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.

Live Review

John Geggie / Lorne Lofsky / Joe Sullivan / Jim Doxas: Ottawa, Canada, May 26, 2012

by John Kelman
June 14, 2012

John Geggie / Lorne Lofsky / Joe Sullivan / Jim DoxasGeggie Concert SeriesNAC Fourth Stage, Ottawa, CanadaMay 26, 2012For his final show of the 2011/2012 Geggie Concert Series, Ottawa bassist John Geggie put together a group of Canadian musicians who are all deserving of broader international recognition. A down-the-middle mainstream jazz set, it still had plenty of surprises in store for the near-capacity crowd at the National Arts Centre's Fourth Stage, and if it was ...

Album Review

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra: Evocations

Read "Evocations" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 14, 2012

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, led by pianist, trumpeter, composer and music director Mark Harvey, celebrates its sixth album for Leo Records. Recorded at various venues in the Boston, MA, area, the orchestra's empirical gait surges forward, as no two compositions are distinctly alike. Variety is always an underlying factor within the band's manifesto; from military orchestral progressions to avant-garde expressionism and a few nods to convention, the musicians tie quite a few genres and stylizations into a broad soundstage.

Live Review

Sun Trio: Helsinki, Finland, May 22, 2012

by Anthony Shaw
June 14, 2012

Sun TrioLaulumiehet RestaurantHelsinki, FinlandMay 22, 2012We never really listen to music with only our ears; even in a dark room, lying back with headphones, our mind fills with images, sensations and other paraphernalia. Similarly, seeing Sun Trio perform in the hallowed surroundings of Helsinki's Laulumiehet Restaurant, it was impossible to disassociate the three young Finnish musicians from the oil paintings of illustrious musicians whose images hang on the wood-paneled walls all around the artists and ...

Album Review

Chris Cortez: Aunt Nasty

Read "Aunt Nasty" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
June 14, 2012

A businessman as well as an active musician, Chris Cortez has been very busy producing music through his own Blue Bamboo Music record label--so much so that Aunt Nasty is his first recording in five years. A guitarist and excellent vocalist as comfortable in rock and blues as he seems to be when performing a jazz standard, this sixth solo effort provides an eclectic selection of three vocal and nine instrumental tracks, presented in a varied landscape. There are reinterpretations ...

Album Review

Alexander Hawkins Ensemble: All There, Ever Out

Read "All There, Ever Out" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
June 13, 2012

It has been the Holy Grail of jazz since its inception: to carve out the perfect balance between the written and the spontaneously invented. While All There, Ever Out may not be the definitive statement, English pianist Alexander Hawkins has taken a bold stab at a new version of the equation, combining composition and improvisation in exciting and unpredictable ways. A rising star on the London scene, oft times in the company of saxophonist Evan Parker or drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, ...

Record Label Profile

Rudi Records: Reviving the Avant-garde

by Jakob Baekgaard
June 13, 2012

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the avant-garde as: “an intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts especially in the arts." In jazz, the expression, at least to some, has negative connotations, describing music that is introverted, noisy, pretentious and/or difficult to understand. That negative image usually results from the fact that the music requires of the listener patience and a wide open mind; it doesn't replicate the predictable listening provided by pop product.In spite of the prejudice and challenges ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery: By A Little Light

Read "By A Little Light" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
June 13, 2012

A unique blend of traditional jazz, classical, Eastern European folk, and modern idioms, Mat Ulery's By A little Light is steeped in a melancholic grace and shadowy beauty that provides the two-disc set its unifying force. Throughout, Ulery has chosen detail and the oblique over the grandiose to etch his dusky scenes and portraits that seem to capture discreet emotional moments the way master photographers can distill vast meaning within a single frame.Bespeaking Ulery's consistency of approach there ...

Extended Analysis

Medeski, Martin & Wood: 20

by Doug Collette
June 13, 2012

Medeski, Martin & Wood20Indirecto Records2012In an ongoing celebration of its twentieth anniversary, Medeski Martin & Wood released twenty original recordings in digital form over the course of 2011. Sequenced in the order in which the tracks were released, the collection as a whole flows with the expert pacing of an MMW performance and, in truth, with much the same artful pacing as their best studio albums, such as Combustication (Blue Note, 1999).

Album Review

Francois Houle 5 + 1: Genera

Read "Genera" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 13, 2012

Celebrated Canadian progressive jazz clarinetist Francois Houle enlists an all-star support system for a comprehensive album that radiates numerous slants amid ethereal backwashes, scrappy improvisation and softly explorative passages. “Albatros" highlights the sextet's manifold capabilities. Propagated by Houle's buoyantly lilting stride, the band generates a deceptively complex primary theme based on odd-metered unison phrasings, spanning free-bop undertones and pianist Benoit Delbecq's ephemeral classical fills. “Albatros" serves as a solid vehicle for the band to stretch during the bridge, ...

Live Review

Jerry Dammers' Spatial A.K.A Orchestra at the Norfolk And Norwich Festival 2012

by Bruce Lindsay
June 13, 2012

Jerry Dammers' Spatial A.K.A OrchestraTheatre Royal Norfolk And Norwich FestivalNorwich, UKMay 26, 2012It only took a quick glance at the stage to confirm that this was to be no ordinary jazz gig: Jerry Dammers' Spatial A.K.A Orchestra doesn't do ordinary. Dammers, leader and keyboard player of '70s ska band The Specials, formed his Spatial A.K.A Orchestra in 2006 in tribute to Sun Ra. Since then, the band's repertoire has expanded, the visuals have become ever ...