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

The Landrus Kaleidoscope: Capsule

by Dave Wayne
December 3, 2011

After exploring post-bop and free-ish jazz with his first two CDs, multi-reed player Brian Landrus extends his stylistic range into the realm of electric jazz with Capsule. Despite listing Fender Rhodes and electric guitar among the CD credits, Capsule is not really a fusion record. Rather, it's a jazz recording with some electronic instrumentation, along the lines of what Dave Douglas and Donny McCaslin have been doing with their electric bands. Landrus' band is well-suited to explore this realm. Pianist ...

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Extended Analysis

Miles Davis Quintet: Live in Europe 1967 - The Bootleg Series Volume 1

by Kevin Davis
December 3, 2011

Miles Davis Quintet Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Volume 1 Legacy Recordings 2011 The most--perhaps only--frustrating thing about this first installment in what trumpeter Miles Davis completists can only hope ends up being an exhaustive series of archival releases, is the 44 years it took Columbia/Legacy to release it. Though offbeat catalog oddity Miles in Berlin (Columbia, 1965) managed to snap what Japanese jazz buffs dubbed Davis' “Gold Quintet" (featuring tenor saxophonist ...

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Album Review

Various Artists: 101 Things to Do in Bongolia

Read "101 Things to Do in Bongolia" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 3, 2011

101 Things to Do in Bongolia compiles the first year of 45 RPM singles, plus a few bonus remixes and other surprises, released and digitally compiled by Brooklyn-based Electric Cowbell Records, founded by percussionist/entrepreneur Jim Thomson. Thomson also plays in two bands featured here (the CSC Funk Band, and Bio Ritmo) and has continued Cowbell operations with assistance from keyboardist Marlysse Simmons (also in Bio Ritmo) and Stuart Bogie, who has helmed horns and production for Medeski, Martin & Wood, ...

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Extended Analysis

Pat Martino Quartet: Undeniable

by Chris May
December 2, 2011

Pat Martino QuartetUndeniableHighNote2011 Hot buttered soul-jazz, Batman, guitarist Pat Martino's Undeniable is the business! Recorded live at Washington's Blues Alley in June 2009, with tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, organist Tony Monaco and drummer Jeff Tain" Watts, it harks back to Martino's early to mid 1960s roots in combos led by organists Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Richard Groove" Holmes. The album revisits the codified, fifty year-old style ...

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Album Review

Arun Ghosh: Primal Odyssey

Read "Primal Odyssey" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
December 2, 2011

Primal Odyssey, the second album from British/Asian clarinetist and composer Arun Ghosh, is yet more evidence that the Northwest of England is a creative center for some of the most stylish contemporary jazz. Admittedly, Ghosh is now based in London, but the towns of his formative years must take some of the credit for nurturing and encouraging his talents. As a writer and performer, Ghosh is developing a formidable reputation, which this album can only enhance. The ...

Live Review

Pat Martino: Philadelphia, PA, November 25, 2011

by Victor L. Schermer
December 2, 2011

Pat Martino TrioChris' Jazz CaféPhiladelphia, PANovember 25, 2011Sir Edmund Hillary, when asked why he scaled Mt. Everest, replied, “Because it is there." A similar explanation could be given for why guitarist Pat Martino fans go to hear him repeatedly: because he is there--in the Here and Now!, as the title of his 2011 Backbeat Books autobiography, co-written with Bill Milkowski, proclaims. Fans know they are going to get that rarefied mountaintop feeling from his startling ...

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Album Review

Jimmy Owens: The Monk Project

Read "The Monk Project" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
December 2, 2011

Thelonious Monk is not suffering from inattention in 2011; it seems, in fact, that he's having a great year, for someone who died in 1982. His singularly quirky tunes have become the staples of hundreds of set lists, and it's hard to swing a dead cat in a record store without hitting dozens of new releases that include at least one Monk song. And why not? Monk's compositions are among the most original, identifiable and substantial music in the jazz ...

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Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

Mr. P.C.'s Best of 2011

by Mr. P.C.
December 2, 2011

Dear Mr. P.C.:Jazz is a finite resource, right? So when people write long compositions or take long solos, aren't they stripping the planet? What will be left for our children and grandchildren? Saxophonists Against Future Exploitation

Dear SAFE:Of course there are the jazz depletion deniers who say we can always find more. They want us to mine the music of remote aboriginal tribes, for example, then distill it and extract essential ...

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Album Review

Vasil Hadžimanov Trio: El Raval

Read "El Raval" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
December 2, 2011

El Raval is an ambitious project that brings together three virtuosos: renowned keyboardist/pianist Vasil Hadžimanov; bassist Martin Gjakonovski; and drummer Alek Sekulovski. Each artist is a prominent figure in his own musical sphere and country, but with this recording the Vasil Hadzimanov Trio arrives as a unified band. What links these remarkable musicians together is guitarist Toni Kitanovski, who assumed the role of producer and contributed three tracks to the date. Each of them has played with Kitanovski's regular band ...

Album Review

New World Jazz Composers Octet: Breaking News

Read "Breaking News" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
December 2, 2011

Established in 2000, in the spirit of the Mingus Jazz Workshop, the New World Jazz Composer's Octet sounds more like an orchestra than a group of eight musicians. On its third release, Breaking News, the octet showcases six contemporary composers affiliated with the ensemble. The music is intricate and well-constructed, with hints of Latin on a few of the tracks, including Matthew Nicholl's “Poco Picasso," which features a complex piano solo from Tim Ray that nevertheless stays ...