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

Daniel Ori: Emuna

by Jerry D'Souza
May 19, 2012

Bassist Daniel Ori's early upbringing has colored his work as a musician. Exposed first to classical music by his grandmother, he was later influenced by rock music. But these were just two posts on a journey that now finds Ori firmly established on the New York contemporary jazz scene. A winner of the 2009 ASCAP Jazz Composers Award, Ori has gone on to incorporate Middle Eastern, African and Latin influences in his compositions.Ori has a striking range. He ...

Album Review

Espen Eriksen Trio: What Took You So Long

Read "What Took You So Long" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
May 18, 2012

When Rune Grammofon first introduced In the Country with This Was the Pace of My Heartbeat, it touted the young Norwegian trio's 2005 debut as the label's first “jazz record." This is true, perhaps, using a broader definition that may rankle dogmatists more aligned with the American tradition; but over the course of the next seven years, In the Country distanced itself further, adopting a stronger predilection for song form. Rune's 2010 debut by the fledgling Espen Eriksen Trio, You ...

Live Review

Tierney Sutton Band at Dazzle

by Geoff Anderson
May 18, 2012

Tierney Sutton BandDazzleDenverMay 6, 2012Most attractive female singers with long blonde hair simply market themselves under their own name. Not so Tierney Sutton. She's not a solo act. She's part of the Tierney Sutton Band. Sure, she's the focal point onstage (a long blonde mane will do that), but the band is a true collaboration, having been together for about 20 years. Besides performing together, the band collectively creates its own arrangements of jazz standards. ...

Album Review

Theo Jackson: Jericho

Read "Jericho" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 18, 2012

Singer, pianist and songwriter Theo Jackson lives in Oxford, of university fame, and his debut album Jericho is named after an area of the city rather than the ancient town that suffered so much from an excessively loud horn section. There's no need to fear excessively loud horns here: Jackson and his quartet build drama with more subtlety than that and engineer Derek Nash ensures that recording quality is high.Jackson's voice is capable of the occasional bluesier, rougher ...

Album Review

A Small Dream in Red: In the Language of Dreams

Read "In the Language of Dreams" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
May 18, 2012

Singer Nora McCarthy and saxophonist Jorge Sylvester constitute one of the most creative duos in today's jazz scene. Their group, A Small Dream in Red (named after painter Vassily Kandinsky's 1925 masterpiece), made a deep impression with its eponymous 2005 Sundown Jazz debut. McCarthy and Sylvester continue to mine their rich vein of creativity with In the Language of Dreams, offering a powerful cornucopia of musical vision and spiritual aspiration.Several factors make A Small Dream in Red distinctive. ...

Album Review

Human Spirit: Dialogue

Read "Dialogue" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 18, 2012

The three players who now call themselves Human Spirit--drummer Matt Jorgensen, trumpeter Thomas Marriott and alto saxophonist Mark Taylor--have a very successful track record of recording together. They teamed up on Jorgensen's magnificent Tattooed by Passion (2010) and Another Morning (2008), and on Marriott's strange and splendid Crazy: The Music of Willie Nelson (2008) and Flexicon (2009), all on Seattle's Origin Records. But the idea of the group's name came certainly from Marriott's Human Spirit (Origin Records), teaming the trio ...

Album Review

Ned Evett: Treehouse

Read "Treehouse" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 18, 2012

Nashville-based fretless guitarist Ned Evett is classically trained, but he has also derived influence from the likes of guitarist Adrian Belew (King Crimson, Frank Zappa), who produced Treehouse at his recording studio in the Nashville area. Evett has moved around the U.S., recording several solo and group-centric albums. Shocking audiences with his extraordinary technique within the progressive-rock power trio format or going toe-to-toe with fretless guitar wonder Dave Fuse" Fiuczynski, he's broadened his appeal by opening shows for perennial poll-winning ...

Afrobeat Diaries

Part 25 - Ben Zabo: It's a Blinder - But It's Not Afrobeat

by Chris May
May 18, 2012

Ben Zabo Ben Zabo Glitterhouse Records 2012 The extraordinary success of the musical Fela!, and the resurgence of interest in all things Fela Kuti, has made “Afrobeat" a popular buzzword among label publicists. The invocation is often fanciful; albums claiming to be Afrobeat releases regularly land at Afrobeat Diaries which have little, if anything, to do with the music. The latest such arrival is from the Malian group Ben Zabo. “Malian Afrobeat may ...

Bailey's Bundles

Fine & Mellow - Three Voices and Deborah Shulman/Larry Zalkind

by C. Michael Bailey
May 17, 2012

Summit Records hits a quiet home run with the release of Three Voices' Transitions and Deborah Shulman & Larry Zalkind's Lost in the Stars: The Music of Bernstein, Weill & Sondheim. Three VoicesTransitionsSummit Records2012 Three Voices is the trio of flugelhornist Kim Pensyl, vibraphonist Rusty Burge and bassist Michael Sharfe. While a vibraphone-anchored trio is not unheard of, it is a welcome and even novel change from piano- ...

Album Review

Mary Halvorson Quintet: Bending Bridges

Read "Bending Bridges" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
May 17, 2012

The widely celebrated 2010 debut of Mary Halvorson's Quintet, Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12), confirmed the young guitarist's growing reputation with a selection of urbane compositions as impressive as her idiosyncratic improvisations. Bending Bridges expands upon the previous album's concepts, offering further proof of Halvorson's burgeoning talent, reinforced by an even greater sense of accord within the ensemble.Bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith once again support the vivacious frontline of trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who ...