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.

160

Album Review

Hendrik Meurkens: Live at Bird's Eye

Read "Live at Bird's Eye" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
November 24, 2011

Considered, by many, to be the most important jazz harmonicist since Toots Thielmans, German-born/New York-based Hendrik Meurkens has long been a connoisseur of Brazilian jazz, with an impressive discography of bossa nova and samba-infused music. Live at Bird's Eye is an assemblage of Brazilian, American and Italian jazz standards recorded live on several sessions from 2008 and 2010 at the Bird's Eye Jazz Club in Basel, Switzerland. For this recording, Meurkens draws on music from Joao Donato, Antonio Carlos Jobim ...

207

Mix Tape

McCoy Tyner: Vol. Two, 1960-61

by Lawrence Peryer
November 24, 2011

Vol. One, 1959-60 | Vol. Two, 1960-61 The jazz world ushered in the 1960s with a fury of innovative change. A bold avant-garde stretched the form while also making accessible and engaging records. Across just nine months in one corner of that world,pianist McCoy Tyner played on a variety of sessions that together serve as a concise illustration of the ground bop was ceding to modality, melody and more. He began his tenure and apprenticeship with saxophonist ...

143

Jazz Poetry

Poetry in Motian

by William DeLancey Adamson
November 23, 2011

Shimmering behind Bill's subtle reharmonies of the Gershwin tune LaFaro's pungent doublestops and even that asshole girl's phony laugh at the climax is your intelligence I've never heard nor ever will hear the like it's only Sunday night at the Village Vanguard but I feel it's the garden of Eden Years later it actually was or you made us think it was again when you wrote that primeval drone four notes ...

3,562

Website News

About All About Jazz's Open Jazz Project

by Michael Ricci
November 23, 2011

A community-driven effort to further jazz on the web Since we began back in 1995, and through the constant support of jazz enthusiasts, jazz musicians, industry professionals and web technicians, All About Jazz has established itself as an essential resource for jazz music. The site's importance grows with each passing year and as we further expand what we do, our dependency on folks like yourself grows as well. We're committed to building a comprehensive platform that embraces a global and ...

224

Extended Analysis

Andre Previn: Four Classic Albums

by David Rickert
November 23, 2011

Andre PrevinFour Classic AlbumsAvid Group 2011 Andre Previn may not be as well known as fellow West Coast pianists Vince Guaraldi and Dave Brubeck, but he nevertheless created a respectable body of work, mostly as a trio with drummer Shelly Manne, with whom he created a series of recordings where they swapped the leader role back and forth. This compilation collects four of Previn's sessions from the West Coast heyday of ...

189

Album Review

Sinikka Langeland: The Land That Is Not

Read "The Land That Is Not" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
November 23, 2011

Four years after her relentlessly beautiful ECM debut, Sinikka Langeland returns with the equally breathtaking The Land That Is Not. Following Starflowers (2007), the Norwegian singer/kantele player took a detour with Maria's Song (ECM, 2009), an intimate recording of folk songs and compositions by J.S. Bach that expanded upon territory visited on Påsketona (Nordic Sound, 2004). Few projects emerge entirely from a vacuum, and if Langeland's empathic Scandinavian quintet appeared to coalesce out of the ether for Starflower, the truth ...

158

Take Five With...

Take Five With Walter Clark

by AAJ Staff
November 23, 2011

Meet Walter Clark: It's in my DNA. Both of my grandparents on my mother's side were musicians. My grandmother had a degree in music from Spellman College and my grandfather, John McCoy, played multiple instruments and is the biological father of pianist McCoy Tyner. Music was a hobby, but after trying various trades and especially after the death of John Lennon, who encouraged me to continue after I had given up on music, I decided ...

120

Album Review

Jon Lundbom and Big Five Chord: Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!

Read "Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
November 23, 2011

Hot Cup Records has quickly established a reputation for documenting some of the most adventurous and quirky modern jazz around today. The label's flagship band, Mostly Other People Do The Killing (MOPDTK), is an incredibly energetic collective whose members seem to be popping up on all sorts of recordings these days. Half of MOPDTK, saxophonist Jon Irabagon and bassist Moppa Elliott, are also charter members of guitarist Jon Lundbom's Big Five Chord. Interestingly, the exact same personnel have also established ...

119

Album Review

Sean McGowan: Sphere

by David Rickert
November 23, 2011

Those who seek to create a tribute album of Thelonious Monk music face one big obstacle: how do you capture Monk's idiosyncratic style without sounding like a pale imitation? You could just record cover versions of his songs and leave it at that, but the end result wouldn't really capture the pianist's oddball genius, so what would be the point? Perhaps Sean McGowan has found the best solution: adapt Monk's music to a different instrument than piano. Sphere, ...

147

Album Review

Ira Sullivan and Stu Katz: A Family Affair

Read "A Family Affair" reviewed by William Carey

by William Carey
November 23, 2011

Some numbers to ponder. Saxophonist/trumpeter Ira Sullivan is 80 years old; vibraphonist Stu Katz is 74. 57 years. That is how long Ira Sullivan and Stu Katz have been making music together. 64 years. The number of years that Joe Segal's the Jazz Showcase has been featuring great jazz. In 1954, the year Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock," two fine young jazz musicians first got together in their adopted hometown of Chicago. Fast forward 57 ...