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

San Francisco Latin Jazz Society: This

by Dave Sumner
April 11, 2012

The San Francisco Latin Jazz Society is standing all by its lonesome in a corner of the jazz room. Filling a largely ignored niche, SFLJS channels late sixties Latin jazz à la Gato Barbieri and fuses it with the rock-jazz fusion that rose to prominence in the seventies with bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Love, Devotion, Surrender (Columbia, 1973) collaboration between guitarists Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin.On its previous release, Now What (Scott Brown Music, 2011), SFLJS ...

Album Review

Robert Jukic: Operation Charlie

Read "Operation Charlie" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
April 11, 2012

The earliest musical memories Robert Jukič has were being exposed to classical music, which provided him with a comfort zone and put him to sleep. Later, before he was old enough to pick them up, he used imaginary drum sticks to play drums, finally gravitating to the real thing when he was 12. He got an acoustic guitar two years later but switched to bass after high school.Jukič is a prolific musician and composer, finding his comfort zone ...

Album Review

Hristo Vitchev / Weber Iago: Heartmony

Read "Heartmony" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
April 11, 2012

Sofia, Bulgaria-born/San Francisco-based guitarist Hristo Vitchev and longtime collaborator, Rio De Janeiro-native pianist Weber Iago, have created a work of sublime musicality with Heartmony. A record of intensely lyrical guitar and piano duets full of mysticism, it comprises of seven of Vitchev's originals that are intricately constructed, but allow the guitarist and pianist ample opportunity for improvisation. Although much of the album, like its cover art, is very impressionistic, perhaps the best example of this is the ...

The Moment's Energy

Marion Brown: The Freshness after the Rain

by Nic Jones
April 11, 2012

[Editor's Note: For the inaugural installment of his new column, in which he monkeys around on the margins of jazz and improvised music, Nic Jones takes a look at the often overlooked and undervalued multi-instrumentalist, Marion Brown.] Reed player and percussionist Marion Brown's music is a singular thing. Through his associations in the 1960s--not the least of these being as a sideman on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse!, 1965)--he might, in many peoples' minds, be associated with the New ...

Album Review

Clare Fischer Orchestra: Extension

Read "Extension" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
April 10, 2012

When composer Clare Fischer passed away on January 26, 2012, he left behind a diverse legacy. Spending the late 1950s as pianist and arranger for The Hi-Lo's before working alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Donald Byrd, Fischer finally attained greater recognition in the 1960s for his contributions to the then burgeoning Latin jazz and bossa nova craze, including writing the standard “Pensativa."Conceived and performed exactly as he intended, Extension is his masterpiece. Recorded in 1963, the album is a ...

Profile

Will The Real Joe Harriott Please Stand Up?

by Duncan Heining
April 10, 2012

The Jamaican saxophhonist Joe Harriott was, without doubt, one of the most important and innovative jazz musicians to emerge in Britain in the fifties and early sixties. He arrived in Britain in 1951 with Ozzie Da Costa's band, which was en route for an engagement in Germany playing US army bases. Much to his erstwhile boss's dismay, Harriott chose to stay in the UK beginning an association with British jazz that was to prove of mutual benefit, creatively though never ...

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Live Review

Ron Carter at 75: New York, March 27, 2012

by Bob Kenselaar
April 10, 2012

Ron Carter at 75: A Life in MusicAlice Tully HallNew York, NYMarch 27, 2012On the night of the Juilliard School's tribute to Ron Carter, electronic billboards lining 65th Street near Lincoln Center flashed bright pictures of the iconic jazz bassist. The event was a lot like the man and his music: there was an atmosphere of elegance and warmth, occasional touches of wry humor, some chamber music colorings mixed on a deep jazz palette, and ...

Album Review

Will Bernard Trio: Outdoor Living

Read "Outdoor Living" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
April 10, 2012

As if capturing the Will Bernard Trio caught up in a rush of inspiration, both the initial and concluding pairs of tracks on Outdoor Living are sequenced together without breaks between. It's an appropriate production touch for an album on which the participants are clearly feeding on each others' ideas and building on the individual and collective talent on hand. The initial segue to “Morgan Deux" from “Nature Walk" is a springboard for the musicians and listeners alike to become ...

Album Review

Brian Patneaude: All Around Us

Read "All Around Us" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
April 10, 2012

On All Around Us, Albany, New York saxophonist Brian Patneaude's solid quartet delivers a high energy, straight-ahead jazz date.As a saxophonist, Patneaude solos transparently and has a bright sound, set off by a hard-edged technical competence that will remind some of Michael Brecker, as on the complicated line of “Blucocele." On Bronisław Kaper's “Invitation," Patneaude is admirably unfazed by the celebrated 1958 John Coltrane reading of the tune on Standard Coltrane (Prestige, 1962). Patneaude the composer provides compelling ...

Album Review

Simon Nabatov: Spinning Songs of Herbie Nichols

Read "Spinning Songs of Herbie Nichols" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 10, 2012

A heralded outsider, Russian pianist Simon Nabatov imparts a personal spin on a selection of legendary jazz pianist Herbie Nichols' discography. Here, Nabatov performs solo, exuding his habitual creative sparks during these interrogations and investigations of Nichols' often-overlooked body of work. Featuring integrations of traditional jazz applications with austere classicism, bop, world-beat grooves and more, the pianist duly underscores Nichols' knotty rhythmic persuasions. Throughout, Nabatov tears down these compositions and re-engineers the various melodies and structures. With flourishing ...