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

Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
June 18, 2012

Wadada Leo SmithTen Freedom SummersCuneiform Records2012Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers is four and a half hours of music, spread over four compact discs. The mind struggles to make coherent sense of so large an undertaking. Smith has said that there are no recurring musical motifs; the nineteen pieces--most of them fully-developed suites in their own right, three of them stretching over twenty minutes--stand on their own. Two groups--Smith's ...

Album Review

David Benoit: Conversation

Read "Conversation" reviewed by Jeff Winbush

by Jeff Winbush
June 18, 2012

If a touch of grey makes a man look distinguished, his full head of hair gone grey makes David Benoit positively aristocratic. The knock on Benoit is he makes music that is pleasant yet not memorable and, at times, is dismissed as being lightweight. It's time to reassess that somewhat harsh appraisal as time has been kind to Benoit, as his playing grows stronger and his ideas more interesting.Benoit makes it look effortless, but Conversation works hard at ...

Album Review

Young Magic: Melt

Read "Melt" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
June 18, 2012

Young Magic is an ensemble with a global reach of reference. Its music wanders the territorial edges of music, scoping out where boundaries had been erected and looking beyond them. This open-form aesthetic has resulted in multifaceted type of music that is concurrently exploratory and involving. This trio was founded by Australian producer/singer Isaac Emmanuel, who when disbanded his band to date, Flamingo Crash, and went to travel across the world, simultaneously recording sounds and music on ...

Catching Up With

Wadada Leo Smith: Sounding America’s Freedom

by Franz A. Matzner
June 18, 2012

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has been at the forefront of musical invention for 40 years and has recently entered a late-career renaissance. In May, 2012, this seminal musician released his greatest effort to date, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform), a 30-year in-the-making testament to the power of civil rights and the importance of artistic engagement in social activism. As the United States faces an election, at the heart of which lies race relations, Smith's message of liberty is intended to drive ...

Album Review

Bruce Kaphan Quartet: Bruce Kaphan Quartet

Read "Bruce Kaphan Quartet" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 17, 2012

The pedal steel guitar is so closely associated with American country and western music that its image can scarcely escape that infinite gravity of categorization. Even when it has wobbled its way into jazz, the instrument has always operated beneath the label of “Western Swing" or “Alternative Country." Several notable players have distinguished themselves in the hinge of Western Swing, including Bob Wills' steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, Hank Williams' steel guitarist Don Helms, and Buddy Emmons. Many of the country ...

Album Review

Marzio Scholten: Voids, Echoes and Whispers

Read "Voids, Echoes and Whispers" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
June 17, 2012

For his third release, Marzio Scholten capitalizes on the unexpectedly impressive sophomore effort, World of Thought (OAP, 2010)--a sleeper hit from a then-up and coming guitarist who continues on an upward trajectory--by focusing on chemistry and consistency. Only drummer Bob Roos is gone, replaced by Mark Schilders, while World of Thought guest saxophonist Yaniv Nachum is now a full group member, performing on all but the brief but incendiary guitar/drums duet “Oxygen (Interlude)," where Scholten adds a touch of overdrive ...

Bailey's Bundles

Jazz Singer/Songwriters Part I: Louise Van Aarsen and Rebecka Larsdotter

by C. Michael Bailey
June 17, 2012

We can only hear “My Funny Valentine" so many times presented in so many manners. Writer Scott Yanow, in his book The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide (Backbeat Books, 2008), called for a moratorium on singers recording this and several other songs because, like “Stairway to Heaven" and “Freebird" (for those from behind the Cotton Curtain), we have heard these songs enough. One way that an artist may address standards fatigue is to avoid them altogether and write their own ...

Album Review

Orrin Evans: Flip The Script

Read "Flip The Script" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 17, 2012

Pianist Orrin Evans' last three outings for the Posi-Tone label have been vastly different from one another. He forged new, edgy frontiers as part of the collectively formulated Tarbaby on The End Of Fear (Posi-Tone, 2010), put his own unique stamp on the big band format with the bold Captain Black Big Band (Posi-Tone, 2011), and gave a nod to Philadelphia, the city that formed and nurtured him, on the mostly trio-based Freedom (Posi-Tone, 2011). Flip The ...

Bailey's Bundles

Jazz Singer/Songwriters Part II: Maria Neckam and Tanya Balakyrska

by C. Michael Bailey
June 17, 2012

“Jazz Singer/Songwriters Part I: Louise Van Aarsen and Rebecka Larsdotter"“ featured two new artists standing in the middle of the adult contemporary jazz vocals map. Both discs have elements of mainstream acoustic and mainstream contemporary electric jazz and feature original compositions by the singers themselves. Where Maria Neckam and Tanya Malakyrska differ is in their concerted aim to smash genre definition, making all music one. Maria NeckamUnisonSunnyside2012 Austrian ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Jens Larsen

by AAJ Staff
June 17, 2012

Meet Jens Larsen: Danish Guitarist Jens Larsen took up playing guitar at the age of 12. Fascinated by jazz, he decided to first study in Copenhagen and later to leave for the Netherlands to study and later graduate cum laude from the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. He is now active working as a guitarist, composer and arranger in The Netherlands and performing with Træben throughout Europe.His intelligent style of playing is in perfect balance with ...