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.

124

Album Review

Marty Ehrlich's Rites Quartet: Frog Leg Logic

Read "Frog Leg Logic" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
January 12, 2012

The premier of Marty Ehrlich's Rites Quartet, Things Have Got To Change (Clean Feed, 2009), featured the venerable multi-instrumentalist's engaging originals bolstered by a handful of previously unrecorded pieces by his mentor, the late Julius Hemphill (1938-1995). Drawing on Hemphill's seminal work in the St Louis-based Black Artists' Group (BAG), and his innovative writing for the World Saxophone Quartet, Ehrlich has proven to be one of the legendary saxophonist's most ardent devotees, leading Hemphill's self-titled saxophone sextet after his passing.

476

Album Review

Jack DeJohnette featuring Bill Frisell: The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers

Read "The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers" reviewed by AAJ Staff

by AAJ Staff
January 12, 2012

Drummer Jack DeJohnette, now four releases down the road with his Golden Beams label, turns to the archives for this historic live set with Bill Frisell. The guitarist first heard DeJohnette's music as a teenager in the '60s, though it took some time before they would first perform together on Don Byron's Romance with the Unseen (Blue Note, 1999). They embrace a shared musical vision with one ear to the ground, digging the groove, and the other wide open to ...

136

Album Review

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Samdhi

Read "Samdhi" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 12, 2012

Paralleling the recent world-music phenomena, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa has become a champion of Indo-Jazz applications. By integrating Indian classical ragas, Mahanthappa fuses a highly progressive jazz base into his undulating and, at times, mesmeric compositions. With touches of jazz-fusion, framed on sprawling improvisational forums, the artist's global approach reaps additional rewarding factors via his signature sound, often designed with scintillating 16th note solo runs. He aligns his technical acumen with a compositional prowess that embeds variability with an assertive line ...

304

Race and Jazz

BAM or JAZZ: Why It Matters

by Greg Thomas
January 12, 2012

Since the last Race and Jazz column, the first of a multi-part discussion with John Gennari--the top scholar on the history of jazz criticism--a firestorm of controversy has arisen surrounding Nicholas Payton's declaration that, to him, the word jazz is dead. He also feels that the word jazz is tantamount to or worse than the “n" word--nigger--and that the best and most descriptive umbrella term is Black American Music: BAM. We'll continue sharing our conversation with Professor Gennari ...

Take Five With...

Take Five With Larry Tamanini

by AAJ Staff
January 12, 2012

Meet Larry Tamanini:Larry Tamanini is a professional musician with lots of experience in various high-level musical settings. Instrument: Guitar. Teachers and/or influences? My primary teachers for learning guitar have been Pat Martino, Dennis Sandole and Tom Giacabetti. Like most musicians, I have many influences. My big four on guitar are Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino and Kenny Burrell. Some other instrumentalists that I cannot leave off this list are Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, ...

713

Jazz Primer

What is Jazz? Good Question...

by Jason West
January 12, 2012

What is jazz? According to Wynton Marsalis jazz is music that swings. According to Pat Metheny jazz is not the music of Kenny G. According to Webster's jazz is characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre. Personally, I prefer the definition found in the old musician's joke about jazz being “better than sex, and it lasts longer." Certainly, the question is a highly subjective one. ...

129

Live Review

27th Havana International Jazz Festival: Havana, Cuba, December 15-18, 2011

by Louis Heckheimer
January 11, 2012

27th Havana International Jazz Festival Havana International Jazz Festival Plaza Havana, Cuba December 15-18, 2011 [Note: This is the second of a series of articles reporting on concerts and other activities that took place, as well as profiles of Cuban musicians who took part.] The Havana International Jazz Festival originated in 1979 when Cuban trumpet player Bobby Carcasses and others held a jazz festival at the Casa de la Cultura de Plaza in ...

Album Review

Soren Kjaergaard / Ben Street / Andrew Cyrille: Femklang

Read "Femklang" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 11, 2012

In his liner notes to the seminal Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959), pianist Bill Evans wrote eloquently about the link between Japanese visual art and improvisation, using the description of the technique of minimalistic painting as an analogy to the process of musical creation. Evans emphasized the need for an uninterrupted and natural approach to music making, eschewing elaborate artistic planning in favor of an approach which would allow the music to blossom in the moment while, at the same ...

114

Multiple Reviews

Another Timbre: Silence and After 2 – Cutting Edge

by John Eyles
January 11, 2012

When the Another Timbre label was launched in the autumn of 2007, its proprietor, Simon Reynell, said he intended its output to be a balance between electro-acoustic improvisation (eai), European free improv (EFI) and modern composition. While acknowledging that there are areas of overlap between these categories, at the time he added, “My interest in contemporary classical music has continued alongside my passion for improv, so I was very clear that I wanted Another Timbre to cover both areas. However, ...

Album Review

Eric Dolphy: Out To Lunch

Read "Out To Lunch" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
January 11, 2012

Recorded just four months before his tragic demise, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch (Blue Note, 1964) represents a pinnacle moment in avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. Together with Andrew Hill's Point of Departure on the same label and from the same year, Out To Lunch is among the most challenging albums in the Blue Note catalog--one to approach with a very open mind. It is also the only full studio record that Dolphy completed for the label, and the only ...