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

Bertil "Jonas" Jonasson: Jonas Plays Gullin

Read "Jonas Plays Gullin" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
April 7, 2012

Long after his death in 1976, Lars Gullin still casts a long shadow over the Scandinavian jazz scene. The baritone saxophonist was the first Swede to be accorded international recognition. He was one of Zoot Sims' Five Brothers in 1950, played with James Moody, Stan Getz, and Leonard Feather's Swinging Swedes. He won the 1954 Downbeat poll as “new star" on baritone without ever having set foot in the U.S.Today, the house where he was born on the ...

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Album Review

Taylor's Universe: Kind of Red

Read "Kind of Red" reviewed by Mark Redlefsen

by Mark Redlefsen
April 7, 2012

Leader of the band Taylor's Universe, multi- instrumentalist, composer, producer, and record label owner Robin Taylor hails from Denmark. With the title of his 30th release, Kind Of Red, Taylor cleverly tips a hat to the iconic album Kind of Blue (Sony, 1959) by trumpeter Miles Davis, and possibly also to King Crimson's Red (Atlantic, 1974). Taylor has had a number of releases under different banners over the last few decades. For all those needing to catch up, Kind of ...

Extended Analysis

Various Artists: The Leopard Lounge Box Set

by Chris May
April 6, 2012

Various ArtistsThe Leopard Lounge Box SetWarner Jazz2012If you enjoy the TV series Mad Men, you are going to love The Leopard Lounge Box Set. Probably.You need to go know what you are getting into. Should you be offended by the thought of guitarist Barney Kessel hanging on to a tremolo arm and twanging out George Gershwin's “Summertime," or cornetist Nat Adderley fronting a cheesy, Vegas-style big band arrangement of Tony ...

Album Review

Paul Booth: Trilateral

Read "Trilateral" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
April 6, 2012

For some people the Big 4-0 is the key, for others it's the Big 5-0 or 6-0 or 7-0. For saxophonist Paul Booth it was his forthcoming 33rd birthday that proved to be a cause for reflection. As the day loomed in 2010, Booth was already thinking about a trio record with bass and drums. The apparent ever-presence of the number 3--"most everywhere I turned"--made Booth think again. The result is Trilateral, an album that is inspired by the number ...

Live Review

Herd Trio: Helsinki, Finland, March 29, 2012

by Anthony Shaw
April 6, 2012

Herd TrioKoko Jazz Club Helsinki, FinlandMarch 29, 2012 With their emergence onto the Finnish scene in 2009 in the national competition for the Nordic Jazz Comets award (won that year by the Icelandic Ingemar Andersen Quartet) the Herd trio have been making waves in northern waters ever since. This gig, however, in the newly opened premises of the Koko Jazz Club--now across Helsinki's very short 'Long Bridge' and behind Hakaniemi Square--was their first in ...

Album Review

Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames: New Multitudes

Read "New Multitudes" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
April 6, 2012

New Multitudes arises from a distinctly unusual multi-faceted collaboration. The initial entry in the centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie's birthday began as a Gob Iron project helmed, as was Death Songs for The Living (Transmit Sound/Legacy Recordings, 2006) by Jay Farrar and Anders Parker. Given access to the Guthrie archives by Woody's daughter Nora, the duo began marrying original music to selected lyrics of the iconic folksinger from which point the project broadened into what became the New Multitudes project ...

Album Review

Erik Charlston JazzBrasil: Essentially Hermeto

Read "Essentially Hermeto" reviewed by Matt Cibula

by Matt Cibula
April 6, 2012

Erik Charlston is not shy about revealing his main influence. Not only did he title this album Essentially Hermeto after the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist/composer/mystic Hermeto Pascoal, he even starts the first track with the kind of rustling ambient sound that Pascoal loves so much. Unlike Pascoal himself, who might use that sound for a few minutes or an entire track, Charlston moves pretty quickly into “Vale de Ribeira"--like most of the selections on the album, a Hermeto Pascoal song. A straightforward ...

Album Review

Brian Patneaude: All Around Us

Read "All Around Us" reviewed by Andrew J. Sammut

by Andrew J. Sammut
April 6, 2012

An active part of the jazz scene in New York's Capital District, Brian Patneaude's fifth album shows off his originality and depth as a tenor saxophonist and composer. The six original compositions and two covers on All Around Us were “inspired by people, places and events" in Patneaude's life, adding a personal gravity to the assured musicianship on display.Listing Michael Brecker, David Sanborn and Hank Mobley among his influences, Patneaude plays with an attractively big, warm tone, more ...

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Album Review

Jared Gold: Golden Child

Read "Golden Child" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
April 6, 2012

Jazz organist Jared Gold continues to make his presence known, both in name and sonically. Energizing and free yet possessed of a comprehensive knowledge of the Hammond B3 organ, he communicates with the language of giants such as Don Patterson and Chris Foreman of the Deep Blue Organ Trio. It's been said that “either you have it or you don't," and Gold's playing bears the truth of the groove on Golden Child. On his fifth recording as a leader, Gold ...

Big Band Report

Marching to a Jazz Tempo

by Jack Bowers
April 5, 2012

March came in like a lion in Albuquerque with no less than four blue-chip jazz concerts in the first five days, three of which I attended, passing on the first (the Charlie Christian Project featuring guitarist Michael Anthony and trumpeter Bobby Shew at The Outpost Performance Space) because Betty and I had seen basically the same concert when it debuted last May. On March 2, I was at the Jazzbah nightclub in downtown Albuquerque to see and hear the superb ...