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

Keith Pray: Confluence

Read "Confluence" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 29, 2012

When not leading the 17-piece Big Soul Ensemble, the Soul Jazz Revival group or the New Orleans-style Mohawk Brass Band, bandleader, educator and alto saxophonist Keith Pray fronts a hard-swinging quartet performing at venues in Albany and throughout the Capital District of upstate New York. Confluence is his fifth recording as leader, a project he designed for his working quartet but modified with the addition of guitarist Chuck D'Aloia, an idea that remained percolating after seeing a 1994 gig of ...

Album Review

Dennis Rollins Velocity Trio: The 11th Gate

Read "The 11th Gate" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 29, 2012

For more than two decades, British trombonist Dennis Rollins has played alongside Maceo Parker, Courtney Pine, The Brand New Heavies and others in and around his home base in the United Kingdom. Rollins' first international release, The 11th Gate came about from a simple conversation Rollins had with Pine, who wondered if it was possible for Rollins to record his Velocity Trio in a way that truly reflected the trombonist's personal influences and style.It's no wonder that Pine ...

Live Review

Borneo Jazz 2012

by Ian Patterson
May 29, 2012

Borneo Jazz Festival 2012Miri, Sarawak, BorneoMay 10-12, 2012Borneo Jazz--held in Miri, Sarawak semi-autonomous state, Malaysia--has grown steadily since its inaugural edition in 2005, going from 3,000 spectators seven years ago to over eight thousand today. This growth is a reflection of the successful planning and promotion by the festival organizers and an indication of the Malaysian public's hunger for international music. And on a broader level, perhaps, it's another sign of the growing appeal of jazz festivals ...

Under the Radar

Don Redman: Setting the Template

by Jim Gerard
May 29, 2012

As someone who came to jazz as a young man in the 1970s, I can attest that subsequent generations of both its chroniclers and, even sadder, its practitioners, have succumbed to the peculiarly and regrettable American disease of a-historicism. They've shoved jazz history through a sieve, reducing it from an epic tale of heroic evolution with a cast of hundreds--if not thousands--to a denuded sliver of text that could fit in a single tweet--one that might read like ...

Album Review

Ralph Peterson: The Duality Perspective

Read "The Duality Perspective" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 28, 2012

Balance is often overlooked in music criticism, yet it's such an important aspect in music-making and life. Light doesn't exist without dark, bold only takes shape when placed next to bland and earthbound realities are only truly understood by those who also know how to take flight. Drummer/educator Ralph Peterson understands this better than most, and The Duality Perspective documents his balanced outlook for all to hear. This album is really two records in one, as Peterson ...

Interview

Rick Drumm: Seizing the Day

by Ian Patterson
May 28, 2012

It's good to have dreams, but it's even better to follow them, to see them take shape before your eyes and to live them. Rick Drumm has lived more than one dream. Three years as drummer with NORAD, the North American Air Defense Band, was followed by two years drumming in the famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. After over 1000 performances later, there was hardly a corner of the United States that Drumm hadn't visited. However, Drumm's ...

Album Review

Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos: Carrera

Read "Carrera" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
May 28, 2012

In his first recording since the magnificent arrangements of music of by Cuchi Leguizamon, Domador de Huellas (Sunnyside 2010), pianist Guillermo Klein has reassembled his main musical vehicle, Los Guachos, for Carrera. Here, Klein once again shows why he is such a master of manipulating the voices of the instruments he uses, bringing out subtle variations in tone and color. Moreover, like his mentor, Gil Evans, he is able to nominate the voices he wishes to use to express his ...

Album Review

Dan Clucas's Lost Iguana Ensemble: Do You Know The Ways

Read "Do You Know The Ways" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 28, 2012

There is nothing conventional in the sound worlds of Los Angeles-based composer and cornetist/flutist Dan Clucas. He rarely release an album; his last official release with his Immediately quintet was Exile (pfMentum, 2006), though he released four albums in 2011 on his Bandcamp page, two of which were solo recordings and solos/duos with a computer program. Do You Know The Ways features unique instrumentation for quintet: cello, two drums, tuba and Clucas (on cornet and flute), performing two long compositions ...

Album Review

Rhett Frazier, Inc: Every Day is Saturday

Read "Every Day is Saturday" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 28, 2012

Rhett Frazier, Inc. might be based in East Los Angeles, but its music was first baked in the working class breadbasket of the American Midwest: Songwriter and vocalist Rhett Frazier grew up in Oklahoma, less than half an hour's distance from the home or birthplace of legendary soulmen Roy Milton ("the father of modern R&B") and Lowell Fulson ("Reconsider Baby"). Drummer, synthesizer player and producer Donny Gruendler (a/k/a “Inc.") was born and raised in Detroit. “For me, ...

Live Review

Trondheim Jazz Festival: May 9-13, 2012

by John Kelman
May 28, 2012

Trondheim Jazz FestivalTrondheim, NorwayMay 9-13, 2012 Being Norway's third largest city, next to Oslo and Bergen, means something completely different to being the third largest city in Canada or the United States. With more than 25,000 students in a city of approximately 160,000 people, it's not unlike (albeit a little larger than) Kingston, Canada, another university town whose size places it, however, as that country's 58th largest. But there's more to Trondheim than its ...