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

Nicky Schrire: Freedom Flight

Read "Freedom Flight" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 14, 2012

Breaking into the jazz vocal world is no easy feat. Aspiring singers often find themselves angling for crumbs of attention in this overcrowded field, and having a pleasant voice doesn't count for much anymore. Originality in approach, a proclivity for picking songs that stretch the definition of jazz and an elastic understanding of the voice's role in this music have become increasingly important for those looking to make their mark in this domain, and newcomer Nicky Schrire deserves high marks ...

Live Review

Frode Gjerstad & Ståle Liavik Solberg: Jerusalem, Israel, June 28, 2012

by Eyal Hareuveni
July 14, 2012

Frode Gjerstad & Ståle Liavik Solberg Uganda Jerusalem, Israel June 28, 2012 The best way to experience free improvised music is live, close to the musicians--and if possible, in small places. The Uganda club in Jerusalem turned out to be a perfect space for Norwegian reed player and master of free improvisation, Frode Gjerstad, and his fellow countryman and frequent collaborator, drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg, in their first gig in Israel, part ...

Album Review

Bruce Kaphan Quartet: Bruce Kaphan Quartet

Read "Bruce Kaphan Quartet" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 14, 2012

What can be more American than jazz played on pedal steel guitar? After all, both are United States' cultural products. Yet pedal steel guitarists are rarely found outside the different sub-genres of country music. Enter Bruce Kaphan, a virtuoso of this instrument and a talented composer who peppers Bruce Kaphan Quartet with abundant jazzy sensibilities. Kaphan includes a couple of standards in the repertoire, allowing the steel guitarist and his band mates ample opportunity to demonstrate their ...

New York Beat

Caribbean Heritage Month: Dion Parson at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola

by Nick Catalano
July 14, 2012

From its inception, one of the goals of this column has been to record the impact that jazz has made on the myriad musical traditions of our planet. Since I started writing about this subject a couple of decades ago, the amount of international folk music, dance forms, vocal stylings, variant scales, and other often spurious localisms that jazz has impacted has increased exponentially. The sheer number of these traditions was dramatically illustrated in June with the appearance of Dion ...

Album Review

Roberto Magris: One Night In With Hope And More...Vol.1

Read "One Night In With Hope And More...Vol.1" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
July 14, 2012

Italian composer and pianist Roberto Magris is an internationally renowned artist reminiscent of piano masters like Kenny Drew, McCoy Tyner and the legendary Bill Evans. A veteran jazz musician, Magris has recorded eighteen albums in a career that has spanned over three decades and, with One Night In With Hope And More...Vol. 1, continues his collaboration with JMood Records, documenting a set of trio music by some forgotten bebop masters. With bassist Elisa Pruett and legendary drummer Albert Tootie" Heath, ...

Book Review

Joaquim Paulo and Julius Weidermann: Jazz Covers

by Lewis J Whittington
July 14, 2012

Jazz CoversJoaquim Paulo and Julius Wiedemann560 pagesISBN: 978-3-8365-2406-3Taschen2012Writers Joaquim Paulo and Julius Wiedemann have assembled a stellar exhibit by way of these oversized Taschen books. The two volumes, packaged in a slipcase, are a beautiful collection of album cover art that document the global jazz scene from 1940-90. They are comprised of pristine transferred images and represent both commercial and fine art trends.The covers evoke specific ...

Book Review

Ted Gioia: The Jazz Standards - A Guide to the Repertoire

by C. Michael Bailey
July 13, 2012

The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the RepertoireTed Gioia544 pagesISBN: 0199937397Oxford University Press2012Author and musician Ted Gioia and, by proxy, his readers, are having a pretty good year. The second edition of his informative The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2011) was recently published, vastly expanding its sections addressing recent history. Gioia's long awaited dictionary of the jazz standard book, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the ...

Album Review

Rich Halley: Back From Beyond

Read "Back From Beyond" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 13, 2012

Over a half a century after saxophonist Ornette Coleman launched the free jazz movement the genre is going strong thanks to such individualistic practitioners as tenor saxophonist Rich Halley. Halley's sound has matured and crystallized over the course of dozen or so albums, all critically acclaimed. On his fourteenth release as a leader, Back From Beyond, he showcases his versatility and virtuosity, switching from quiet lyricism on “Opacity" to unbridled fury on “Spuds." Regardless of style, his ...

Album Review

Harris Eisenstadt: Canada Day III

Read "Canada Day III" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
July 13, 2012

Drummer Harris Eisenstadt has gained steam on the progressive jazz front, largely due to his complex and harmonically variant compositions amid glittering support from like-minded musicians who often lead solo careers as well. His Canada Day band reemerges with a strong program, seeded in multidimensional jazz-tinged spinoffs, featuring free form segments, intricately executed structural components and other factors.Bassist Garth Stevenson launches “The Magician of Lublin," with a creaky and cranky arco bass riff, segueing the band into a ...

Album Review

Berthet, Vonlanthen, Bondi: Silo

by Glenn Astarita
July 13, 2012

Experimental guitarist Vinz Vonlanthen shares equal billing with a motivated team on Silo, set upon asymmetrical pulses, bustling movements, and passages shaded with inquisitive-like thematic constructions all enhanced by a superb audio engineering process. Essentially, the trio goes on a journey to seek those often-elusive answers via enthusiastic interplay amid a few torrential downpours.Vonlanthen's electric guitar work spans rock to avant-garde improvisation and generates a model for free-flight expansionism. He also imparts numerous textural components, where the band ...