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

Aram Shelton: Everything For Somebody

Read "Everything For Somebody" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 8, 2012

Alto saxophonist Aram Shelton cannot break his Chicago habit. We're not talking that monkey woman Joe Williams used to sing about, back in the day. Shelton, who left Chicago a few years back for the Bay area of California, returns to the windy city often, both physically and for its sound.His second quartet recording, like These Times (Singlespeed Music, 2010) lands smack-dab on the Midwestern map. The saxophonist recruited three Chicagoans--saxophonist Keefe Jackson (Jason Stein Quartet, Josh Berman, ...

Book Review

Bob Willoughby: Jazz - Body and Soul

by Chris May
August 8, 2012

Jazz: Body and SoulBob Willoughby176 pages, hardback, slipcaseISBN: 978 1 901268 58 4Evans Mitchell Books2012To the wider world, Bob Willoughby is the Los Angeles photographer who took a raft of iconic photographs of movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. During the earlier part of this period, as the first-call photographer for studios wishing to document the making ...

Album Review

Rich Halley 4: Back From Beyond

Read "Back From Beyond" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
August 8, 2012

It's perplexing that a jazz saxophonist of Rich Halley's caliber has never recorded for a large jazz label such as ECM or Soul Note/Black Saint. Perhaps a victim of geography (he's chosen to live in rural Oregon almost his entire life) and circumstance (he maintained a career as a wildlife biologist) more than anything else, the tenor man is far too busy composing, gigging, and recording to complain. With the inauguration of his own label, Pine Eagle Records, the whole ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss and The Rob Scheps Big Band: Our Path To This Moment

Read "Our Path To This Moment" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
August 8, 2012

A veteran jazz artist and educator, Oregon-based Ezra Weiss is much more than a fine pianist; he is a talented composer and arranger nominated for Best Arranger under the Rising Star category of Downbeat Magazine's 60th Annual Critics Poll of 2012. Since graduating from the country's oldest music school (Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory of Music), Weiss has produced five recordings as well as penning countless compositions for various high school and college music departments. Weiss has always yearned to produce a ...

JazzLife UK

The Art Of The Song

by Bruce Lindsay
August 8, 2012

Singing is possibly the most universal of the arts, certainly of the musical arts. The human voice is the most portable of instruments, always there, always available. It's also the most expressive of instruments: almost every instrument invented in history has at some time or other been used to mimic the voice; none have truly succeeded.Ask most people to name a few great musical stars of the past 100 years and the chances are that the majority of ...

Catching Up With

Grant Stewart: The Sound of Hard Bop Today

by Marta Ramon
August 8, 2012

Grant Stewart is regarded as one of the most influential tenor sax players of the contemporary jazz scene. After nine formative years of intense learning and playing in his hometown of Toronto, the 19 year--old Stewart took his saxophone and bought a flight to New York. Once there, he did things his own way from day one: he decided his best bet would be to seek tutelage from musicians he liked, such as trumpter Donald Byrd, pianist Barry Harris and ...

Album Review

Gary Porter: Can't Keep Still

Read "Can't Keep Still" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 8, 2012

"Oh Mr. Porter, what can I do? I wanted to go to Birmingham and they've taken me on to Crewe." So went the refrain of an old Music Hall tune. Porter, a sextet from Essex in the south of England, doesn't take its name from that great old song, nor is it named for an equally old alcoholic beverage. The band is named, more pragmatically, after its leader: singer and guitarist Gary Porter. It's a workmanlike, practical, band name. The ...

Album Review

Kat Parra: Las Aventuras de Pasion!

Read "Las Aventuras de Pasion!" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
August 7, 2012

A collaboration between vocalist Kat Parra and trombonist/arranger Wayne Wallace would be reason enough to celebrate ¡Las Aventuras de Pasión!, the duo favoring a slightly more languorous than usual Afro-Cuban jazz, richly played and brightly sung. Wallace has mined this vein on a string of remarkably good records over the last decade or so. Highlights of this Afro-Cuban warmth include Parra's bilingual cha-cha-cha “Oye Papi," and Murray Low's elegant and altogether apposite piano playing.But there is more to ...

Big Band Caravan

Budman-Levy Orchestra / Jens Wendelboe Big Band / DiMartino-Osland Jazz Orchestra

by Jack Bowers
August 7, 2012

Budman / Levy OrchestraFrom There to HereOA2 Records2012 If this splendid album, recorded two years ago (2010), is in any way emblematic of what lies ahead, the long-range outlook for big band jazz is indeed bright and auspicious. Saxophonist Alex Budman and trombonist Jeremy Levy have assembled a group of A-list musicians from the Los Angeles area who glide easily through Levy's elaborate compositions and arrangements with nary a lapse nor ...

Album Review

David Bixler: The Nearest Exit May Be Inside Your Head

Read "The Nearest Exit May Be Inside Your Head" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 7, 2012

Saxophonist David Bixler's ties to pianist Arturo O'Farrill have had positive and negative consequences. The positives are a raised profile, a fairly steady gig for twelve years and counting, and the opportunity to paint atop brilliantly arranged Latin platforms of varying shapes, colors and sizes for audiences around the world. So, one might wonder, what could possibly be negative about this connection, and the answer comes with one simple word: pigeonholing. This saxophonist isn't bound to a ...