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

Wendy K: Just For a Thrill

Read "Just For a Thrill" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
July 8, 2012

A professional actress with a long successful career on the other side of the camera as a film and television casting director (running her own firm and collaborating with many talented directors), Wendy Kurtzman (as Wendy K) now focuses on what she's always loved the most: singing. On Just For a Thrill, K expands her horizons, evolving into the singer and recording artist of which she has always dreamed. The vocalist enters the jazz world on the lighter side with ...

Behind the Lens With...

Behind the Lens With Lorenzo Di Nozzi

by Lorenzo Di Nozzi
July 8, 2012

Meet Lorenzo Di Nozzi: I am a stage photographer. I live between Milan, Madrid and Barcelona, where I work as official photographer of the Theatre Palau de la Musica Catalana. I am also the official photographer of the Barcelona Gospel Festival and the Voll-Damm Jazz Festival of Barcelona. Gear: Nikon D700;Lenses: 70-200 f2.8 VRII; 85 f.18; 50 f1.4Teachers and/or influences? I was lucky...I studied with Fernando Marcos y ...

Extended Analysis

Ten Freedom Summers

by John Sharpe
July 8, 2012

Wadada Leo Smith Ten Freedom Summers Cuneiform Records 2012 Without doubt Ten Freedom Summers is the crowning achievement of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's distinguished career to date. Years in the making, the complete sequence of 19 songs, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, was recorded live at Los Angeles' Red Cat club in 2011, producing over four hours of superbly nuanced, invigorating music. Southwest Chamber Music, under the direction of Jeff von ...

Album Review

Manuel Valera: New Cuban Express

Read "New Cuban Express" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 7, 2012

Pianist Manuel Valera has been liberally mixing and melding Cuban forms with modern jazz ideals since his first record--Forma Nueva (Mavo Music, 2004)--put him on the map, but his methods have changed and evolved. He expanded his aural framework by working a woodwind quintet into the musical fabric of Vientos (Anzic Records, 2007), which showed glimpses of his more reflective side, and he took standards to task, tackling the music on his own terms on the winning Currents (MAXJAZZ, 2009). ...

Album Review

Mikkel Mark Trio: Mikkel Mark Trio featuring Luther Thomas

Read "Mikkel Mark Trio featuring Luther Thomas" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
July 7, 2012

Alto-saxophonist Luther Thomas joined pianist Mikkel Mark for this concert at the Christiana Jazz Club in Copenhagen on December 1, 2007. The program of standards on the resultant Mikkel Mark Trio featuring Luther Thomas works well, profiling the free jazz approach of Thomas with the more structured improvisations of Mark.Thomas and Mark are both protagonist and antagonist as they lay down an appealing sense of balance. The arrangements unfold to let Thomas swerve into unfettered highlands as Mark ...

Album Review

Budman/Levy Orchestra: From There To Here

Read "From There To Here" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
July 7, 2012

An appropriately-titled debut from the Budman/Levy Orchestra, From There To Here features 24 of the finest players in the Los Angeles area, plus a four-piece string section, superbly interpreting twelve compositions from composer/arranger/trombonist/co-leader Jeremy Levy co-leader of the group. San Franciscan saxophonist Alex Budman is the other leader of an ensemble formed in 2007 and, like the album title suggests, came to LA from elsewhere for the chance to document some great jazz.Budman recorded several albums with the ...

Behind the Lens With...

Behind the Lens With Pat A. Robinson

by Pat A. Robinson
July 7, 2012

Meet Pat A. Robinson : My love for photography began in junior high school, starting with a plastic Kodak film camera, as a means to meet people and start new friendships.I dreamed that the art of photography would be my life's work. I'm a self-taught photographer. My skills advanced further by taking photography, writing, and taking journalism-related courses and workshops. Coursework led to an internship at the Associated Press under the direction of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer ...

Album Review

Bill Carrothers: Family Life

Read "Family Life" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
July 7, 2012

Pianist Bill Carrothers gets personal in Family Life. Entering the stream of Americana flowing straight down the middle of jazz, Carrothers produces his Kinderszenen (1838) after German composer Robert Schumann, or, at the very least, his Woodland Sketches (1896) after American composer Edward MacDowell. Family Life is is a carefully constructed set of musical miniatures capturing a national essence, that indefinable thing that made Aaron Copland Aaron Copland, George Gershwin George Gershwin, Duke Ellington Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk Thelonious ...

Album Review

Teofilovici and Miroslav Tadic: Vidarica

Read "Vidarica" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
July 7, 2012

There are types of music that grow on you with every new Listen, and then there are types of music that fade away when played too often. Vidarica--the collaboration between guitarist Miroslav Tadić and vocal duo the Teofilovic brothers-- definitely is one of those rarely crafted albums that grows with each new listen. In a way, this is a dream pairing and reveals them to be a perfect match for each other. It has been a very long time coming, ...

Album Review

Dan DeChellis Trio: My Age of Anxiety

Read "My Age of Anxiety" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
July 6, 2012

If anything in jazz approaches the status of a commodity, it would be the piano trio. The inevitable comparisons run the gamut from Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett to Cecil Taylor and, more often than not, those benchmarks are either unattainable or unsustainable. A more accessible measure may be in the ability to differentiate one group's unique contribution from the plethora of similarly structured groups. The Dan DeChellis Trio meets that distinction with its debut, My Age of Anxiety--but here, ...