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.

103

Live Review

Newport Beach Jazz Party 2012: Newport Beach, CA, February 16-19, 2012

by Patricia Myers
March 12, 2012

12th Annual Newport Beach Jazz PartyNewport Beach Marriot HotelNewport Beach, CAFebruary 16-19, 2012An abundance of top-level jazz in the glamorous ocean-side setting of the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel has made the annual Newport Beach Jazz Party one of the most popular on the circuit. The extended President's Day weekend event attracted listeners from 27 states and Canada, and as far away as Australia, England and Austria. The party was billed “right down the middle and ...

Album Review

Emma Smith: The Huntress

Read "The Huntress" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 12, 2012

"Experienced" is seldom an appropriate adjective to apply to a 21 year-old performer, but it's perfectly apposite when applied to singer and composer Emma Smith. She began singing with a big band at the age of 14 and was, barely a year later, a mainstay of Britain's National Youth Jazz Orchestra. With the support of musicians such as Sir John Dankworth and Nikki Iles, and an ever-increasing list of club and festival performances, Smith is rapidly becoming one of the ...

Album Review

Franco D'Andrea: Traditions And Clusters

Read "Traditions And Clusters" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 12, 2012

It is a satisfying musical experience when a performance can deliver traditional jazz without the music being reduced to orthodoxy. Such is the resonance of Franco D'Andrea's sound.The seventy-something Italian pianist follows Soprais (El Gallo Rojo, 2011), with his long-established quartet, by adding the early jazz instruments of clarinet and trombone, played respectively by Daniele D'Argaro and Mauro Ottolini. On the live Traditions And Clusters he also invites his contemporary , drummer Han Bennink, to sit in on ...

Album Review

Sarah Elgeti Quintet: Into The Open

Read "Into The Open" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
March 12, 2012

From the Danish Radio (DR) Big band--directed by such greats as Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer and Jim McNeely--to the jazz environment of Copenhagen's Café Montmarte, Denmark has been at the forefront in nurturing and producing some of the finest jazz musicians in Europe and, indeed, the world. Saxophonist/flautist Sarah Elgeti is the latest Danish wonder to emerge on the international stage, astounding critics with Into the Open, by her all-Danish quintet. Elgeti wields her sax like a veteran journeyman, pens ...

Album Review

Dead Cat Bounce: Chance Episodes

Read "Chance Episodes" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 12, 2012

It does not behoove to fall for the apparent flippancy of Dead Cat's Bounce. The name of the ensemble is merely an ironic take on the state of the union; and on a larger canvas it casts aspersions on the relevance of capitalism without the folk tradition. Even its use of klezmer music and a mash of marching music, folk blues rhythms and other cultural motifs are to suggest the richness of Babel-like nature of America's music. The wry sense ...

185

Interview

Al Jarreau: Simple and Necessary Happiness

by Esther Berlanga-Ryan
March 12, 2012

There are very few jazz greats that make people who love this music smile in awe while witnessing their beautiful talent. Jazz is larger than life, and they all contribute to its greatness every day, whether it is from a small stage in the Village in New York, or from some old record, spinning while popping and clicking away with that undeniable charm, making the music flow. As long as jazz happens, the magnificence of it all remains flawless and ...

127

Opinion

Whitney Houston: A Final Look

by Lloyd N. Peterson Jr.
March 11, 2012

Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson will be forever linked as they brought the world together and made a nation cry. They were God's gift to us mere mortals and in a very brief period of time, they made us believe. They were able to capture through music, what leaders desperately try. And though tragedy would clearly define them, their life and death mirrored a dark poetic beauty that bordered on the mystical; and it would seduce us. And while they ...

Album Review

Chicago Trio: Velvet Songs to Baba Fred Anderson

Read "Velvet Songs to Baba Fred Anderson" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 11, 2012

Drawn from two nights at Chicago's legendary Velvet Lounge, this double-disc set by three of the Windy City's finest provides fitting tribute to that establishment's late proprietor. Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson was held in high esteem for his support for young musicians, non-judgmental direction, and provision of a space to experiment and perform. That the music was recorded two years prior to Anderson's passing lessens neither the saxophonist's influence nor the depth of feeling behind the dedication.Going under ...

Extended Analysis

Giovanni Pessi / Susanna Wallumrod: If Grief Could Wait

by C. Michael Bailey
March 11, 2012

Giovanni Pessi, Susanna Wallumrod, Marco Ambrosini, Jane AchtmanIf Grief Could WaitECM2012 Manfred Eicher's Edition of Contemporary Music label (aka ECM) has three creative foci: “classical" music, jazz and folk music. The last of these is often overlooked in discussions of ECM, but folk music, particularly that of the colder European climes, makes up a potent part of the company's catalog. These three foci do not exist separately from one another. Instead, ...

Album Review

Carlo De Rosa's Cross-Fade: Brain Dance

Read "Brain Dance" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
March 11, 2012

The energy of bassist Carlo De Rosa's Brain Dance is palpable. Musically, it is a close equivalent of an elastic band held extremely taut and then twanged continuously until the kinetic energy continues to do what the fingers once did. However, De Rosa's fingers continue to do what invisible fingers once did to the music as a whole. The bassist finds this energy contained in the strings of his double bass and the electric one he sometimes also plays. His ...