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

John Surman: The Rainbow Band Sessions

Read "The Rainbow Band Sessions" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
December 27, 2011

It's been nearly two decades since British saxophonist/clarinetist John Surman last did a large ensemble disc, with the exception of Free and Equal (ECM, 2003), which teamed the duo of Surman and drummer/pianist Jack DeJohnette with the London Brass ensemble. But the last time Surman did a swinging session beyond a quartet was The Brass Project (ECM, 1993), and that was in collaboration with Canadian expat John Warren, another longtime Surman partner dating as far back as How Many Clouds ...

464

Live Review

Bohemian Caverns Celebrates 85 Years of Historic Jazz

by Franz A. Matzner
December 27, 2011

Marking its 85th anniversary as a jazz venue, 2011 was a remarkable year for Washington, DC's Bohemian Caverns, solidifying its renewed reputation as DC's premier jazz club and a venue of national significance. The path to this point, however, was neither easy nor guaranteed. The smoky clubs, dark corner joints, impromptu lofts, theaters, noisy dinner clubs, and hidden basement bars of jazz are emblazoned in our collective imagination and provide definition to entire genres of film and ...

101

Album Review

Alex Lopez: We Can Take This Boat

Read "We Can Take This Boat" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 27, 2011

While We Can Take This Boat is the debut from New York-based tenor saxophonist Alex Lopez, he's no unseasoned novice. Lopez studied with saxophonists George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, and Bob Mintzer, obtained his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Miami and his Masters at the Manhattan School of Music, and managed to turn some heads with his playing on percussionist Bobby Sanabria's Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!! (Jazzheads, 2011). Lopez can also be found bringing improvisational elements and unique ...

145

Take Five With...

Take Five With Stockton Helbing

by AAJ Staff
December 27, 2011

Meet Stockton Helbing: I starting playing drums in the sixth grade, while growing up in South Carolina. After high school, I attended the University of North Texas where I played in the well known One O'clock Lab band under the direction of Neil Slater. That opportunity helped open the door to being hired by jazz trumpet legend Maynard Ferguson. I spent four year touring the world with Ferguson, as well as serving as Musical Director. ...

Album Review

Kjell Nordeson / Aram Shelton: Incline

Read "Incline" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 27, 2011

The avant-garde schema is sort of an open-world platform where almost anything goes. But Incline is an album that sheds a radiant light on the sax-drums duo format, featuring an inordinate degree of textural components and a seamless integration of two like-minded artists, performing on similar planes. Here, Swedish drummer Kjell Nordeson and American alto saxophonist Aram Shelton opt for a reclusive setting, tucked away in the mountains at a cabin in Lake Tahoe, NV. Perhaps all or most distractions ...

260

Talkin' Blues

Talkin' Blues with Jimmy Herring

by Alan Bryson
December 27, 2011

Jimmy Herring is a musician who blurs lines, both in terms of genres and roles. Over the past two decades his work with the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Gov't Mule, The Allman Brothers Band, Frogwings, Phil Lesh & Friends, Project Z, Jazz is Dead, and Widespread Panic has cemented his position as one of the world's premier progressive rock guitarists. He has the uncanny ability to fuse the visceral power of rock with the ingenuity of jazz harmonics without diminishing the ...

142

Album Review

radio.string.quartet.vienna: radiodream

Read "radiodream" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
December 26, 2011

Ah, a string quartet. Calm, gentle--if rather derivative--music may well await. But there's a short verse on the inside cover of radiodream, the closing line of which serves as a fair warning about much of the music that actually awaits: “you can only escape while you are awake." radio.string.quartet.vienna is a band that not only wishes to play with the basic rules of grammar and punctuation; it also wants to play with the imagery of dreams and, for much of ...

132

Reassessing

Charles Lloyd Quartet: Love-In

by Chris May
December 26, 2011

Charles Lloyd QuartetLove-InAtlantic1967 Four-and-a-half decades after the event, saxophonist Charles Lloyd's Love-In, recorded live at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium in 1967, the counterculture's West Coast music hub, endures as much as an archaeological artifact as a musical document. From sleeve designer Stanislaw Zagorski's treatment of Rolling Stone photographer Jim Marshall's cover shot, through the album title and some of the track titles ("Tribal Dance," “Temple Bells"), and the inclusion of John ...

105

Album Review

Samo Salamon Bassless Trios: Duality

by Nic Jones
December 26, 2011

Guitarist Samo Salamon is one of those players quietly but fully engaged with moving the music forward. His vocabulary is entirely his own by dint of the individuality of phrasing that pervades the music of both trios featured in this set. Despite the similarity of instrumentation, the two groups' different personalities is testament to what's going down. The US trio, with alto saxophonist Tim Berne and drummer Tom Rainey, flirts with the kind of music Ornette Coleman ...

102

Take Five With...

Take Five With Frank Herzberg

by AAJ Staff
December 26, 2011

Meet Frank Herzberg: Frank Herzberg has appeared on nearly 60 CDs as a bassist, plays regularly with his own trio, and with the Marta Karassawa Quintet, John Stein Group, and the André Juarez Quartet, among others. He works also as a studio musician and producer for instrumental music in Brazil. He appears regularly at festivals giving concerts and workshops about improvisation.During his carrier he has appeared onstage, in the studio, or in workshops with Horace Silver, ...