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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Multiple Reviews

Two Sides Of The Trio Coin: Sebastian Liedke and Heniu

by Dan Bilawsky
January 19, 2012

These two albums make it abundantly clear that bassist Sebastian Liedke doesn't look at music as a unidirectional art form, and his life experiences likely have a lot to do with his outlook. The young, Berlin-based artist had put his instrument on the back burner while he was gainfully employed as a civil engineer, but lack of enthusiasm for his chosen career helped him find his way back to the bass. This circuitous route to the music camp clearly helped ...

Album Review

David Bennett Thomas: Jazz Portrait

Read "Jazz Portrait" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 19, 2012

One of America's top literary voices in crime fiction, T. Jefferson Parker says that after he finishes reading a good book he feels nourished. A sense of nourishment can also come from listening to a good piece of music, regardless of genre. Pianist David Bennett Thomas, who may be better known for his classical compositions--his Piano Works 2001-2009) (Self Produced, 2010) a superb example of that side--presents his tangent into jazz with Jazz Portrait, drawing inspiration from the world of ...

Album Review

Tolvan Big Band: Tarantula Suite

Read "Tarantula Suite" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
January 19, 2012

The Tolvan Big Band is one of Scandinavia's most experienced big bands. Located in Malmö, in southern Sweden, this orchestra has been working since 1979 and, under saxophonist/musical director Helge Albin, has collaborated with notable Americans such as Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Liebman and Michael Brecker, British composer Mike Westbrook and Danish saxophonist Lars Møller; the band has even dedicated one of its programs to new arrangements of the John Lennon/Paul McCartney songbook. On Tarantula Suite, reed player ...

Live Review

NYC Winter Jazzfest, Day 2: January 7, 2012

by Daniel Lehner
January 19, 2012

Day 1 | Day 22012 NYC Winter Jazzfest, Day 2New York, NYJanuary 7, 2012 Gregoire Maret The harmonica, like the accordion and other free reed aerophones, doesn't come with as much built-in room for expression as other wind instruments, which is what makes Gregoire Maret's playing so unique. For his quartet show at Zinc Bar, Maret relied on loose melodicism, carefully organized ornaments and just the right amount of “out" playing to give ...

128

Album Review

Charlie Haden / Hank Jones: Come Sunday

Read "Come Sunday" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
January 18, 2012

Come Sunday continues the dialog between two jazz masters--bassist Charlie Haden and pianist Hank Jones--that began with 1995's Steal Away (Verve). The topic of discussion concerns hymns, spirituals, and beloved tunes which are, without a doubt, personal and familiar to both musicians. Jones (the elder sibling of jazz luminaries Elvin Jones and Thad Jones) was the son of a devout Baptist deacon while Haden grew up performing in his family's radio show, which included country and American folk music.

Album Review

B3 Conspiracy: Sleeping Lions

Read "Sleeping Lions" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 18, 2012

There's something magnificently earthy and earth-moving about the sounds emanating from a Hammond B3 organ, especially when it's in great hands. Marvelous players such as Jimmy Smith, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Richard Groove" Holmes and Joey DeFrancesco lead the B3 parade. B3 Conspiracy's Sleeping Lions is a doubly delicious dose of organ-driven jazz: not only is there Bill Callanan's fine playing (deserving to be listed with the aforementioned), but the CD gives props to organ/soul-jazz stars Brother Jack McDuff and Les ...

Album Review

Jon Corbett's Dangerous Musics: Kongens Gade

Read "Kongens Gade" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 18, 2012

Legendary European jazz and free-jazz drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo gels to a higher-power along with prominent exponents of the British jazz scene in this egalitarian rendezvous. Led by energetic hornist Jon Corbett, who seemingly exhausts all possibilities of this expressionistic voyage, bassist Nick Stephens' limber and expansive bottom-end assists with seeding a loose but manifold structural component. Corbett is at no loss for ideas, equating to a set modeled on extended pieces. With his bristling trumpet lines atop ...

Album Review

Axel's Axiom: Uncommon Sense

Read "Uncommon Sense" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
January 18, 2012

Since graduating from Boston's Berklee College of Music in 2004, German-born pianist Axel Schwintzer has kept busy teaching, playing throughout New England, performing at the prestigious Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and playing various venues in the New York City area since relocating there in 2007. Axel's Axiom may not be familiar to most jazz audiences, but is Schwintzer's second group, with Uncommon Sense representing the sextet's recording debut.With the Grammy Award-winning Yellowjackets--clearly one ...

235

Multiple Reviews

Miles Davis: 1986-1991 The Warner Years

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
January 18, 2012

Warner Bros. was trumpeter Miles Davis's last record company, and the five years covered by the five-disc collection entitled 1986-1991 The Warner Years, pale in comparison to the 30-year, 70-disc box set of Davis' complete recordings for Columbia Records, released in 2009. So the quantity is far lower: how does the quality compare?Davis' detractors typically divide his output into the early, good years and the late, bad years: at some point, they say, Davis simply went too far. ...

116

Album Review

Daniel Bennett Group: Peace And Stability Among Bears

Read "Peace And Stability Among Bears" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
January 17, 2012

The album art (a bear bedecked in Wild West accouterments) and song titles ("Farmer Joe Was A Bear," “Dogs Of Our Time") of Daniel Bennett Group's Peace & Stability Among Bears promise a good--if cartoonish--time. What's going on in the music, however, is something altogether different. The quartet performance led by reeds player Bennett sounds light at first blush but is, in fact, pretty weighty business, welcoming and aesthetically coherent. Three elements of this success have nothing to do with ...