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

The Duke Robillard Jazz Trio: Wobble Walkin'

Read "Wobble Walkin'" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 4, 2012

Guitarist Duke Robillard may be widely praised for his blues bona fides, but calling him a blues guitarist is a bit limiting. While his work with Roomful of Blues and his stint with the Fabulous Thunderbirds have earned him a large fan base and some well-deserved respect in the blues and guitar communities, he's proven himself equally conversant in jazz and elsewhere. Blues music remains his bread and butter, but albums like After Hours Swing Session (Rounder, 1990), Conversations In ...

Album Review

Kate McGarry: Girl Talk

Read "Girl Talk" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
April 4, 2012

At a time when it seems that everyone is a jazz singer releasing new music in a male-female distribution of 1 to 10, what is it exactly that separates the merely good singers from the truly great ones. Because of the sheer number of singers and relative high quality of jazz singing today, it is brutally hard for a singer to register above the base noise he or she is surrounded with. Equally hard is critical evaluation of such music. ...

Album Review

Karen Johns & Company: Peach

by Edward Blanco
April 4, 2012

The multi-talented Karen Johns is known not only as a singer, but also as a songwriter, actress and a playwright. The highly entertaining and truly sweet Peach, by Johns & Company, features songs from her swing-jazz musical play, Once There Was A Peach. Their third jazz album and eighth overall, the group delivers an exciting, infectious sound reminiscent of the golden age of the Swing Era. Sounding at times more like a big band than a light ensemble, the vocalist ...

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Album Review

Kate McGarry: Girl Talk

Read "Girl Talk" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 3, 2012

Someone should tell vocalists today--at least the ones we see on those TV talent hunts--that singing doesn't have to be some exercise in screaming self-annihilation, that beauty and style is more about composure and command. You could tell them, or you can hip them to Girl Talk, by Kate McGarry.McGarry, a jazz vocalist, has covered various pop and folk songs by the likes of Peter Gabriel, Sting, Björk and Joni Mitchell on prior recordings. Her style defies categorization. ...

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Profile

Grand Union Orchestra: Music and Movement

by Duncan Heining
April 3, 2012

In March, 2012, The Grand Union Orchestra, one of the jazz world's finest and most ambitious ensembles, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Maybe you haven't heard of the band yet but if you have the chances are you'll revel in its kaleidoscopic blending of jazz and music from across the planet. Though based in the East End of London, it would be an outrageous misnomer to call it “Britain's Grand Union Orchestra." After all, it draws its participants from Africa, the ...

Album Review

Hendrik Meurkens / Gabriel Espinosa: Celebrando

Read "Celebrando" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 3, 2012

Defining the Zoho imprint as a “World Music" label is a bit of a misnomer, but label head Joachim “Jochen" Becker does seem to have a global outlook when it comes to artist signings. Afro-Cuban music, British blues, Argentine sounds, R&B, Asian-jazz hybrids, Brazilian jazz, and vocal projects have all found a home at Zoho. Some labels like to hone in on a specific style, but Zoho seems to feel the opposite; their only guiding principle of discrimination seems to ...

Album Review

Matteo Sabattini: Dawning

Read "Dawning" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 3, 2012

Perhaps due to New York's dynamism--and no doubt in part the result of the city's pivotal role in jazz's history--New York jazz ensembles are frequently characterized by bold playing and a hard edge that's arguably less common in many European jazz groups. Italian-born alto saxophonist Matteo Sabattini's New York Quintet builds a bridge between a melodic European sensibility and the incisiveness in ensemble playing typical of the metropolis. Sabatini's elegant Old World-meets-New World arrangements are typified by the juxtaposition of ...

Album Review

Skogen: Ist gefallen in den Schnee

Read "Ist gefallen in den Schnee" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
April 3, 2012

Ist gefallen in den Schnee, lasting sixty-one minutes, consists entirely of a November 2010 recording of the title composition by Magnus Granberg. For the recording Granberg's group Skogen--in which he plays piano--is expanded to a nonet including two non-Swedish guest musicians, Angarad Davies on violin and Toshimaru Nakamura on his instrument of choice, the no-input mixing board. Strings, vibraphone, percussion, bowls and glasses plus electronics complete the group's line-up, giving it a soundscape that extends way beyond that of a ...

Album Review

Twelves: The Adding Machine

Read "The Adding Machine" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 3, 2012

The addition of guitarist Rob Updegraff to Twelves, the U.K. band that started as a trio in 2008, tenders a compact yet expandable group focusing largely centered on asymmetrical pulses, layered sound-sculpting, and toggling between the misty divisions of free jazz and free-bop. The guitarist and saxophonist Mark Hanslip act as searchers perched atop oscillating currents, these being predominately designed with gradually climaxing theme constructions and effective use of space. Complete with transient mini-motifs, the bulk of the material is ...

Extended Analysis

Nino Rota: Collector Nino Rota

by Chris May
April 3, 2012

Nino Rota was a composer who stretched the imagination, though he was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a jazz composer. Classically trained, at the Milan conservatoire and Rome's Santa Cecilia academy, Rota composed ten operas, five ballets and a great amount of orchestral and chamber music. He counted Igor Stravinsky and Arturo Toscanini among his friends and admirers, and was enough of a modernist to include Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone method in his palette.But Rota is best ...