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.

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Album Review

Gabriel Vicens: Point in Time

Read "Point in Time" reviewed by Andrew J. Sammut

by Andrew J. Sammut
March 16, 2012

Gabriel Vicens brings together simpatico colleagues from the scene in his native Puerto Rico and beyond to explore twelve of his works on the guitarist and composer's debut, Point in Time. Vicens' compositions explore quirky, catchy heads ("Point in Time," “Beautiful Place"), plenty of vamps ("La Diferencia," “Frame of Mind" and “El Camino") and medium tempo grooves blending straight-ahead and Latin rhythms ("El Comienzo," “Cuadro"). He also includes brief, abstract introductions to several tunes by one to two players.

Album Review

Aleks Girshevich Trio: Tomorrow

Read "Tomorrow" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
March 16, 2012

The word “prodigy" comes from the Latin prodigium, which means “sign" or “portent." Jazz boasts its fair share of these exceptional individuals, including drummer Tony Williams, pianist Keith Jarrett, saxophonist Grace Kelly and Trombone Shorty. Folks on the Colorado music scene have been talking for years about the tremendously talented drummer Aleks Girshevich, who was born in 2001. Now with Aleks' debut CD, appropriately titled Tomorrow, it's time for the rest of the jazz world to take note of this ...

Album Review

Hera: Where My Complete Beloved Is

Read "Where My Complete Beloved Is" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 16, 2012

It may be symbolic that the albums of the innovative Polish ensemble Hera are released by the label Multikulti. After all, the label's name follows Don Cherry's all-embracing vision of a new world music, a vision where distant and foreign traditions enrich each other, artificial genre distinctions and geographical boundaries are blurred, and stereotypical divisions between high and low, and ancient and modern art are unknown. Headed by composer and reed player Wacław Zimpel, Hera takes Cherry's concept even further ...

Album Review

Olavi Trio & Friends: Triologia

Read "Triologia" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 16, 2012

In his fine dissertation, “The Descriptive Grammar of the Ground--Almost Complete Poems" Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros wrote of the poetry that exists in everything, if one chooses to see it. The Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, echoed this belief in emotive poetry. Similarly, Olavi and Friends--albeit in ways a lot more extreme than the Paul Winter Consort and more like Bill Laswell and friends--makes a similar claim for music. This often dissonant musical poetics has been expounded by the ...

The Doorman's Diary

January 2012

by Jeff Winke
March 16, 2012

January 6 The jazz club was closed during the holidays. Being ever diligent, The Doorman used the time off to reflect on his craft and create a new set of resolutions for the year having accomplished the majority of the goals I had set for the past year. My 2011 resolutions, which were handwritten with a gold-nib Lamy fountain pen on a sheet of cotton-fiber ivory paper secured from Crane & Co., are gold-framed and hang prominently in my private ...

Extended Analysis

Michael Gibbs and the NDR Bigband: Back in the Days

by John Kelman
March 15, 2012

Michael Gibbs and the NDR BigbandBack in the DaysCuneiform Records2012Jazz may be filled with reharmonizations, reinventions and reimaginings of songs from across its entire history; few artists have, however, made their names solely as composers and arrangers. Relative youngsters like Maria Schneider, Vince Mendoza and Darcy James Argue have successfully shaped careers focused exclusively on the other side of the performance table, but when it comes to legacy artists, the name Gil ...

Album Review

Tish Oney: Sweet Youth

Read "Sweet Youth" reviewed by Gregg Akkerman

by Gregg Akkerman
March 15, 2012

In previous offerings from singer Tish Oney, she surrounded herself in the trappings of traditionally sized jazz combos, but on Sweet Youth she eschews safety in numbers for the nowhere-to-hide texture of voice and guitar. This baker's dozen of standards and original songs dispels any doubts that the recently doctored Oney (University of Southern California, Jazz Studies) is better suited to academic settings rather than the recording studio. The artful playfulness of her scatting on several tunes (highlighted on “Waltz ...

Live Review

Peter Brotzmann Ada Trio: London, UK, February 20, 2012

by John Sharpe
March 15, 2012

Peter Brötzmann Ada TrioCafé OtoLondonFebruary 20, 2012 So potent was the chemistry between saxophone behemoth Peter Brötzmann, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love when they first convened, that a separate existence was clearly merited. Although the saxophonist had previously engaged both younger men in duos, captured by Smalltown Superjazz on Wood Cuts (2010) and Sweetsweat (2007) in the case of the Norwegian, it was on the 2011 Chicago Tentet tour that the triumvirate initially ...

Album Review

Anders Jormin: Ad Lucem

by John Kelman
March 15, 2012

It may be frustrating when an artist releases albums infrequently, but when quality trumps quantity all is forgiven. Swedish bassist Anders Jormin's discography as a leader remains small--just eleven records as a leader since his auspicious 1988 Dragon debut, Eight Pieces. Still, with a high profile résumé sporting fellow ECM label mates such as pianist Bobo Stenson, saxophonist Charles Lloyd, trumpeters Tomasz Stańko and Don Cherry, and violinist Mark Feldman, Jormin's recorded output may be relatively diminutive, but it's consistently ...

Live Review

Marc Ducret: Helsinki, Finland, January 29, 2012

by Anthony Shaw
March 15, 2012

Marc Ducret SoloMalmintaloHelsinki, FinlandJaunary 29, 2012 A solo performance is by definition an intense experience, and when the musician is committed to a style which is itself close to impenetrable the result can be bewildering; in this case a performance is bound only by the resourcefulness of the audience. Those attending this penultimate concert of French guitarist Marc Ducret's Finnish tour almost certainly knew what to expect. With the assistance of ...