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

Bro/Knak: Bro/Knak

by John Kelman
August 22, 2012

Following three consistently fine recordings as a leader--2009's The Stars Are All New Songs Vol. 1, 2010's Balladeering and 2011's Time (all on the Danish guitarist's own Loveland imprint)--in addition to international visibility gained through work with Paul Motian on the drummer's Garden of Eden (ECM, 2006) and trumpeter Tomasz Stańko's Dark Eyes (ECM, 2010), Jakob Bro takes a considerable detour with Bro/Knak, a collaboration with Danish electronic musician Thomas Knak. Bro's laconic and, perhaps, more to the point melancholic ...

We Travel the Spaceways

The Grand Canyon

by Mark Corroto
August 22, 2012

Flying over the Grand Canyon on your way to Las Vegas is one way to see that huge gash in the earth, and standing on the banks of the Colorado River is another. From one perspective depth cannot be appreciated, from the other the enormity of it all. Such is the case with modern improvised music. Listeners often maneuver in the dark, catching a glimpse here and a glance there, but to take in the enormity of it is quite ...

Album Review

The Brubeck Brothers Quartet: LifeTimes

Read "LifeTimes" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 22, 2012

Jazz has proven, time and time again, that the bonds of family feed the creative soul. Everybody from the Jones brothers and the Marsalis family to the 3 Cohens have found satisfaction in the connection that comes with blood and blues, DNA and musical dynamism, and kinship of the artistic and literal varieties; The Brubeck Brothers are no exception. Chris and Dan Brubeck, the offspring of the one and only Dave Brubeck, having been playing and recording ...

Catching Up With

Antonio Sanchez: Doing It All

by Ian Patterson
August 22, 2012

Antonio Sanchez has been guitarist Pat Metheny's first-choice drummer for the past decade. The tremendous finesse, propulsion and extensive vocabulary that Sanchez possesses have illuminated not only Metheny's recordings, but those of heavyweights such as vibraphonist Gary Burton, saxophonist Michael Brecker, and pianists Chick Corea and Danilo Perez. In recent years, Sanchez has been much in demand, and his collaborations many. Sanchez's debut as a leader, the hard-blowing Migration (Cam Jazz, 2007) marked a new chapter in his ...

Album Review

Lionel Loueke: Heritage

Read "Heritage" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
August 21, 2012

Lionel Loueke's two previous Blue Note recordings--Karibu (2008) and Mwaliko (2010)--displayed his usual virtuosity as a guitarist/vocalist who links his West African Beninese musical roots with a modernist jazz outlook that is uniquely his own. On Heritage, he's assembled new musicians and hooks up with innovative pianist Robert Glasper, who coproduced and performs on the album. Glasper's work as a producer--as witnessed on his acclaimed Black Radio (Blue Note, 2012)--is the perfect fit with Loueke's eclectic ideas. ...

Album Review

Nick Gianni's Evolution: Nick Gianni's Evolution

Read "Nick Gianni's Evolution" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 21, 2012

Saxophonist Nick Gianni's Evolution is a latter day fusion band, forged in the fires of New York's downtown scene. Nublu--an off-the-beaten-path club in Alphabet City--served as the incubator for this group, as it blends funk, electronica, free jazz and worldly influences to come up with a style all its own. The music on its self-titled CD is built around the steady pillars of drummer Dalius Naujokaitis and bassist Dmitry Ishenko, who provide an ever-funky bottom, upon which ...

Live Review

Richard Sussman Quintet: Nyack, NY, July 22, 2012

by David A. Orthmann
August 21, 2012

Richard Sussman QuintetNyack Jazz Week at the Turning Point CafeNyack, NYJuly 22, 2012Unlike the performance of certain forms of popular music, in which musicians dutifully strive to reproduce perfect versions of tracks from a record, a jazz CD release party proceeds from entirely different expectations. Befitting the music's emphasis on improvisation and the element of surprise, a live set of previously recorded compositions serves as a jumping off point for differences born in the heat ...

Album Review

Hikashu: Uragoe

Read "Uragoe" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 21, 2012

Hikashu is the main outfit of extraordinary Japanese vocal artist Koichi Makigami, whose career has covered over thirty years, countless personnel changes and equally inestimable collaborations with vocal improvisers and other free-spirited musicians across the States and Europe. Uragoe is an excellent representation of this unique quintet: it rocks, it improvises, and it is funny and eccentric. The quintet serves as a trusty vehicle for Makigami's boundless energy, theatric and acrobatic vocal articulations, and idiosyncratic ability to ...

Bailey's Bundles

Cheryl Bentyne Sings the Winners

by C. Michael Bailey
August 21, 2012

It is not so hard to sing jazz music, at least, if such is measured by the glut, deluge, plethora or superabundance of jazz vocal recordings released each season. Where bandleader and composer Duke Ellington once opined that that there are only two types of music, good and bad, you could say that some of this music is good and some is superior. The vast majority of jazz vocal recordings are good. Very few, necessarily, are superior. So, while it ...

Live Review

Montreal Jazz Festival: Montreal, Canada, June 28-July 7, 2012

by Greg Thomas
August 21, 2012

Festival International de Jazz de MontréalMontréal, CanadaJune 28-July 7, 2012From the time of the airplane's descent to the airport in Montréal, I knew something was different and perhaps special about this place. Instead of a square or rectangular grid style of suburban housing plots, from my window I saw circular formations of housing, many with swimming pools in the back yards.That's a cool design for a neighborhood, I thought. Similar ideas would come to mind ...