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.

185

Live From New York

Ches Smith, Tyshawn Sorey & Roy Haynes

by Martin Longley
September 21, 2011

Ches Smith & These Arches The Stone August 30, 2011 John Zorn's Stone was pretty much sold out for this single set by drummer Ches Smith's five-piece band. That's 74 folks crammed into a thankfully air-conditioned zone. The reason that the normally silenced A/C was allowed to thrum is that These Arches mostly rock out, reaching volume levels that can mask such humming. Even so, the interior was still sweltering, post-Hurricane Irene. The ...

175

Album Review

Florencia Ruiz: Luz De La Noche

Read "Luz De La Noche" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
September 21, 2011

Since her debut in 2000, Argentina-based guitarist/vocalist Florencia Ruiz has merited high acclaim in South America, Europe, and Japan as an artist of vision and panache. With a renascent spirit, she embraces a wide range of stimuli--folk, pop, jazz, classical, electronica, and visual arts in works with large ensembles. Her U.S. debut of Luz De La Noche (Light of the Night) continues her diverse ideas and introduces her to a wider audience. Ruiz's aura is at the ...

216

Extended Analysis

Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian: Further Explorations

by John Kelman
September 21, 2011

Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian Further Explorations Universal Classics and Jazz Japan 2011 Three still-living jazz icons team up on Further Explorations, an album inspired by another legend whose influence remains unequivocal, 30 years after passing away, age 51, in 1980. Gaining initial exposure as a member of Bill Evans' first trio on New Jazz Conceptions (Riverside, 1956), drummer Paul Motian left the group nearly four years before bassist Eddie Gomez would ...

160

Album Review

Aldemar Valentin: Ficciones

Read "Ficciones" reviewed by James Nadal

by James Nadal
September 21, 2011

From Ficciones' opening title track, Aldemar Valentín's ensemble wastes no time in heading right for the fast lane. On his second outing as leader, the bassist/producer has assembled a tight group, with the intent of performing his compositions in a progressive jazz format. Co-producer L. Raúl Romero lays down impressive guitar work throughout, his chord structures and lead runs blending with Valentín's crisp bass lines for a contemporary fusion sound. “Santurce Triste"--aptly named for a section of ...

163

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith's Organic: Heart’s Reflections

Read "Heart’s Reflections" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
September 21, 2011

Wadada Leo Smith is currently making some of the most distinctive music on the planet; its expressive depth, as exemplified by Heart's Reflections, seemingly born not merely of one lifetime, but of several. The trumpeter's means of expression, which has never been the stuff of mere virtuosity, is now purged of all excess, resulting in something else, deeply enriched with clarity of thought and execution. It could argued that such clarity doesn't come easily, but in bringing together the musicians ...

157

Album Review

Andrea Wolper: Parallel Lives

Read "Parallel Lives" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 21, 2011

Andrea Wolper isn't just a jazz singer. Hearing her mid-song monologue with bass accompaniment, during her own “The Girls In Their Dresses," makes it clear that she's actually an actress choosing to communicate through the medium of jazz, and an utterly original one at that. On Parallel Lives, Wolper explores the music of Joni Mitchell, Hoagy Carmichael, Richard Rodgers, and Duncan Sheik, to name just a few, and she brings a dramatic flair to the work of each and every ...

240

Album Review

Bill Frisell: All We Are Saying...

Read "All We Are Saying..." reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
September 20, 2011

If there's any sign that Bill Frisell's move to Savoy was a good one, it's the release of All We Are Saying..., which makes three albums from the veteran guitarist in just thirteen months. Frisell left two decades at Nonesuch to be able to release more than one album a year, in order to keep up with a still-growing myriad of projects, and with this John Lennon tribute not even in the plans when Beautiful Dreamers was released, in August, ...

243

Extended Analysis

Miles Davis Quintet: Live In Europe 1967 - The Bootleg Series Vol. 1

by Doug Collette
September 20, 2011

The Miles Davis Quintet Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1Legacy Recordings2011 With the compact disc in its waning stages of dominance as a medium for music, The Miles Davis Quintet: Live In Europe 1967--The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 restates the case for the archiving as a means of historical as well as collecting purposes. The rare sources of these recordings, most from radio and television broadcasts, don't preclude ...

192

Album Review

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Samdhi

Read "Samdhi" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
September 20, 2011

About halfway through the aptly named “Killer," it becomes apparent that saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa's Samdhi is up to something just a little different. Amid the track's impossible changes and blistering tempo, the saxophonist's alto undergoes acoustic-electric alterations that are processed through a laptop. Not that it was ever needed, but this embracing of technology, and other influences, adds yet another dimension to his repertoire. Samdhi is the product of Mahanthappa's receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, which ...

145

Album Review

Jan Johansson with Georg Riedel: in Hamburg

Read "in Hamburg" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 20, 2011

Scandinavian jazz? It started with the Esbjorn Svensson Trio, didn't it? Well, no. It goes back many years further. As in Hamburg demonstrates emphatically, two early stars of Swedish jazz, pianist Jan Johansson and bassist Georg Riedel, could cut it with the best of the '60s jazz world, as instrumentalists and as composers. This beautiful album, put together with Riedel's cooperation, consists of recordings made by Johansson and Riedel between 1965-68--as a duo and in partnership with various big bands, ...