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.

239

Record Label Profile

MoonJune Records: A Decade of Progressive Rock Documentation

by Mark Redlefsen
October 5, 2011

On a moon of this past June, appropriately enough, Leonardo Pavkovic, owner of the progressive jazz label MoonJune Records, gave All About Jazz an interview at the label's office in Union Square, New York City. The name MoonJune Records, which Pavkovic started back in 2001, is taken from the title of a song, “Moon In June," that appeared on the Canterbury jazz-rock group, Soft Machine's 1970 album, Third (CBS). MoonJune Records aims to provide jazz and progressive rock musicians from ...

156

Live Review

Guelph Jazz Festival: Guelph, Canada, September 7-11, 2011

by Sara Villa
October 5, 2011

Guelph Jazz Festival, Colloquium & Nuit Blanche Guelph, Canada September 7-11, 2011 As Prez used to say, if you are a good improviser you are able to tell a soulful story. What happens, then, when some of the most experimental improvisers from Canada, Australia, Norway, and England (among the others) are involved in a four-day kermesse, including an all-night long nuit blanche, filled with experimental performances? The single story, then, becomes a complex, intertwined narrative of ...

151

Album Review

Jonathan Smith Quintet: En Route

Read "En Route" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 5, 2011

Portland-based guitarist Jonathan Smith spent three decades putting out fires, but he lets things burn on En Route. The retired firefighter-cum-jazz guitarist assembled a crew of musicians with whom he'd performed in live settings at various times, to record a debut album which, as Smith himself says, “delivers solid and accessible jazz." Smith's music isn't made to push boundaries and challenge his potential listeners; it's simply straight-up, straight-ahead jazz that's easy to digest. Blues, boogaloo, swing, calypso, ...

182

Take Five With...

Take Five With David Martin

by AAJ Staff
October 5, 2011

Meet David Martin: David Martin was born in Toledo, OH and grew up in Charleston, WV. He graduated from Capital University's Conservatory of Music in Columbus, OH. He is a composer, arranger, teacher, and performer. He played in the Columbus area for several years then moved to Minneapolis, MN and lived there 13 years. He had his own jazz trio and also played in Puro Cubano, Beira Mar Brasil, Proyecto La Plena, Latin Sounds Orchestra, Salsa Del Soul ...

142

Album Review

Daunik Lazro: Some Other Zongs

Read "Some Other Zongs" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 5, 2011

To designate saxophonist Daunik Lazro the French Joe McPhee--or, perhaps, the French equivalent to Evan Parker--is to illustrate not only the proficiency he has with his instrument, but his formidable improvisational skills. For his second solo release, Some Other Zongs, he sticks solely to the finicky and often blunt baritone saxophone--an instrument which, in the hands of a master musician like Lazro, sheds its dull and undistinguished patina to emerge full-flowered. Some Other Zongs follows his previous solo ...

175

Album Review

Los Agentos: Afrykanski Snieg

Read "Afrykanski Snieg" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
October 5, 2011

Out of Poland comes an eclectic band of musicians led by harmonicist Robert Lenert, wrapped in a kaleidoscope of sound and image. The name of the band is Spanish, but the players sing in English, French and Polish, and their music takes them through pop, jazz and R&B. A sprinkling of African rhythms and the array of African instruments played by Andrzej Serafin level the musical terrain, but it is the overall context that counts, and the band scores big ...

169

Album Review

Gary Grant: Don't Hold Your Breath

Read "Don't Hold Your Breath" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 5, 2011

Years ago, The New Yorker did a profile article on the appropriately named New York studio lead trumpet legend, Bernie Glow, depicting the daily rigors of studio recording life in the now long-gone halcyon days of that city's recording scene. Today, Los Angeles studios reign supreme, the trumpeting envelope surpassed daily as registers are pushed, rhythms are highly complex, acoustic instruments compete with technologies, and genres mix and mingle. Studio trumpeters require a high degree of precision, and the unflinching ...

162

Album Review

Janelle Reichman: Middleground

Read "Middleground" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 4, 2011

It's a pity that someone as conspicuously talented as Janelle Reichman couldn't prompt at least one bona fide record label to release her remarkable debut, Middleground. But that's emblematic of today's music biz: without a name, talent simply doesn't cut it. While the other members of Reichman's quintet are also nameless--or may as well be--they are no less adept than she, and together they have produced an impressive narrative that swings and satisfies from start to finish. ...

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

October 2011

by Mr. P.C.
October 4, 2011

Dear Mr. P.C.:On my steady gig, I'll be trying really hard to play well. You know, being in the moment, trying to come up with ideas I've never played before, treating jazz with total respect. Right in the middle of all that I'll hear the drums start to sound like something is wrong. When I look over, the drummer is making kissy faces at some cute woman in the audience and showing off for her with all these ...

103

Album Review

Claudio Roditi: Bons Amigos

Read "Bons Amigos" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 4, 2011

Trumpeter Claudio Roditi may have left Brazil long ago, but his homeland still resides deep inside his soul. On Bons Amigos, Roditi's trumpet speaks, sings and soars in service of songs put to paper by some of the finest writers in Brazilian music history. When it came time to map out a program for this, his third album on Resonance Records, Roditi sat down with producer/label head George Klabin and focused on music, written in the period between the '60s ...