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

Trio M: The Guest House

Read "The Guest House" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
February 13, 2012

Historically, the most revered jazz piano trios tend to erase the distinction between leader and accompanist; empathetic listening skills and quicksilver responsiveness enable adroit performers to spontaneously shape the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic contours of the music in democratic fashion. The esteemed Trio M, whose personnel boasts pianist Myra Melford, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, is one such collective. Though Melford's return to the classic acoustic trio format that established her reputation in the early 1990s is notable, ...

Album Review

Je Suis!: Mistluren

Read "Mistluren" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 13, 2012

In 1962 free jazz pioneer Albert Ayler moved to Sweden. Like Jesus Christ's 40 days in the desert, he came home to the United States after being tempted by the devil, and led a revolution in free jazz. His Swedish temptation, perhaps it was a viral contagion, has survived these past 50 years, resurfacing in the sextet Je Suis!.Like Ayler, leader and composer Niklas Barnö is fond of simple melodies and bits of mayhem. His trumpet can be ...

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Interview

Matt Wilson: Have Drums, Will Travel

by Lawrence Peryer
February 13, 2012

Drummer Matt Wilson must surely be in the running for the title of hardest-working man in jazz. Wilson is a composer, bandleader, producer and teacher. As a leader, his projects include the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, Christmas Tree-O and the Carl Sandburg Project. He has been in bands with luminaries such as Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Ted Nash and many, many others. As for legends, he's played with Herbie Hancock, Dewey Redman, Andrew Hill, ...

Album Review

Gregory Porter: Be Good

by Dan Bilawsky
February 12, 2012

Debut albums often serve as fine introductions to the work of fledgling artists with potential for greater things, but that wasn't the case with Gregory Porter's Water (Motéma, 2010). Porter's debut, which was nominated for a Grammy Award, presented a vocal soul-jazz juggernaut that seemingly materialized out of thin air as a fully matured musical entity. His early experiences working in small San Diego clubs and singing in Off-Broadway and Broadway productions in New York helped Porter to establish himself ...

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Extended Analysis

Portico Quartet

by John Kelman
February 12, 2012

Change is inevitable, but when a group loses one of its founders and biggest conceptual fundamentals, can it really survive the loss? When Britain's Portico Quartet announced the departure of co-founder Nick Mulvey, whose hang (a UFO-shaped instrument that sounds somewhere between steel pans and gamelan gongs) was one of its most defining characteristics, the group's future certainly seemed in peril. Hard enough to replace any instrumentalist who's been so much a part of a group's musical lexicon, but just ...

Album Review

Andy Aitchison Quartet: You Ain't Never

Read "You Ain't Never" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 12, 2012

The piano and the violin are, perhaps, the only two musical instruments so complete and so possessed of body and soul that they can elicit and provoke the purest feelings of sadness and joy, and every other feeling in-between. But of the two, only one does so with the manipulation of merely four strings. The violin has to be played with complete technical mastery so as to act with the mystery and magic that someone like Nicola Paganini elicited from ...

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Live Review

Umbria Jazz Winter #19, Days 1-2: December 28-29, 2011

by Sara Villa
February 12, 2012

Days 1-2 | Days 3-5 Umbria Jazz Winter #19 Perugia, Italy December 28, 2011-January 1, 2012 In an Italy where the cuts inflicted to the cultural sector by the last Berlusconi government led a figure like Riccardo Muti to publically express his indignation, Umbria Jazz Winter # 19 was a confirmation of the incredibly rich and original patrimony that Italian arts and music have to offer on the international scene, including constant international projects realized ...

Album Review

Talking Cows: Almost Human

Read "Almost Human" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 12, 2012

Talking Cows may be the world's only bovine-themed jazz group. Titles of previous CDs include Bovinity (Morvin Records, 2006) and Dairy tales (Morvin Records, 2009). Almost Human indicates a move further in the primate direction. But where a true bovine creature may have an aspect of the ruminative in its nature, the Talking Cows does not. This Dutch quartet's music is thorny, intense, and hard to categorize--a sort of off-kilter avant-garde, mainstream brew much like that of pianist Andrew Hill ...

Album Review

Barb Jungr / Kuljit Bhamra / Russell Churney: Durga Rising

Read "Durga Rising" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
February 11, 2012

Durga Rising was recorded in 1996 but not properly released at the time. Featuring Barb Jungr on vocals, Kuljit Bhamra on percussion and Russell Churney on piano, it seems likely to attract more attention today than it did back in 1996. Since then, Jungr has enjoyed a burgeoning solo career accompanied by a string of awards that recognize her prowess as a cabaret singer, and Bhamra has gained prominence in several areas, including jazz, through his work with saxophonist Andy ...

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Book Excerpts

Concepts of Pain: The Stuff of the Sixties

by Gordon Marshall
February 11, 2012

This chapter is an excerpt from Naked Mind: On Music and Power, a work in progress by All About Jazz contributor Gordon Marshall. It is said that the '60s ended in 1974, with Richard Nixon's resignation. On the one hand, there was nothing left to believe in. On the other, there was nothing left to protest. Early in the decade, Timothy Leary preached acid politics, thinking that Mao and John F. Kennedy should be sitting in ...