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.

Scumbles

Courtney Pine: Suffolk, UK, September 20, 2012

by Sammy Stein
October 21, 2012

Courtney PineSuffolk, UKSeptember 20, 2012Courtney Pine is not so much a musician as an experience. The event was the opening night of the Ipswich Music Festival and the venue was the grand hall of Ipswich High School-grander than most school halls granted but not the sort of venue Pine would normally be associated with. The last time I saw him in action was just over a year ago at Snape Music Festival, where he ...

Album Review

Stephen Riley: Hart-beat

Read "Hart-beat" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
October 21, 2012

The tenor saxophone trio is one of the great, if somewhat underutilized lineups in jazz. Stephen Riley has made a study of the format and delivers a fine addition to a limited canon with Hart-beat. Eschewing piano and leaving the horn to carry the musical weight all by itself is an idea that was recorded by the great Sonny Rollins as early as Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957). That record set a very high standard that is rarely ...

Album Review

Mikolaj Trzaska / Olie Brice / Mark Sanders: Riverloam Trio

Read "Riverloam Trio" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 21, 2012

Mikolaj Trzaska (pronounced “Miko-why Chass-kuh") is not a name which drops off even the most assiduous jazz fan's lips. But on the evidence of this recording, it will become increasingly familiar outside his native Poland. Already the reedman has featured alongside American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee on the excellent Magic (Not Two, 2009), with reedman Ken Vandermark's Resonance Ensemble, and in a spinoff from that aggregation with trombonist Steve Swell under the moniker Inner Ear.Riverloam Trio unites the Pole ...

Hardly Strictly Jazz

Frank M. Young and David Lasky: The Carter Family - Don't Forget This Song

by Skip Heller
October 21, 2012

Frank M. Young and David Lasky The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song 192 pages ISBN 978081988361 Abrams ComicArts 2012 In recent years, the music biography has turned notable corners. The post-punk generation, coming largely from the world of fanzines and urban weekly newspapers, has become a big chunk of the literary establishment, and they've brought with their stylistic practices with them. Editorial expression, format, research procedures-new era. There are obviously ...

Album Review

Narada Burton Greene: Live at Kerrytown House

Read "Live at Kerrytown House" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 20, 2012

Does the world need yet another solo piano album? Well if they are all as enjoyable as this then there would be no doubt as to the answer. Live At Kerrytown House captures veteran pianist Narada Burton Greene in pristine clarity on a well-tuned instrument, for an intimate set from Ann Arbor in 2010. Even though Greene came of age with the likes of saxophonists Marion Brown, Gato Barbieri and Albert Ayler in the 1960s, this set belies his avant-garde ...

Album Review

Roger Davidson Trio: We Remember Helen

Read "We Remember Helen" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 20, 2012

The music business holds claim to more than its share of selfish, self-promoting, greedy individuals who built their fortunes on the backs of others but, within its ranks also exist a certain class of individual that truly looks out for the best interests of the music and the people who make it. Helen Keane, by all accounts, was one of the good ones. Keane, who started out as an A&R scout for CBS and MCA, was best ...

Live Review

Shemekia Copeland: New York, NY, September 27, 2012

by Mike Perciaccante
October 20, 2012

Shemekia Copeland City Winery New York, NY September 27, 2012Shemekia Copeland, the daughter of the late, great blues guitarist Johnny “Clyde" Copeland, is an accomplished blues singer in her own right. She possesses a soulful, smoky voice and can, when needed, whisper a seductive lyric or belt and wail with the best of them. During her career she has opened for The Rolling Stones, performed at The White House and shared the stage ...

Album Review

Moritz Ecker: Die Mikronesische Mafia

Read "Die Mikronesische Mafia" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 20, 2012

Berlin-based guitarist Moritz Ecker's five-part composition for an ensemble of nine musicians features his main characteristics as composer: versatility that is not bound to any orthodox definition of jazz; a flair for emotional, dramatic narratives; and a healthy sense of irony, as can be grasped from its title, Die Mikronesische Mafia. The composition was recorded in 2009. Ecker's guitar sketches out the cyclical, skeletal lines of each of the composition's five parts, later fleshed out by his ...

Live Review

Michael Wolff: Half Moon Bay, CA, September 23, 2012

by Bill Leikam
October 20, 2012

Michael WolffTribute to Cal TjaderDouglas Beach HouseHalf Moon Bay, CASeptember 23, 2012Early in the week prior to this performance, the Douglas Beach House was already nearly sold out and yet, when the doors opened that Sunday afternoon, people still clamored to get in to hear some of vibraphonist Cal Tjader's original band members--one of whom was Michael Wolff, musical director for the show and a unique pianist.Wolff said, “I met Cal ...

Album Review

Michael Formanek: Small Places

Read "Small Places" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 20, 2012

Small Places is bassist Michael Formanek's follow-up to 2009's The Rub and Spare Change, his critically acclaimed ECM debut as a leader. While Formanek's sophomore effort for the label features the same high profile sidemen, it differs in that the lineup rehearsed the material live before heading into the studio with producer Manfred Eicher, where every nuance of the working group's finely-honed rapport was captured in crystalline clarity.Seamlessly blending the composed and improvised, alto saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist ...