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

Jack Davies Big Band: The Jack Davies Big Band

by Chris May
April 23, 2012

Jack Davies Big BandThe Jack Davies Big BandV&V Music2012With its debut album, trumpeter and composer Jack Davies' big band has joined an elite strand of British orchestras--Loose Tubes, flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler's outfits and Colin Towns' Mask Orchestra prominent among them--which have enriched and expanded the original big band aesthetic imported from the US. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), where he studied classical music, and the Royal Academy ...

Album Review

Amit Friedman Sextet: Sunrise

Read "Sunrise" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 23, 2012

This seems to be shaping up as the year of the “Sunrise." Two outstanding sets by that name have been released in 2012: one by the Masabumi Kikuchi Trio on ECM Records, the other a self-produced gem by the Indo/American chamber ensemble, Karavika. Israeli saxophonist Amit Friedman makes it a triptych with his own Sunrise, on Seattle's Origin Records.Friedman has a knack for memorable melodies enmeshed in sophisticated and lively arrangements. On the title tune (which opens the ...

Album Review

Osvaldo Coluccino: Atto

by John Eyles
April 23, 2012

Osvaldo Coluccino is a self-confessed loner with an eclectic history as a musician, poet, and composer. As a composer, he has employed conventional acoustic instruments and/or electronics, the latter exemplified on Neuma Q (Die Schachtel, 2010). For Atto, recorded near Milan between February and May 2011, he took the role of sole creator-performer and opted to make music using neither instruments nor electronics. Instead he struck, rubbed or breathed into everyday objects to generate sounds that cannot be associated with ...

Interview

Bobby Broom: Building a Legacy

by R.J. DeLuke
April 23, 2012

Guitarist Bobby Broom had a feel for music at a very young age. He was exposed first to clarinet and violin as a child, but they didn't have an impact on him. Eventually, an old guitar came through the household. It had four strings across an instrument with a small neck. “I didn't know it was a descendent of the banjo," Broom recalls. “I found out later it was a tenor guitar. I still have it. I didn't ...

Live Review

Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III with Evan Parker: London, England, March 23, 2012

by John Sharpe
April 22, 2012

Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III with Evan ParkerCafé OtoLondonMarch 23, 2012Over the past three years north London's Cafe Oto has built a solid, predominantly young audience for adventurous music. Part of the secret has been programming world class talent over multiple nights and pairing them with the cream of the capital's improvisers, many of whom deserve the world-class epithet in their own right. That was certainly the case this Friday evening, on the cusp of ...

Album Review

Judi Silvano: Indigo Moods

Read "Indigo Moods" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 22, 2012

Vocalist Judi Silvano celebrates 20 years of jazz recording with the release of Indigo Moods on the Jazzed Media label. After recording in a variety of formats, with and without husband and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, Silvano lands here with a collection of standards that features pianist Peter Tomlinson providing the harmonic guidance and trumpeter Fred Jacobs adding the color. Such an intimate environment provides maximum artistic exposure for vocalists, and only the most experienced singers can not only withstand ...

Book Review

David Schiff: The Ellington Century

by Lewis J Whittington
April 22, 2012

The Ellington CenturyDavid SchiffHardcover; 336 pagesISBN: 978-0-520-24587-7University of California Press2012In the pantheon of jazz giants, bandleader and pianist Duke Ellington holds an undisputed top spot, but, David Schiff believes, Ellington has never been given the recognition he also deserves as a composer. Schiff redresses the slight in this groundbreaking, if sometimes too dense, study.“European music, torn loose from its older harmonic moorings, needed to acquire something ...

Album Review

Steve Denny Trio: Life in the Basement

Read "Life in the Basement" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
April 22, 2012

The basement is a rich metaphor, with all sorts of literary and emotional connotations. In pianist Steve Denny's case, it represents a place for gestation and growth, a lair in which to hunker down and do one's work. Denny was born and raised in Denver, studied music at Loyola University in Chicago where he graduated summa cum laude, and then earned a master's at University of North Colorado. Along the way he studied with legendary pianist Art Lande and met ...

Album Review

Mockūno NuClear: Drop It

by John Sharpe
April 22, 2012

In its enterprising catalogue of modern day masters and loft jazz rarities, the Lithuanian No Business imprint also documents local musicians. Chief among them is one of the country's premier improvisers, saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas. Previous appearances on the label have placed him in a Peter Brotzmann-like trio on Live at 11:20 (2010) and in an impromptu freewheeling duet with Japanese pianist Ryoji Hojito on Vacation Music (2011). On Drop It by the self-referential Mockūno NuClear, Mockunas corrals a changing cast ...

Album Review

Kazhargan World: Wonderful Times

Read "Wonderful Times" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 22, 2012

Technology has irrevocably altered everything in its path; the way recordings are made is no exception. A century ago, a nine-person aggregation would have had to hover around a single recording device, playing together, in order for all the participants to make it onto the same record. Now, the members of a nonet don't even need to be on the same continent as one another and everybody can add their parts to the mix at their own leisure. These are ...