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

Hillmen: The Whiskey Mountain Sessions

Read "The Whiskey Mountain Sessions" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 31, 2012

The group name and album title might imply semblances of a bluegrass jam-session, but Hillmen's The Whiskey Mountain Sessions is, in fact, an improvised jazz-rock set tinted with psychedelics, featuring keyboardist Gayle Ellett and guitarist Mike Murray, of the fabled Southern California progressive rock band Djam Karet. It's an electro-organic schematic sans instrumental overlays or audio compression that effectively captures the live studio performance aesthetic. In a loose sense, the music plots along like a pulsating dreamscape, formed ...

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Album Review

Jim Ketch: A Distant View

Read "A Distant View" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 31, 2012

A Distant View delivers intelligent music performed by highly involved players across a dozen diverse selections ranging from straight-ahead hard bop, calypso, an obligatory standard and a Chuck Mangione-esque soft rock tidbit thrown in for dessert. Incorporating a classic Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers quintet formula, these outstanding players share a common interest here in the total effort and each others' offerings, and it pays off in dividends. The frontline of trumpeter Jim Ketch and saxophonist ...

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Catching Up With

Ahmad Jamal

by Chris May
January 31, 2012

In February 2010, at the well seasoned age of 80, pianist Ahmad Jamal released A Quiet Time on Dreyfus Records. It is an album many observers regard as up there in the stratosphere along with such landmark Jamal discs as Chicago Revisited (Telarc, 1992) or A L'Olympia (Dreyfus, 1996), to name just two of many--or even Jamal's breakthrough LP, But Not For Me: At The Pershing (Chess, 1958). Sadly, Francis Dreyfus--a revered figure in the European record business, ...

Album Review

Heddy Boubaker / Hernani Faustino: Domino Doubles

Read "Domino Doubles" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
January 30, 2012

Saxophonist Heddy Boubaker and bassist Hernani Faustino have more in common than their love for improvised music. Both began their musical journeys playing in rock bands, before harkening to the call of free music.Boubaker was born in Marseilles in 1963 and began what he calls experimenting with music in 1977. First came rock and then punk, before he put his guitar aside and picked up alto and bass saxophones. His muse, now improvised music, is a perfect fit ...

Album Review

Joanna Weinberg: The Piano Diaries

Read "The Piano Diaries" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
January 30, 2012

Australian vocalist Joanna Weinberg is a difficult artist to pigeonhole in one genre. A testament to her versatility, The Piano Diaries is a very personal debut stemming from her restarting piano lessons after a three-decade hiatus, and represents a musical distillation of her eponymous autobiographical one-woman show. The dozen-song set showcases her various influences yet create a very original whole. Her times spent in South Africa are reflected in the jazz-like township theme of “Daughters of the ...

Extended Analysis

Josh Arcoleo: Beginnings

by Chris May
January 30, 2012

Josh ArcoleoBeginningsEdition Records2012 Over the decades since Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were making their reputations, forging in their wake two very different paradigms for the tenor saxophone, the instrument's players have acquired something of the aura of the gunslingers of the American Frontier. Other instruments lend themselves to compare-and-contrast, too, but there is something uniquely high noon about the tenor and its place in jazz legend. Although ...

Album Review

Hristo Vitchev / Weber Iago: Heartmony

Read "Heartmony" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 30, 2012

The choice between widening ones circle of musical partners or deepening relationships that already exist is often something with which musicians wrestle. While finding new collaborators can help in the networking department and open up new avenues of possibility in sound and style, continual exploration with a kindred spirit may help both parties in their pursuit of musical enlightenment, ultimately leading to a better artistic payoff in the end. Hristo Vitchev, a Bulgarian-born and Bay Area-based guitarist, knows a thing ...

Album Review

Dead Cat Bounce: Chance Episodes

Read "Chance Episodes" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
January 30, 2012

Saxophonist Matt Steckler is a man of many parts. As a musician he has led his own bands including the imaginatively titled Dead Cat Bounce and has played with some of the finest including saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Lee Konitz, and percussionist Bobby Sanabria. His varied associations and wide comfort zone are manifested in the array of styles infused into his compositions. He is well-served by his band, an unusual combination of four saxophones, bass and drums. Dead Cat Bounce ...

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Interview

Terell Stafford: Trial and Inspiration

by Andrew J. Sammut
January 30, 2012

Terell Stafford is as likely to credit his influences as he is to impress his listeners. Coming to jazz comparatively later than many players, and even with his busy schedule as a sideman, leader and educator, he remains devoted to exploring the music's roots, while expressing a relentless desire to learn more. Stafford first started playing trumpet at age thirteen, initially studying the classical repertoire and pursuing a music education degree at the University of Maryland. After being ...

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Book Review

Mark Miller: Way Down That Lonesome Road - Lonnie Johnson in Toronto 1965-1970

by Jerry D'Souza
January 29, 2012

Way Down That Lonesome Road: Lonnie Johnson in Toronto 1965-1970Mark MillerPaper; 160 pagesISBN 978-1-55128-148-3The Mercury Press2011 The life of singer and guitarist Lonnie Johnson has been chronicled well enough for a blues performer. But leave it to Mark Miller to find an adjunct that adds a whole new dimension to Johnson's biography--the last five years of his life, which he lived in Toronto. Miller has ...