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

Georg Breinschmid: Fire

Read "Fire" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 24, 2012

The North American cognoscenti are not so hip after all. Not many will have heard of the Vienna Art Orchestra and fewer still will know of its one-time bassist, the classically trained, Georg Breinschmid. Breinschmid is a maddeningly ingenious virtuoso musician, who, picking up where Frank Zappa and Victor Borga left off, is breaking down musical barriers faster than they can be put up and bringing more pure joy to the unexpurgated enjoyment of serious music than many musicians on ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five With James Brandon Lewis

by AAJ Staff
March 24, 2012

Meet James Brandon Lewis: Saxophonist/composer James Brandon Lewis was exposed to jazz, gospel, and R&B and at an early age began his journey into the realm of music. He attended Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts located in Buffalo NY. Upon graduating, James would continue his musical pursuit At Howard University, where he was blessed to have played with some of the finest musicians in the world, including Benny Golson, Geri Allen, Wallace Roney, Bill Pierce, ...

Album Review

Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet: Bach Sonatas

Read "Bach Sonatas" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
March 24, 2012

Can classical music performance be controversial? Most often, this is true only when a performance departs from contemporary (or not-so-contemporary) conventional wisdom, which often relies on both a uniform and blinding reverence to how “things ought to be." Every composer who ever put pen to parchment may have designated a specific instrument in a given piece, but that does not preclude the possibility of a different instrument playing that same piece. In fact, this is exactly how the composers of ...

Album Review

Anna Borges and Bill Ward: Receita de Samba

Read "Receita de Samba" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
March 24, 2012

Boston area husband and wife team Anna Borges and Bill Ward are the creative force behind Receita de Samba, a collection of 11 classics by various Brazilian composers. Both sing on alternate tracks that mix samba and bossa nova with other regional variations. A percussion heavy band that also includes flutist Amir Milstein and Ward (on piano and guitar) provides accompaniment to the vocalists. Given that the five songs featuring Ward are associated with ...

Album Review

Georg Breinschmid: Fire

by Larry Taylor
March 24, 2012

A mixture of outrageous humor and subtle beauty make up Fire, from Austrian bassist Georg Breinschmid. Such a conflicting opinion needs explaining. The 14 mostly originals (plus a bonus disc of four additional tracks) combine live and studio recordings using two different groupings. There is Brein's Café--a piano/violin/bass trio; and a duo with trumpeter Thomas Gansch. In some pieces they all get together. There are silly vocals and shameless parodies of polkas and classics--think Shostakovich ...

Album Review

Ben Wendel: Frame

Read "Frame" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 23, 2012

There is a beautiful and mysterious quality to multi-instrumentalist Ben Wendel's Frame. It is as if the hot breath from one of his horns has blown some ancient film away to reveal an iridescent object that begins to oscillate and spin, changing colors and hues, mesmerizing as it spins and swings with uncharacteristic swagger. All this seems both real and unreal as Wendel's singular, hypnotic voice unfurls. The saxophonist inhabits a sound as close to singing through the reed as ...

Multiple Reviews

Allan Holdsworth: Hard Hat Area and None Too Soon

by John Kelman
March 23, 2012

Few artists alive in 2012 can be both as awe-inspiring and frustrating as guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Since emerging in the early 1970s--his solo on “Hector's House," from trumpeter Ian Carr's Belladonna (Vertigo, 1972), an early and rough-hewn but still staggering preface to advances made in leaps in bounds in the ensuing half decade--Holdsworth has emerged as a rare true original, creating a harmonic landscape like none other. It's not just guitarists who strive to emulate Holdsworth's smooth, legato approach, sophisticated ...

Album Review

Hasler / Paeffgen / Berger: Hasler / Paeffgen / Berger

Read "Hasler / Paeffgen / Berger" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 23, 2012

At first sight, the main talking point on the eponymous offering from trumpeter Werner Hasler, drummer Gilbert Paeffgen and Karl Berger is the vibraphonist's co-optation into the multinational trio. That impression lasts no longer than the first listen to this fresh and open collaboration. Berger, a German-born, New York-based veteran, has a long-held interest in world music, a product of his association with wandering griot trumpeter Don Cherry, which proves to be the perfect grounding for this meeting. Paeffgen, in ...

Live Review

Scott Hamilton and Friends at Dinkelspiel Auditorium Stanford University, Stanford California

by Bill Leikam
March 23, 2012

Scott Hamilton and Friends Stanford Jazz Festival--40th AnniversaryDinkelspiel AuditoriumStanford, CaliforniaFebruary 24, 2012As a part of the 40th anniversary of the Stanford Jazz Festival, Scott Hamilton took to the stage to a nearly sold out crowd for a powerful evening of jazz. Hamilton is one of the most highly respected and sought after tenor saxophonists in the world. The Larry Vuckovich Trio formed the core players for the event--pianist Larry Vuckovich, bassist Jeff Chambers, ...

Album Review

Bugge Wesseltoft: Songs

by John Kelman
March 23, 2012

After John Scofield released his balladic A Moment's Peace (EmArcy, 2011), the guitarist revealed, in an 2011 All About Jazz interview, that the original plan was to record with Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft. It may not have come to pass, but based on Songs, it sure sounds as though these two artists--geographically distanced by thousands of miles--were in remarkable simpatico.A Moment's Peace is still a group record, and if it doesn't ever boil over, it manages a simmer ...