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

Hiroe Sekine: After The Rainfall

Read "After The Rainfall" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 20, 2012

Pianist Hiroe Sekine's graceful touch and pleasant musical disposition are apparent from the first downbeat on After The Rainfall, but they don't make this an underwhelming affair. The record certainly has its share of gentle aural pleasantries, but that isn't the end of the story. Fusion-laced revisions of Thelonious Monk, swinging, up-tempo blues, and Brazilian getaways are also part of the package.Sekine retained the producing services of Russell Ferrante of the Yellowjackets. He also oversaw the work on ...

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Album Review

Peter Appleyard And The Jazz Giants: The Lost 1974 Sessions

Read "The Lost 1974 Sessions" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
March 20, 2012

A gem of a discovery, vibraphonist Peter Appleyard's The Lost 1974 Sessions is an important record, both artistically and a historically. Appleyard assembled most of clarinetist Benny Goodman's group in RCA's Toronto studios for a one of a kind opportunity when band in town for a concert. He called the ad hoc band the Jazz Giants, and this is perhaps the only place to hear these masters play and interact with one another.The perfect host and leader, Appleyard ...

Album Review

Juhani Aaltonen / Heikki Sarmanto: Conversations

Read "Conversations" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 20, 2012

The splendid music on Conversations is as close to the celebration of Impressionism in modern music as possible. It is true that saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen and pianist Heikki Sarmanto create epic narratives here, and also true that both act as characters in those narratives. Of greater significance, however, is the extraordinary emotion of these musical stories, facilitated by sublime technique and use of dynamics by both musicians. Aaltonen crowns his playing with broad glissandi in longlegato passages marked by staggeringly ...

The Doorman's Diary

February 2012

by Jeff Winke
March 20, 2012

February 3 From one of the city's ex-burbs they had traveled specifically to the jazz club... a couple celebrating the husband's 49th birthday. When I learned of the special day, I discreetly passed back his cover charge and wished him many more. A small token that will reverberate beyond this couple and their special night. There was only one other give-back this night. A man entered, reluctantly paid the cover, stood and watched the band play a couple of numbers, ...

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AAJ PRO

An Open Letter to Musicians: Lemme Hear It!

by Dave Sumner
March 20, 2012

This begins a series of posts intended to give artists, labels, and promoters some insight into how I use the internet to discover and purchase music and how that knowledge might be used to the benefit of the artists. I don't claim to be the prototypical music listener and buyer. I listen to, and buy, a whole lot of music. I spend uncountable hours on various web sites, including my own, shooting the breeze about what I've heard. ...

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Jazz in the Aquarian Age

Stan Getz: I'm Gonna Blow the Walls Down

by Bob Kenselaar
March 20, 2012

This article was originally published in The Aquarian Weekly, March 1979. The music that Stan Getz made over the years was consistently moving and powerful. But he was probably putting me on a little when he said he was going to “blow the walls down" in New York for a series of shows early in 1979. When someone gives you a headline like that, though, you go with it. He was a little more straightforward later in the ...

Album Review

John Moulder Quintet: The Eleventh Hour: Live at the Green Mill

Read "The Eleventh Hour: Live at the Green Mill" reviewed by Dave Sumner

by Dave Sumner
March 19, 2012

Whereas many of Chicago's jazz and blues guitar icons seem to channel the dark alleys and the bar sign neon of the city through their instruments, John Moulder's sound is more akin to a synthesis of the lakefront--a beauty and serenity that is just as likely to show a face of fury and cold precision. For some time now, Moulder has quietly been developing his sound into something quite unique. The Eleventh Hour provides the opportunity to hear it in ...

Live Review

Monty Alexander: New York, February 20-March 4, 2012

by Bob Kenselaar
March 19, 2012

Monty Alexander: 50 Years in Music & 50 Years of Jamaica The Blue Note New York, NY February 20-March 4, 2012Monty Alexander set out an ambitious agenda in trying to showcase all the many facets of his 50-year career in music during this two-week stint at the Blue Note. The pianist sure delivered, though, judging by three shows that featured Alexander side-by-side with several of his many collaborators over the years--some of the ...

Album Review

Daunik Lazro / Jean Francois Pauvros / Roger Turner: Curare

by John Sharpe
March 19, 2012

Silence could be the fourth member of the group responsible for the cooperatively derived Curare, joining the French pairing of reed supremo Daunik Lazro and guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros with English drummer Roger Turner. As the four cuts are sourced from two live dates some 20 months apart, this cross-Channel aggregation is clearly not a one-off. Lazro may still be best known for his collaborations with fellow reedmen Joe McPhee and Evan Parker, but over a thirty-plus year career he has ...

Album Review

Andrew Cyrille / Haitian Fascination: Route de Freres

Read "Route de Freres" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 19, 2012

To experience ecstasy without the memory of it would certainly be a travesty. Fortunately, it may now be possible to have both--to have the near-perfect memory of being in the throes of ecstasy--and it is all because of the music on Route de Frères by Andrew Cyrille and Haitian Fascination. More specifically, it is because of the character of “Jean" in the miraculous little Vodou piece which opens the album. It is the relentless and remarkable tapping of percussionists Frisner ...