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.

Live Review

Duncan Sheik: Bayshore, NY, December 9, 2011

by Christine Connallon
December 24, 2011

Duncan Sheik Boulton Center for the Performing Arts Bayshore, NY December 9, 2011 Selecting “Stripped" to kick off the show at the Boulton Center for the Performing Arts on Long Island, NY seemed appropriate on many levels. Duncan Sheik stood center stage in the cozy, 260-seat venue, flanked by a semi-circle of five acoustic guitars and a keyboardist at a stately piano slightly behind him. Not an elaborate electric set, this was an ...

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Album Review

Hetty Kate: Kissing Bug

Read "Kissing Bug" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
December 24, 2011

British-born, Australian-based vocalist Hetty Kate leads three bands in Melbourne, recording several albums of western swing and lounge-style music. Kissing Bug is her first foray into jazz, showcasing standards from some of her favorite composers, like Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Johnny Richards and Billy Strayhorn. With only five tracks, the effort qualifies as an EP, serving as a preview and, as the press clippings state “a taste of more to come," intimating that this may well be a warmup to ...

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Product Spotlight

Miles Davis Trumpet High Performance In-Ear Headphones

by John Kelman
December 24, 2011

When Monster Cable launched the Miles Davis Tribute In-Ear Headphones in 2009, it redefined just how good a set of in-ear buds could sound...and how comfortable they could be. Still, priced at nearly $500 US, the product was aimed at a very specific demographic, a target made even clearer by the limited edition nature of its launch; only a certain number of the headphones were manufactured, lending them an exclusivity to tie into other products aimed at a high-end market, ...

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Year in Review

Mark F. Turner's Best Releases of 2011

by Mark F. Turner
December 23, 2011

It's been another terrific year of music and these are just a few that sparked something within and keep me coming back for more. Jazz New Releases Steve Coleman and Five Elements The Mancy of Sound (Pi Recordings) James Carter Organ Trio At The Crossroads EmArcy) Chris Dingman ...

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Album Review

Pat Mallinger Quartet featuring Bill Carrothers: Home on Richmond

Read "Home on Richmond" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 23, 2011

Minneapolis/St. Paul-bred Pete Mallinger, steeped in the tradition of saxophonists Charles Lloyd, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, opens Home on Richmond with Lloyd's “Third Floor Richard." The Chicago-based saxophonist's quartet takes the tune on a wild ride, like a jalopy with a bad wheel alignment careening down a mountain road with questionable brakes. It's a loose-jointed, freewheeling eleven minutes, and the brakes are just barely applied as the group segues into a rollicking thirteen-minute version of Charlie Chaplin's “Smile," a ...

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Album Review

G. F. Fitz-Gerald & Lol Coxhill: The Poppy Seed Affair

Read "The Poppy Seed Affair" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
December 23, 2011

Guitarist G.F. Fitz-Gerald has always mapped out musical territory every bit as distinct as that of Derek Bailey or Hans Reichel, while Lol Coxhill is one of the most distinctive soprano saxophonists on the planet. They've worked as a duo for decades and this one-DVD/two-CD set straddles those decades with rare aplomb. The DVD was shot in 1981 and depicts crimes of passion performed in a style simultaneously surreal and expressionist by members of the performance art ...

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Album Review

Jesper Thilo: Jesper Thilo & The American Stars

Read "Jesper Thilo & The American Stars" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
December 23, 2011

Jesper Thilo was the Danish saxophonist of choice for nearly all the great US jazz musicians who played Copenhagen in the 1980s. Johnny Griffin, that most demanding of tenor players, pushed him to the limit and had no hesitation in naming him a “great Dane." Among those who included him on their recording sessios in the Danish capital were trumpeters Clark Terry and Harry Sweets" Edison, pianist Sir Roland Hanna and trombonist Al Grey, all featured on ...

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Live Review

Norm Zocher: Cambridge, MA, December 6, 2011

by Andrew J. Sammut
December 23, 2011

Norm Zocher Outpost 186 Cambridge, MA December 6, 2011 Norm Zocher is well known for his guitar work on Boston's forward-thinking jazz scene, as well as gigs with Maria Schneider, Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer, Esperanza Spalding and local mainstay the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, all between teaching at Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. On December 6 at Outpost 186, Zocher made his hometown debut on the unusual jazz double ...

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Just For Fun

Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: Jazz Aphorisms

by Chris May
December 23, 2011

For artists who express themselves in a non-verbal medium, jazz instrumentalists have come up with a bundle of choice aphorisms. Here are four attributed to, or about, tenor saxophonists, which were coined too late for inclusion in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff's Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1955). If you feel like sharing some favorites of your own, you can post in the comment box below. Frank ...

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Album Review

Alejandro Florez & Tibagui: Malandanza

Read "Malandanza" reviewed by Lawrence Peryer

by Lawrence Peryer
December 22, 2011

Alejandro Florez's Tibagui exists to explore and expand upon the Andean music of the guitarist's native Colombia. Neither cumbia nor chichi, Florez's quartet use traditional folk melodies as starting points for very modern, sophisticated and engaging improvisations. The musical tradition Tibagui springs from is primarily string-based, typically a trio including the Latin bandola and tiple, as well as guitar. Here, Florez has expanded the instrumentation to include wind instruments and percussion, each of which has long had ...