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.

Live Review

Westchester Jazz Orchestra: Dobbs Ferry, NY, September 29, 2012

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
October 11, 2012

Westchester Jazz OrchestraMaster's SchoolDobbs Ferry, NYSeptember 29, 2012The much-acclaimed Westchester Jazz Orchestra (WJO) opened its 10th season with a program called West Side Stories, based on that brilliant and timeless 1957 Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. In keeping with the WJO's ongoing educational objectives, the concert began with a conversation among four of the evening's arrangers: WJO's artistic director and conductor, pianist Mike Holober, trombonist Pete McGuiness, trumpeter Tony Kadleck, and pianist ...

Album Review

Sam Newsome: The Art of the Soprano, Vol. 1

Read "The Art of the Soprano, Vol. 1" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 11, 2012

Sam Newsome's The Art of the Soprano, Vol. 1 is a solo soprano saxophone outing, While not unprecedented--Steve Lacy and Evan Parker have done this before--it certainly is unusual. The straight horn all alone: no bass, no drums, no piano or guitar. Sounds lonely, and a little too sonically spare.But no one has gone deeper into solo soprano than Newsome. The saxophonist, who honed his artist chops in trumpeter Terence Blanchard's groups on tenor sax in the early ...

Album Review

Angelo Comisso: Stabat Mater

Read "Stabat Mater" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 11, 2012

Italian composer/pianist Angelo Comisso took on a challenging task when he decided to write contemporary music to one of the most powerful medieval hymns, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, that meditates on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother during his crucifixion, attributed to Franciscan Jacopone da Todi. This hymn has been set to music by many composers, among them Joseph Haydn, Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi and Arvo Pärt. But Comisso arrangement of this sorrowful hymn does not attempt ...

Album Review

Michael Stephans / Spatial Edition: Open Spaces

Read "Open Spaces" reviewed by Chuck Koton

by Chuck Koton
October 11, 2012

Michael Stephans--educator and published author of prose and poetry--also happens to be a master jazz drummer and percussionist. The Miami-born Stephans, who these days lives in the surprisingly jazz-heavy Pennsylvania Poconos, has performed with world renowned horn players like Pharoah Sanders, Dave Liebman and Bennie Maupin, as well as Grammy-winning pianist, Alan Broadbent, among others. On Open Spaces, Stephans and Spatial Edition perform a dynamic and memorable mix of mostly original music.The quartet kicks off with the title ...

Album Review

Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Live

by John Kelman
October 11, 2012

Change can be good, though there's often a sense of loss when a significant adjustment happens. Honing his very specific Ritual Groove/Zen Funk music for more than a decade, Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch was hit with a particularly big change when Ronin's founding bassist, Bjørn Meyer, left in 2011 to pursue personal projects. The more recent departure of equally longstanding percussionist Andi Pupato on September 1, 2012, leaves Ronin--with new bassist, Thomy Jordi, in tow--to forge ahead as a quartet, ...

Profile

Bruce Kamsinky: Entrepreneur, Businessman, Musical Diplomat

by Bruce Klauber
October 11, 2012

Saying that Bruce Kaminsky is, after almost 40 years, among the most sought-after bassists on the eastern US coast doesn't even begin to tell the whole story. Or saga, if you will. He maintains that being a musician is synonymous with being an entrepreneur. In line with that, his entrepreneurial activities have focused on the invention and marketing of the electronic upright KYDD bass, the portable electric instrument classroom lab called the KYDD Lab, and the KYDD sound ...

Album Review

Jacob Garchik: The Heavens (The Atheist Gospel Trombone Album)

by Mark F. Turner
October 10, 2012

Brooklyn-based Jacob Garchik's The Heavens (The Atheist Gospel Trombone Album) recalls the prose of author James Weldon Johnson's famous 1927 book of poetry, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. where Garchik's stunning trombone work is likened to the poem's protagonist: a charismatic preacher with the ability to deliver awestruck messages. Garchik's trombone is the messenger, yielding powerful orations that are spirited and persuasive, like a sentence taken from Weldon's book that reads:“He intoned, he moaned, he pleaded-he ...

Interview

Bobby Zankel: Revisiting Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”

by Victor L. Schermer
October 10, 2012

John Coltrane's iconic A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965) is a jazz perennial, continuing to attract and move listeners around the globe nearly five decades after it was released. Great musicians, such as guitarists John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana, and saxophonist Joshua Redman cite its profound influence on their career. The Branford Marsalis Quartet , with A Love Supreme Live (Marsalis Music, 2004, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, on A Love Supreme (Palmetto, 2005), The Turtle Island String ...

Album Review

Graham Dechter: Takin' It There

Read "Takin' It There" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 10, 2012

A quartet is usually a self-contained collection of four, but sometimes these groupings serve as part of a greater whole; guitarist Graham Dechter's foursome does both. Dechter, drummer Jeff Hamilton, bassist John Clayton and pianist Tamir Hendelman serve as the rhythmic power source for the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra but they can also stand on their own in fine, grooving fashion. Dechter, in his mid-twenties at the time of this recording, has been keeping company with Clayton and ...

Live Review

Bobby Zankel: Philadelphia, PA, September 22, 2012

by Victor L. Schermer
October 10, 2012

John Coltrane Birthday Celebration with Bobby Zankel's Warriors Of The Wonderful Sound40th Street Field, University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PASeptember 22, 2012It's unusual to have a jazz milestone take place in a free-for-the-people neighborhood concert on an open urban space, but that is exactly what occurred as saxophonist Bobby Zankel and his avant-garde big band, Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, debuted his stunning arrangement of saxophonist John Coltrane's iconic 1964 recording, A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965). Zankel ...