimate sound on the opener, “Circle and Up," showcases his virtuosity without flaunting it. ...

Interview

John Patitucci: The Gentle Soul

by Esther Berlanga-Ryan
November 5, 2012

Every jazz musician inhabits a private inner world of amazing energy and light, where they live, dream and fall deeply in love with their unique craft while creating this extraordinary and improvised music. Through the years, some become masters of their instruments, and a selfless interaction with the world takes place, where they share what they learned and even help others find their own voice. This way, paying it forward becomes an act of brotherhood, a present for the future ...

First Impressions

Peter O'Mara: My Time

by AAJ Staff
November 5, 2012

Australian guitarist Peter O'Mara is a thirty year veteran of the German jazz scene, and given his association with Klaus Doldinger's Passport that spans two decades, I was curious what direction his solo album My Time (Marangani Records, 2012) would take. By Alan Bryson Tasteful restraint, a mellow after hours sound that represents an appealing alternative to smooth jazz. It's an album (four covers, six original titles) that works well as mood music, yet the interaction ...

Album Review

Iiro Rantala: My History Of Jazz

Read "My History Of Jazz" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 4, 2012

It is perhaps an odd history of jazz that opens and closes with a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach, but My History Of Jazz is a very personal history, the history of Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala. His previous album, Lost Heroes (ACT Music, 2011), was a solo piano recording; full of mesmerizingly beautiful music, it was one of the year's finest releases. My History Of Jazz doesn't quite match the consistency of Lost Heroes, but its best moments are on ...

Album Review

Michaela Rabitsch & Robert Pawlik Quartet: Voyagers

Read "Voyagers" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 4, 2012

Austrian vocalist/trumpeter Michaela Rabitsch and guitarist Robert Pawlik have fronted a quartet and performed as a duo for the past 15 years, releasing three CDs ahead of the present Voyagers. Concentrating on original compositions that lean in a commercial-popular direction, the pair has received a good deal of buzz. The majority of Voyagers is prepared very much with a broad European audience in mind. Rabitsch's vocals are smoky (she is no female Chet Baker-as the press has called her-because she ...

Extended Analysis

The Wood Brothers: Live Volume Two - Nail & Tooth

by Doug Collette
November 4, 2012

The Wood BrothersLive Volume Two: Nail & ToothSouthern Ground2012While the Wood Brothers presented its live album, Sky High (Southern Ground, 2012), as a document of how its music has evolved since it resumed its partnership in 2004, it really didn't depict the progression as clearly as its successor does. As a companion piece Nail & Tooth illustrates how far the duo has come as collaborators, particularly as percussionist/vocalist Jano Rix has become ...

Album Review

Sean Conly / Michael Attias: Think Shadow

Read "Think Shadow" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 4, 2012

This is an intimate meeting between old friends. Bassist Sean Conlyand Michäel Attias who collaborated before on Conly's Re: Action (Clean Feed, 2012) and on Attias' recent Spun Tree (Clean Feed, 2012). But this recording features both musicians who work now as the Think Shadow duo. Here, they improvise on the spot, creating melody, rhythm, and harmony, searching for a mutual language. The fifteen duets are subdued and restrained. Conly and Attias leave enough space for each ...

Album Review

Anglagard: Viljans Oga

Read "Viljans Oga" reviewed by Alex Franquelli

by Alex Franquelli
November 4, 2012

Complexity can sometimes be considered a form of art in itself and it seldom follows simplicity. Complexity is also impressionism in its purest form. Its faithful depiction of the present may be deemed naïve and unsophisticated, but it remains an unfiltered, pure representation of the being. Less than 20 years ago, Änglagård's albums, Hybris (Mellotronen, 1992) and Epilog (Exergy, 1995), caused a stir in the progressive world. The blending of the archetypes of progressive Scandinavian folk and fusion was a ...

Hardly Strictly Jazz

Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams For Beginners

by Skip Heller
November 4, 2012

Fifty years after his death, Ernie Kovacs is de rigueur. Mainstream, even. His angular, imaginative approach to humor was impossible to imitate, but his influence on television-specifically television comedy-is intractable. He's the Thelonious Monk of the small screen. And just trying to play in a Monkish style always points out that Monk is Monk and nobody else is, so it is with TV and Kovacs.The jazz world often assumes that the avant-garde thinks and operates independent from the ...

Album Review

Harry Allen / Scott Hamilton: ‘Round Midnight

Read "‘Round Midnight" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 3, 2012

Johannes Brahms was called “the keeper of the flame" for Beethoven. Tenor saxophonist Harry Allen and Scott Hamilton are the same keepers for a tenor tradition that existed from the swing era through hard bop. The pair champions a sound and method established by Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young: a broad, dense tone, both confident and hesitant. Allen and Hamilton highlight a stylistic history that ended in 1956 when Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane recorded “Tenor Madness." This ...