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

Juhani Aaltonen & Heikki Sarmanto: Conversations

Read "Conversations" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
January 28, 2012

Saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen and pianist Heikki Sarmanto are two icons of the Finnish jazz scene. Collaborating constantly for almost fifty years in myriad outfits and formats, despite many moves in their busy musical careers, they have never recorded as a duo. These two “incurable romantics," as Aaltonen defines it, use this opportunity to record an album featuring their unique musical communication as one musical entity. All 16 improvisations--based on Sarmanto's melodies, spontaneous creations in the studio and ...

103

Album Review

Juan Andrés Ospina: BBB (Barcelona Bogota Boston)

Read "BBB (Barcelona Bogota Boston)" reviewed by Lewis J Whittington

by Lewis J Whittington
January 28, 2012

The jazz diary of pianist/composer Juan Andrés Ospina's BBB is an elegant, untethered tour of primary musical colors, with inviting light, angles and shadows. “Todavía No" states the theme with percussionist Austin McMahon's airy drums swinging, with tango punctuations. Saxophonists Ben Roseth and actually Matan Chapnizka dominate with flights of jazz fancy, though it is Ospina's piano that keeps the pulse more grounded. The pianist composed all but one of the tracks, but he is very much part of the ...

188

Extended Analysis

Charlie Parker: The Complete Masters 1941-54

by Chris May
January 27, 2012

Charlie ParkerThe Complete Masters 1941-54Universal France2012 It is possible that more “complete" collections of the work of Charlie Parker have been released than there were recordings made by the saxophonist. And as you beat your way through the box set undergrowth, caution is required. Few of the collections are, in fact, complete, even within the parameters (complete live, complete studio, complete with strings, etc) by which they define themselves. In the ...

Album Review

RED Trio + John Butcher: Empire

by John Sharpe
January 27, 2012

By inviting English saxophonist John Butcher to join them in a Lisbon studio, the Portuguese Red Trio executed a stroke of genius. Together they stretch pianist Bill Evans' democratic ethos to its logical conclusion: no-one leads, no-one follows, but paradoxically all four move as one, exploring timbre and mood across three collectively improvised cuts. The threesome's eponymous 2010 Clean Feed debut garnered many critical plaudits and the augmented follow-up looks destined to achieve the same result. Such collaborations are not ...

Live Review

Tim Horner Octet: Teaneck, New Jersey, January 7, 2012

by David A. Orthmann
January 27, 2012

Tim Horner OctetPuffin Cultural ForumTeaneck, NJJanuary 7, 2012 Tim Horner's one night gig at the Puffin Cultural Forum was accompanied by an unusually high set of expectations. In September of last year, Miles High Records released The Places We Feel Free, Horner's impressive maiden voyage as a leader in a career spanning three decades and over two hundred records as a sideman. Places adroitly maneuvers through the sprawling jazz mainstream without evincing any particular ...

Album Review

Sandy Evans: When the Sky Cries Rainbows

Read "When the Sky Cries Rainbows" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
January 27, 2012

The multifaceted Sandy Evans is often described as one of Australia's finest jazz musicians and composers. True enough, but as When the Sky Cries Rainbows amply demonstrates, this saxophonist surely ranks as one of the best contemporary jazz composers/musicians anywhere. A musical response to her husband, clarinetist Tony Gorman's multiple sclerosis, this sixty-minute, suite-like work conveys a remarkable range of colors and textures, and a breadth of musical ideas that evokes composers Duke Ellington and Gil Evans in the more ...

185

Album Review

Markelian Kapedani Trio: Balkan Bop

Read "Balkan Bop" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 27, 2012

Were we able to quantitate talent density as a function of label catalog size, Sergio Veschi's Red Records would doubtless be close to the top. His generosity to Italian and foreign musicians alike has resulted in a great jazz label. Albanian activist/pianist/composer Markelian Kapedani adds to this fine catalog with Balkan Bop, a standard piano trio performance of ten original compositions, marking his second recording for the label, after 2008's solo Balkan Piano. Choosing a single track ...

129

Album Review

Erland Dahlen: Rolling Bomber

Read "Rolling Bomber" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 27, 2012

Norwegian drummer Erland Dahlen's solo debut proffers several areas of interest, as he uses a 1940s Rollingbomber Slingerland drum kit (presumably using new heads) and overlays an array of small percussion and string instruments, electronics and other implements to craft a striking electro-organic expedition. However, the program intimates an inside view of a drummer exploiting his toys to remodel paths previously taken. “Monkey" tenders an all-inclusive display of Dahlen's methodology. He gets matters off to a rapid pace ...

Album Review

Majid Bekkas: Mabrouk

Read "Mabrouk" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
January 26, 2012

Bekkas is a leading Gnawa musician who sings and plays the oud, as well as acoustic guitar and guembri, the three-stringed bass-like instrument that provides the trance- inducing pulse of Gnawa music. The Gnawa, in turn, are spiritual brotherhoods formed in Morocco among slaves brought there from sub-Saharan Africa over the centuries. Bekkas has collaborated with a number of jazz players, including saxophonist Archie Shepp, pianist Joachim Kuhn and drummer Hamid Drake, concentrating on the more adventurous end of the ...

105

Extended Analysis

Zoe Rahman: Kindred Spirits

by Chris May
January 26, 2012

Zoe RahmanKindred SpiritsManushi Records2012 Holy soul food, Batman! It feels good to listen to a musician who plays from the heart rather than the brain. Not that British pianist Zoe Rahman is deficient in the grey stuff or technique. She studied music at Oxford University, the Royal Academy of Music and Berklee; once, twice, three times an alumnus. But when Rahman is seated at the keyboard, and her band kicks in, ...