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

Kuala Lumpur International Jazz Festival: 19-20 May, 2012

by Ian Patterson
June 8, 2012

KL International Jazz Festival Kuala Lumpur Convention CenterKuala Lumpur, MalaysiaMay 19-20, 2012The 19th and 20th of May, 2012 will long be remembered by jazz lovers in Kuala Lumpur as the day jazz came to town. The 13 acts that performed on the stage of the KL Convention Center made history by inaugurating the KL International Jazz Festival. For those attending, feelings were of pride and a certain sense of relief that, finally, this great Asian ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Damon K Clark

by AAJ Staff
June 8, 2012

Meet Damon K Clark: Born in Los Angeles, California, Damon K. Clark was raised by two musically eclectic parents. His mother enjoyed the sounds of Motown as well as musical theater, while his father was partial to jazz and classical music.From an early age, Clark exhibited artistic talent in several mediums such as drawing, painting, wood work, sculpture, fabrics, as well as landscape design and architecture. However, his passion was always music. Clark started voice lessons ...

Album Review

Cynthia Felton: Freedom Jazz Dance

Read "Freedom Jazz Dance" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 8, 2012

Vocalist/academic Cynthia Felton established herself right out of the gate with two artist-specific tribute albums that were stacked with A-list guests and highlighted her supple and soulful vocals. Felton's debut--Afro Blue: The Music Of Oscar Brown (Self Produced, 2009)--was a welcome nod to an underappreciated figure in jazz, and her journey through the world of constantly lauded jazz giant Duke Ellington was a worthy follow-up, but a third single-figure album would have been too predictable. Instead, Felton wisely broke from ...

Album Review

Johan Randen: Summary

Read "Summary" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 8, 2012

Johan Randen is amassing a notable reputation in Europe as a nascent guitar-slinger and session ace. On 24 year-old Swede's third solo outing, Randen conveys guile and exemplary technical acumen. The album also signifies a resume that highlights the guitarist's diverse bag of tricks and comprehensive vernacular, while projecting a comfort zone within several genres. With guest musicians lending a hand on several pieces, Randen also performs on bass, piano, and keyboards. Randen doesn't reinvent the wheel, but ...

Album Review

Susie Arioli featuring Jordan Officer: All The Way

Read "All The Way" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 7, 2012

Vocalist Susie Arioli's performances on All The Way are all about impact through intimacy. Arioli's laidback and understated vocals don't fall in line with the textbook definition of “powerful," but her ability to create highly emotive atmospheres in cloistered and relatively calm surroundings marks her as a powerful singer nonetheless. For this, her seventh studio affair, Arioli and her right hand man, guitarist Jordan Officer, tackle standards in their own inimitable fashion. Mellow moods tend to dominate ...

Album Review

Tom Tallitsch: Heads Or Tales

Read "Heads Or Tales" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
June 7, 2012

Tenor saxophonist Tom Tallitsch makes his Posi-Tone debut with Heads Or Tales, a welcome addition to that label's impressively strong roster of straight-ahead and swinging musicians. Tallitsch has a warm tone, a lyrical and flowing style and an ability to craft solos that add to the narrative of his compositions: qualities that make the tunes--all but one his own compositions--immediately accessible, yet capable of rewarding repeated listening with fresh revelations.While Heads And Tales is his label debut, it's ...

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

June 2012

by Mr. P.C.
June 7, 2012

Dear Mr. P.C.:When people use big words to describe their music, is that supposed to make it better? Like I know a bassist who says he's “contextualizing" his music. Why does he do that? Bassist Uses Lofty Language

Dear BULL: He's practicing Grantspeak, of course. A few decades ago, granting agencies grudgingly started funding jazz projects. But how can their panelists judge the applications when they know nothing about jazz music?

Take Five With...

Take Five With Michael McNeill

by AAJ Staff
June 7, 2012

Meet Michael McNeill: Michael McNeill has become an integral part of Buffalo, NY's thriving jazz and improvised music scene, performing with bands led by Kelly Bucheger and Ravi Padmanabha, and co-leading a quartet with John Bacon. He's also collaborated with trumpet legend Paul Smoker on projects of standards and of original compositions. McNeill also performs with and composes for the New Buffalo Jazz Octet, which the Buffalo News has called “a veritable who's who list of killer regional ...

Album Review

Ballister: Mechanisms

Read "Mechanisms" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 7, 2012

The patrons for this live date must have been sitting on the edge of their seats throughout this exhilarating performance captured at a Chicago venue. With eminent proponents of the Chicago free-jazz sector wreaking havoc and Scandinavian drumming hero Paal Nilssen-Love adding his perennial doses of pop and sizzle, the trio's brazen and unrelenting attack often exceeds anticipated avant-garde paradigms. Containing three extended workouts, the band pushes the proverbial envelope to interstellar proportions. The nineteen-minute opener, “Release Levers," ...

Album Review

Eyal Vilner Big Band: Introducing The Eyal Vilner Big Band

Read "Introducing The Eyal Vilner Big Band" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 7, 2012

Most contemporary big band music is either of the heavily arranged, progressive jazz variety or the light-swing, Glenn Miller orchestral type played mainly for the benefit of nostalgic dancers. It is therefore refreshing to hear an ensemble that embraces the exuberance of mid-20th Century large groups and simultaneously delivers a bop-ish and elaborate sound. Introducing the Eyal Vilner Big Band opens with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's boisterous “Woody'N You." The musicians, driven by Yonathan Rosen's propulsive drumming, weave ...