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.

Extended Analysis

Mose Fan Fan: Musicatelama

by Chris May
July 6, 2012

Mose Fan FanMusicatelamaSterns2012Considering the barbarism of Congo's Belgian colonial regime, which stripped the country of everything bar the light bulbs when independence was won in 1960, it is a wonder that music as beautiful Congolese rumba was created in the late 1940s and 1950s. But the style transcended the circumstances in which it was born (and went on to influence popular music across much of west, central and east Africa during the ...

Album Review

Motian Sickness: The Music of Paul Motian: For the Love of Sarah

Read "For the Love of Sarah" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 6, 2012

The parts of the drum set, viewed individually or as a collective whole, fit neatly under the “percussion" heading in the musical instrument world, yet Paul Motian rarely seemed to view them as objects to be struck. Motian found a way to finesse the cymbals, flirt with the drums and free the drum set from the shackles of firm placement and strict time. His painterly approach to playing, which helped to give the Bill Evans Trio its organic identity, set ...

Book Review

Hull, Hutchison, Strasser: The Music Business and Recording Industry

by Howard Mitchell Wade
July 6, 2012

The Music Business and Recording IndustryGeoffrey P. Hull, Thomas Hutchison, Richard Strasser384 pagesISBN-10: 0415875609Routledge2010Geoffrey P. Hull, Thomas Hutchison, and Richard Strasser wrote The Music Business and Recording Industry as “a comprehensive, introductory textbook focused on the three income streams in the music industry." The book provides a solid grounding in the inner workings of the music industry in the US, with some emphasis given to the global market.

Album Review

Majamisty TriO: Mistyland

Read "Mistyland" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 6, 2012

Supreme virtuosity and intense lyricism come together on Majamisty Trio's Mystiland. Both the group and record are named after Erroll Garner's composition that serves as leader Maja Alvanović's theme song, and is also the only standard on an otherwise all-original disc from the pianist. She imbues Garner's masterpiece with a breeziness that masks the complexities of her Interpretation, letting a sublime gracefulness shine through. Alvanović, a professor of classical piano at Serbia's Novi Sad University, has also ...

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Book Review

Sibylle Zerr: Picture Infinity - Marshall Allen & The Sun Ra Arkestra

by Ian Patterson
July 6, 2012

Picture Infinity: Marshall Allen & The Sun Ra Arkestra Sibylle Zerr 152 pages, paperback ISBN: 978-3-00-035497-7 Self Published 2011Half a dozen books covering the life, times and music of enigmatic big band leader Sun Ra have appeared since his death in 1993, aged 79. Detailed biography, collections of interviews, early writings, poetry and street corner pamphlets give substantial insight into his artistic and philosophical roots. Weightier, academic tomes have studied the impact of ...

Album Review

Magic Malik: Alternate Steps

Read "Alternate Steps" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
July 5, 2012

Flutist Malik Mezzadri grew up on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and moved to France to study at the conservatory in Marseille when he was 17. There he would win the first prize in flute; for more than twenty years, his subsequent idiosyncratic career as Magic Malik has seen him energetically flitting about the territory where jazz gives way to other musical forms: contemporary classical, pop, various kinds of experimentation. He has often organized his own groups' music in the ...

Album Review

Joe Alterman: Give Me The Simple Life

Read "Give Me The Simple Life" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
July 5, 2012

There's a tension for many young jazz musicians, between the desire to start recording and the rather contrary need to develop technically and aesthetically before going public. Sometimes there is no tension: Joe Alterman is a case in point. The pianist may be a mere stripling in his early 20s, but he has the technique, the understanding and, most importantly, the feel of a musician who's been immersed in his chosen music for decades. Give Me The Simple Life, his ...

Extended Analysis

Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus: Didymoi Dreams

by John Kelman
July 5, 2012

Sidsel Endresen & Stian WesterhusDidymoi DreamsRune Grammofon2012There was a time when a live performance was a one-time event; something experienced once by an audience, never to be experienced exactly that way ever again. Live recordings were costly affairs, and if the particular performance lined up for recording didn't turn out to be a great one--or if there were other factors involved, like a bad piano--well, the artist was, as they say, SoL. ...

Album Review

Steve Davis: Gettin' It Done

Read "Gettin' It Done" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 5, 2012

Trombonist Steve Davis has never had a problem getting things done. He instantly joined the slide-wielding elite when he graduated from the Hartt School's Jackie McLean Institute in 1989 and joined up with drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. That gig jump-started his career and he's never looked back. Stints with McLean and pianist Chick Corea followed, helping to raise his profile within the jazz community, and a steady stream of sideman work, leader offerings and dates with the collective super ...

Behind the Lens With...

Behind the Lens With Yves Dorison

by Yves Dorison
July 5, 2012

Meet Yves Dorison: I'm a independent photographer since several years only and I kept my job in a French school as School Counsellor. Most of my work consists of jazz photography. For the past few years I have worked with musicians for their press relations. I made a book with the French author Alain Gerber called The Way You Look Tonight, with 75 pictures and 75 poems (not available anymore alas! ). I currently work with a young ...