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

Frank Harrison Trio: Sideways

Read "Sideways" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 5, 2012

After studying Boston's Berklee School of Music, pianist Frank Harrison returned to his native United Kingdom, making a name for himself as a sideman, most notably in saxophonist Gilad Atzmon's band. But beginning with First Light (Basho Records 2006), he has offered up three piano trio outings, each with different personnel. On Sideways Harrison is joined by bassist Davide Petrocca and drummer Stephen Keogh, band mates who can lay down an insistent groove or drift through the subtle permutations of ...

Big Band Report

Bob Brookmeyer: Jack of All Trades, Master of Valves

by Jack Bowers
February 5, 2012

Bob Brookmeyer, a Renaissance man among jazz musicians who died December 15, 2011, four days before his eighty-second birthday, will be remembered as many things: composer, arranger, musician, educator, outspoken arbiter who brooked no nonsense and wasn't shy about letting others know when he believed they were not giving the music he loved the best they had to offer. What I remember best about Brookmeyer was the lithe, ever-swinging valve trombone that complemented such luminaries as Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Walter Ehresman

by AAJ Staff
February 5, 2012

Meet Walter Ehresman: Called “The quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed disc jockey Charlie Martin (host of KOOP radio's Around the Town Sounds), Walter Ehresman has been a consistent, eccentric presence in the Austin music scene since the mid-'80s. A prolific songwriter and recording artist, he is equally at home presenting a delicate acoustic ballad in an intimate club as he is busting out screaming lead guitar with a full rock band in front of festival crowds. However, ...

Album Review

Talking Cows: Almost Human

Read "Almost Human" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 5, 2012

If there is anything better than the off-the-wall humor of the video promo that preceded this Talking Cows album, it is the actual album itself. Yet much more than the humor of it all is the spectacular seriousness of the music: deadly serious, and for those familiar with the high standards of music (and humor) in The Netherlands itself, this album will surely rate as one of the finest to come out of that country, no matter what the category. ...

Album Review

Jack DeJohnette: Sound Travels

Read "Sound Travels" reviewed by Eugene Holley, Jr.

by Eugene Holley, Jr.
February 5, 2012

Drummer/pianist/composer/bandleader Jack DeJohnette turns seventy this year, and his longevity on the scene is only eclipsed by the astonishing variety of settings in which he's worked. Since emerging from his hometown Chicago, the ubiquitous drummer has played with important artists including saxophonist Charles Lloyd, trumpeter Miles Davis and pianists Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett (with whom he still works today). And then there are his wonderfully eclectic Special Edition groups--always on the cutting edge. Although anyone could hear his crisp ...

Album Review

Eugene Chadbourne and Warren Smith: Odd Time

Read "Odd Time" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 4, 2012

All art is activist; or at least it should be when it challenges established and accepted forms that play to the laissez-faire, the reactionary and the antisocial--and the greater good of the greater number of people experiencing (or trying to experience) it. The music of Beethoven was just so, the composer cancelling the dedication of his mighty Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") to Napoleon Bonaparte after the Frenchman declared himself Emperor. So, too, has some of the finest music of modern ...

122

Profile

The Rotten Apples: Beach Party at the Orchard

by Gordon Marshall
February 4, 2012

The Rotten Apples, “the tightest out-of-tune band in the world," had an antecedent in guitarist Keith Waters' Belmont High School band (Belmont is a town just north of Boston). Even that early evolutionary ancestor of the current band blew effortless attitude in the face of the powers that be. Waters remembers playing a party at the Romney estate in town. “We didn't like the party and we didn't like Romney's kids, so we left early and got back in our ...

112

Album Review

Theo Jorgensmann / Albrecht Maurer: Melencolia

Read "Melencolia" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 4, 2012

Melencolia is based on Abrecht Dürer's 1514 engraving by the same name, created during Germany's horrific Peasants' Wars. However, these prominent jazz and avant-garde artists unite the brighter side of life to offset some fierce interactions. The lower register of Theo Jorgensmann's G-low clarinet synchronizes with Albrecht Maurer's violin and viola phrasings, bringing the duo closer from a timbral perspective. As such, the music emerges from a similar plane and intimates a tighter soundscape with a narrowed gap ...

107

Take Five With...

Take Five With Joseph Patrick Moore

by AAJ Staff
February 4, 2012

Meet Joseph Patrick Moore: For more than a decade Joseph Patrick Moore has been touring, recording, and establishing himself as an artist with a unique voice and a diversity of talents. His skills as bassist; composer; arranger; producer; author; educator and founding partner of Blue Canoe Digital illustrate why he is a highly sought after musician. Moore's music and creative vision echo the spirits of Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, to name a few.Instrument(s): ...

126

Album Review

Janice Finlay: Anywhere But Here

Read "Anywhere But Here" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
February 4, 2012

Saxophonist Janice Finlay has been voted “top sax" by the jazz fans of Winnipeg, Canada for three consecutive years. An educator by profession at the Manitoba Conservatory of Music & Arts, Finlay is a first-call musician who leads several groups and is a long-time member of the Ron Paley Big Band. A stalwart of the Winnipeg jazz scene, she also performs with the city's Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Orchestra. Leading a core quintet of Canadian-based players including award-winning bassist Jodi ...