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.

151

Album Review

Pierrick Pedron: Cheerleaders

Read "Cheerleaders" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 27, 2011

Pierrick Pédron grew up in 1980s France listening to Neil Young and the super groups of rock, as well as to saxophone greats such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley. This combination of early influences can be clearly heard on the French alto saxophonist's third solo album, the fascinating and occasionally enigmatic Cheerleaders. A combination of brass bands, King Crimson, bebop and a touch of Pink Floyd, all centered on Pédron's tight yet lyrical alto sound. It's ...

151

Interview

Francesco Turrisi: In Pursuit of Ecstasy

by Ian Patterson
September 27, 2011

It has often been said that composer/harpsichordist/violinist Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was the first jazz musician. His contrapuntal techniques and ideas on harmony, rhythm and form have influenced countless jazz musicians. Numerous are the jazz musicians who have also studied classical music, usually prior to shifting to jazz. Few, however, are those who have taken a Master's degree in jazz and then opted to study early music, a term that refers to European classical music dating roughly from the Medieval ...

148

Album Review

Kevin Crabb: Waltz For Dylan

Read "Waltz For Dylan" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 27, 2011

Drummer Kevin Crabb's name resonates most in drumming and education circles, but this album is all about his playing and composing. When the Los Angeles-based drummer isn't busy teaching, or espousing the virtues of his former teachers in articles for Modern Drummer magazine or elsewhere, he gets behind the kit and puts his extensive musical knowledge to good use within his own songs. Waltz For Dylan features a tight foursome with a unified mission to serve the ...

160

Album Review

Billy Fox's Backbirds & Bullets: Dulces

by Jack Huntley
September 27, 2011

In the liner notes for Dulces, Billy Fox outlines the influence that Bengali writer, artist and composer Rabindranath Tagore had on his own compositional insights, writing “Tagore boldly defied the expectations of each idiom." And after listening to Dulces, it is apparent that Fox learned well. Like his mentor, Fox is able to use various musical idioms as powerful touchstones without lapsing into empty compositional rhetoric. Instead, Fox harnesses the energy and beauty of multiple dialects that culminates in an ...

148

Album Review

Trevor Watts & Veryan Watson: 5 More Dialogues

Read "5 More Dialogues" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
September 27, 2011

Their conversations, garrulous and engaged in a monumental dissertation about life, emerge from out of a bottomless musical vortex. Such is the power and energy of 5 More Dialogues--the salvoes of arpeggios, from the hands of Veryan Weston, and the breathtaking glissandi, from the breath of Trevor Watts--that the gloom of nothingness into which the music pours that silence is not merely shattered, it is reborn, with angular echoes and ghostly whispers amid the melodious caterwauling of Weston's flying right ...

259

Film Review

John Scofield: New Morning - The Paris Concert

by John Kelman
September 27, 2011

John ScofieldNew Morning: The Paris ConcertInakustik2010 There once was a time when it was nearly impossible to keep up with your favorite artist because, back in the pre-internet Stone Age, you had to rely on less regular media and word of mouth. Nowadays, between internet and social media, it's become easy to know what that artist is up to, because if he burps, you can read about it somewhere. A great thing, in principle, ...

203

Album Review

Stuart McCallum: Distilled

Read "Distilled" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 26, 2011

Distilled is a beautifully atmospheric recording, the third album from Stuart McCallum, best known for his work with the Cinematic Orchestra. The Manchester-based guitarist/composer knows how to combine established and contemporary sounds, making them into music that is never less than fascinating and, at its best, a thing of breathtaking beauty. Much of the beauty of this album comes from McCallum's ability to blend instruments together to form a sound that is both cooperative and undifferentiated--a process ...

272

Album Review

Chick Corea / Stefano Bollani: Orvieto

by John Kelman
September 26, 2011

If the combination of two chordal instruments--guitar with piano, or vibraphone with guitar, say--can prove a significant challenge in improvised music, then surely the piano duo is the most demanding of all. No other instrument has a seven-and-a-quarter octave range, played with eight fingers and two thumbs, creating far greater risk of harmonic, melodic and rhythmic train wrecks. Pianist Chick Corea has been mining the vast harmonic potential of the piano duo more than most, beginning with ...

107

Album Review

Kenny Shanker: Steppin' Up

Read "Steppin' Up" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 26, 2011

Alto Saxophonist Kenny Shanker is proof that an artist's direction isn't always reflected in their tonal personality. Shanker possesses a sleek-and-sweet tone that has served him well on dates with big name ghost band, like the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, as well as smooth-leaning pianist David Benoit, but his own music operates outside of the “contemporary jazz" orbit. Shanker occasionally hints at the simpler side of jazz, with an easily appealing, less-is-more melody ...

118

Album Review

Bad Luck: Two

by Jerry D'Souza
September 26, 2011

When Bad Luck comes in the shape of drummer Christopher Icasiano and saxophonist Neil Welch, it can be a pretty good thing. They met at the University of Washington and, driven by an interest in improvised music, began a musical partnership. Both are fearless navigators of the unknown and communicate with an intuitive sense of empathy. Their music takes them across a wide panorama, over which they forge acoustic unions or use electronics to expand the dimension,all aspects given free ...