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

Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter: Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter

Read "Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 17, 2012

This uncompromising set of free improvisation challenges the very basic concepts of what music is. As seminal improvising guitarist Henry Kaiser writes in his illuminating liner notes: “forget about melody, harmony and rhythm for the moment and listen to everything else that you can hear going on." And there is much going on in terms of structural, timbral, spatial and conceptual complexity in these eight non-idiomatic, on-the-spot improvisations. Houston-based Sandy Ewen experiments with the electric guitar with ...

Album Review

The Joe La Barbera Quintet: Silver Streams

Read "Silver Streams" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 17, 2012

If there is a stream of any kind that runs through Silver Streams by The Joe La Barbera Quintet, it is the flow of energy--intense to the point of ignition--that is tapped. No meandering “Old Man River," this team drinks from the source with gusto and unified creativity. That shouldn't be a surprise, since La Barbera and his mates--each a Los Angeles first call musician--have performed together for decades.La Barbera, one-third of a celebrated jazz family, with brothers ...

Catching Up With

Kurt Elling: Stories from New York

by R.J. DeLuke
October 17, 2012

Singer Kurt Elling seems to be always on the go, working with his fine quartet and lending his artful vocals to a variety of other projects as time allows. Whatever the situation, he brings high aesthetic values and standards. He likes to investigate different musical possibilities under the jazz umbrella, which he embraces without reservation. “I don't deny it. I certainly identify that way," he says of being labeled a jazz singer. “I feel that's the approach that ...

Album Review

Elephant9: Atlantis

by John Kelman
October 16, 2012

Ever a collective, Elephant9's Atlantis represents the Norwegian power trio's most egalitarian outing yet. 2008's Dodovoodoo and 2010's Walk the Nile were, for the most part, dominated compositionally by keyboardist and Supersilent/Humcrush coconspirator Ståle Storløkken. Atlantis is more evenly split between Storløkken's four tracks to bassist Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen's three, but most importantly demonstrates a continued evolution away from Elephant9's early touchstone--American drummer Tony Williams' influential Lifetime--towards ear-shattering, progressive rock-leaning, improv-heavy space rock, a fusion rendered even more nuclear by ...

Extended Analysis

The New York Comes to Groningen Art Ensemble: A Beautiful Friendship

by Bob Kenselaar
October 16, 2012

The New York Comes to Groningen Art EnsembleA Beautiful Friendship: New York Comes to Groningen, Volume 2Prince Claus Conservatory2012 In addition to his active schedule performing in a wide range of jazz contexts on both sides of the Atlantic, bassist Joris Teepe has been director of Jazz Studies for more than a decade at the Prince Claus Conservatoire in the Dutch city of Groningen. In fact, it was Teepe's brainstorm that spawned ...

Album Review

Anat Cohen: Claroscuro

Read "Claroscuro" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 16, 2012

Art begets art on Anat Cohen's Claroscuro. The Israeli-born, New York-based multi-reedist leaves the confines of Benny Goodman's world behind, following her clarinet-only sojourn into king of swing territory, Clarinetwork: Live At The Village Vanguard (Anzic, 2010), with a wide-ranging musical treatise on the balance between light and dark. Cohen addresses each end of the color spectrum on its own terms during this eleven-song program but, more often than not, plays one off the other within a single performance. She's ...

Album Review

Erik Honore and Greta Aagre: Year of the Bullet

Read "Year of the Bullet" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
October 16, 2012

Impressive in its reach and warmth, the music of keyboardist/sampler/lyricist Erik Honoré and vocalist Greta Aagre on Year of the Bullet feels like a perfect brushstroke of sound calligraphy, full of cinematic passages that are designed to evoke a broad emotional spectrum. This is the duo's third release and first signed under their names--previously, they were known as Elsewhere. Years of the Bullet is an Italian expression describing the hard '70s, when Italy was plagued by political ...

Album Review

Torben Waldorff: Wah-Wah

Read "Wah-Wah" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 16, 2012

Danish-born, Sweden-based guitarist Torben Waldorff takes the leading role on Wah-Wah as main soloist, putting his melodic integrity, and a natural leadership that stresses tight group interplay, up front. All his original compositions feature the guitarist's gift for structuring engaging melodies with rich and sophisticated harmonic patterns and tasteful and economic solos, all varied in moods and colors but never indulging in excess. Waldroff's American quartet, featured on this album, toured with these tunes right before heading to the recording ...

Album Review

Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Live

by Dan McClenaghan
October 16, 2012

Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch and his group Ronin joined the ECM Records roster in 2006 with their label debut, Stoa. Since then they have produced a new ECM set every two years, with Holon (2008), Llyría (2010), and now their first recorded-in-concert set for the label, the double-disc Live. Ronin's music has been called Zen Funk, ritual groove music, and mechanistic minimalism. Live proves the group is just as tight onstage as it is in the studio. This ...

Interview

Dafnis Prieto: Experiments in Spontaneity

by R.J. DeLuke
October 16, 2012

Improvisation--music in the moment, eloquently once called “the sound of surprise"--takes place in genres besides jazz. But in America's indigenous art form, it is a cornerstone. The degree to which a song might contain improv varies greatly. Sometimes it's hard to tell in a highly arranged piece where the musicians are taking liberties. Other times its obvious an elongated solo is being composed on the spot. Consider the idea of a band that's pretty much making everything up ...