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

Donny McCaslin Group: Half Moon Bay, CA, September 11, 2011

by Bill Leikam
October 22, 2011

Donny McCaslin GroupDouglas Beach HouseHalf Moon Bay, CaliforniaSeptember 11, 2011 From New York City, the Donny McCaslin Group arrived at the Douglas Beach House with everything ready to go. The group consisted of tenor saxophonist McCaslin, pianist Uri Caine, bassist Fima Ephron and drummer Mark Guiliana. McCaslin's latest album, Perpetual Motion (Greenleaf, 2011) formed the foundation for a tour whose California leg was scheduled to end with the Monterey Jazz Festival. It was a ...

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Album Review

Ron Jackson: Flubby Dubby

Read "Flubby Dubby" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
October 22, 2011

New York-based urban guitarist Ron Jackson blends his soulful jazz sound with elements of R&B, funk and even a touch of the Caribbean mood on Flubby Dubby, his sixth album as leader. Leading his classic organ trio, also featuring organist Kyle Koeler and drummer Otis Brown III, the album was recorded live at Cecil's Jazz Club in West Orange, New Jersey, with alto saxophonist Bruce Williams and tenor luminary Don Braden augmenting the band on “The Long And Winding Road" ...

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Album Review

Naked Truth: Shizaru

Read "Shizaru" reviewed by Lawrence Peryer

by Lawrence Peryer
October 21, 2011

Naked Truth is the brain child of Italian bassist Lorenzo Feliciati, who has made a name for himself throughout Europe since 2005 as both a leader and collaborator. Feliciati has said that Naked Truth came from his desire to create a band where “each voice is equal and contributes to the musical conversation," and where no instrument dominates the melodies or solos. Instead, each composition is based upon a riff or sonic motif, with the players all responding with improvised ...

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Extended Analysis

Arun Ghosh: Primal Odyssey

by Chris May
October 21, 2011

Arun GhoshPrimal OdysseyCamoci Records2011 There you are, waiting for the next Indo-Jazz album to arrive, and then two come along at the same time. October 2011 has already seen the release of Grand Union Orchestra's If Paradise (Red Gold), and now here comes clarinetist Arun Ghosh's Primal Odyssey. It has been a long wait too, in Britain anyway, particularly for Indo-Jazz with a Bengali flavor--since Ghosh's debut set, ...

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Album Review

The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra: All Out of Peaches

Read "All Out of Peaches" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 21, 2011

This Minneapolis-based quintet may whet the appetite of Dixie Dregs or Mahavishnu Orchestra enthusiasts, but the ensemble's progressive-rock stance snugly fits into the newer trends of this genre, where dissonance, melody, jazz-like improvisation and odd-metered time signatures all reside on a synchronous musical topography. “Memo" accentuates the group's divergent compositional style, partially based on odd-metered rhythmic structures and fiddle performer Lisi Wright's streaming staccato phrasings. Drummer Mark O'Day adds a quirky yet inventive tom pattern, serving as an ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five With Andreas Ulvo

by AAJ Staff
October 21, 2011

Meet Andreas Ulvo: Despite his young age, Andreas Ulvo (b.1983), from Eidskog in Hedmark, has already made a mark for himself on the Norwegian and European jazz scenes. His main projects are his own solo piano project and Eple Trio. Together with the two other members of Eple Trio, he has a Masters degree in improvisation and jazz from the Norwegian Academy of Music. Ulvo also works with other bands/artists like the Mathias Eick Quintet,Karl Seglem and Frøy ...

Album Review

Tim Hagans: The Moon is Waiting

Read "The Moon is Waiting" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
October 21, 2011

Trumpeter Tim Hagans shares a couple of things in common with Miles Davis. One is his absolute belief that his instrument shares something visceral with keeping fundamentally correct time--and therefore, on The Moon is Waiting, with drummer Jukkis Uotila. The other is his dalliances with the notes he plays; it is not that he always plays a note for a long time, but he stretches them as much as is required for each one to tug at the nerves, elongating ...

Live Review

Cyrille Aimée and Diego Figueiredo at Nighttown

by Matt Marshall
October 21, 2011

Cyrille Aimée and Diego FigueiredoNighttownCleveland Heights, OHSeptember 27, 2011 At the midpoint of her show with guitarist Diego Figueiredo on Sept. 27 at Cleveland's Nighttown, singer Cyrille Aimée pulled out her loop pedal and set about constructing the rhythmic and harmonic vocal tracks that would form the pulsing, multilayered foundation for a French-lyric song of her own composition. The wordless backing, with its beat-box bump and skip, had as much to do with hip-hop ...

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Album Review

Le Boeuf Brothers: In Praise of Shadows

Read "In Praise of Shadows" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
October 20, 2011

Projects such as the Le Boeuf Brothers' In Praise of Shadows should help quiet the debate on whether or not jazz is stagnating. The twins--keyboardist Pascal and saxophonist/clarinetist Remy--are talented musicians and award-winning composers who are a part of the new breed of young artists, like trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, pianist John Escreet and bassist Esperanza Spalding, who channel their influences, environments, and resources into works that reflect their own identities. As in their self-released 2009 debut, House ...

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Extended Analysis

Jaco Pastorius: The 60th Anniversary Collection

by John Kelman
October 20, 2011

Jaco Pastorius The 60th Anniversary Collection Warner Music Japan 2011 It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a quarter century since Jaco Pastorius died at the outrageously young age of 35. At a time when other electric bassists like Stanley Clarke were redefining the role of the instrument--no longer playing only a supporting role, but becoming a front-line partner--Pastorius still managed to shake an already fusion-quaked world with the one-two-three punch of his ...