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.

297

Interview

Tim Collins: Mixing It Up

by Alan Bryson
September 20, 2011

Tim Collins likes to mix it up. It starts at home; the vibraphonist is married to a successful concert violinist and is intimately connected to the world of classical music. Recording with pianist Matthias Bublath, Collins has also worked with guitarist Charlie Hunter, who produced his second album, mixing rock, jazz, and string quartets. He seeks melodies and inspiration without regard to genre, covering songs by artists a disparate as Tom Petty and Björk on Castles and Hilltops (Nineteen-Eight Records, ...

221

Album Review

Sam Crockatt Quartet: Flood Tide

Read "Flood Tide" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 19, 2011

The Sam Crockatt Quartet's first album, Howeird (Loop Records, 2008), garnered much critical praise, and won Best Album in the 2009 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Its second album, Flood Tide, therefore, has a lot to live up to, so it's to this young quartet's credit that Flood Tide keeps up the early momentum, with a combination of great original tunes and tight, imaginative musicianship. There's one change to the quartet that appeared on the debut recording, with Kit ...

374

Live Review

Punkt 2011: Kristiansand, Norway, September 1-3, 2011

by John Kelman
September 19, 2011

Punkt Festival 2011 The Agder Theatre Kristiansand, Norway September 1-3, 2011It was almost not meant to be. Plagued by a combination of airline snafus and the residual effects of Hurricane Irene--which had hit the northeast coast of the United States a few days earlier, creating (amidst other much more serious results) a backlog of people looking to cross the Atlantic that took days to sort out--what was originally planned as four days in Kristiansand, Norway was ...

124

Album Review

Craig Hilton and Tomas Phillips: Le gout de neant

Read "Le gout de neant" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
September 19, 2011

According to its sleeve notes, the opening track of Le goût de néant, “Sans mouvement I," is a studio recording of Craig Hilton playing solo guzheng, a multi-stringed Chinese zither with movable bridges. This is remarkable, as it does not sound like one person playing a solo instrument; the resonances produced by the guzheng create the impression of a many-layered, drone-like sound collage--one which is very pleasing, bearing resemblances to some of Brian Eno's slowly-evolving, ambient pieces. Had the entire ...

118

Album Review

Lisa Hilton: Underground

Read "Underground" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 19, 2011

In the minds of some musicians and fans, music is meant to be an athletic competition where speed and strength trump everything else, but a large segment of audiences and performers don't buy into that line of thinking. Others believe that music can be a vehicle for expressing emotions and dealing in the art of communication, and pianist Lisa Hilton's Underground embodies those very ideals. Hilton's music has never been of the chops-heavy variety, but the California-based ...

135

Album Review

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: Race Riot Suite

Read "Race Riot Suite" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
September 19, 2011

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's Race Riot Suite is a reminder how adventurous the group has always been since its inception in 1994--never more so, perhaps, than in its latest incarnation, in place beginning in 2010. Four intervals, labeled “Prayers," are interspersed throughout the seven formally labeled tracks and allow JFJO to demonstrate its own collective and individual skill at improvisation. That cursory and close listens whet the appetite for more such jamming is a tribute to the judicious ...

184

Take Five With...

Take Five With Laura Ainsworth

by AAJ Staff
September 19, 2011

Meet Laura Ainsworth: I was born in Los Angeles but came to Dallas as a tot when my dad, jazz sax/clarinetist Billy Ainsworth, relocated to become a part of the growing commercial recording industry. Came up in the music biz (details to follow!). Graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.S. in Radio-TV-Film. Worked on staff and also as a freelance writer for jingle/broadcast services company TM Productions, where I met my husband-to-be, Pat Reeder. Together we ...

199

Interview

Chris Combs: Jacob Fred's Tulsa Tale

by Daniel Lehner
September 19, 2011

On a Memorial Day in 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, an encounter between a young black shoe shiner named Dick Rowland and a white elevator operator named Sarah Page--an incident that was reported with hazy details and shocking incompleteness--started one of the most brutal and tragic race riots in American history. Even more tragic, however, was how little the event was discussed by national or even Oklahoman sources. It was an event that Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's Chris Combs, like many proud ...

244

Live Review

Detroit Jazz Festival: Detroit, MI September 2-5, 2011

by C. Andrew Hovan
September 18, 2011

32nd Annual Detroit Jazz FestivalDetroit, MISeptember 2-5, 2011 As chance would have it, over the past 20 years or so attending the Labor Day festivities at the Detroit Jazz Festival, there have only been a handful of weekends marked by less than optimum weather conditions. On average, the gods have largely smiled down upon the plethora of jazz devotees gathered at Hart Plaza on the banks of Lake Michigan. And when you start to think about it, ...

124

Album Review

Christian McBride Big Band: The Good Feeling

Read "The Good Feeling" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 18, 2011

The Good Feeling marks the debut of the Christian McBride Big Band, but the seeds for this album were sown in the mid-'90s. Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned McBride to write and arrange his first major big band work--"Bluesin' In Alphabet City"--in 1995, and that experience really sparked his interest in composing for large groups. Now, sixteen years after the ink dried on that number, it appears in the penultimate position on his first big band recording. ...