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.

206

Extended Analysis

Charles Lloyd / Maria Farantouri: Athens Concert

by John Kelman
September 6, 2011

When ECM enticed him back into action in 1989, who knew that reed/woodwind multi-instrumentalist Charles Lloyd's career wouldn't just kick-start, it would signal a period of ascendancy that's moved from one creative height to another ever since? Two decades later, his stable quartet of young Americans rivals the stellar group responsible for Atlantic megahits including 1966's Dream Weaver and 1968's Forest Flower. Blasphemous to some, perhaps, but Lloyd's so-called New Quartet--no longer exactly new, since pianist Jason Moran, joined existing ...

237

Album Review

Gerry Hemingway Quintet: Riptide

by Mark Corroto
September 5, 2011

Over the past 25 years, the lineup of drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway's quintet might have changed, but his central organizing concepts have remained constant. Like a working dog, specifically a shepherd, he always seems to be organizing chaos and safeguarding melody. Well, that is, when he isn't inciting the tumult.The most recent variation of his quintet floats a two-horn, Oscar Noriega and Ellery Eskelin frontline, along with Hemmingway's his recent favorite collaborator, guitarist Terrence McManus, and bassist Kermit Driscoll.

276

Album Review

Cecilia Coleman Big Band: Oh Boy!

Read "Oh Boy!" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 5, 2011

The phrase “Oh boy," can be a statement of excitement, an expression of an event that grabs your attention or, in this case, an appropriate reaction to the swinging orchestrations from the Cecilia Coleman Big Band. Oh Boy! is a powerful draw and the debut album from pianist/composer Coleman's new group, presenting thundering big band music of a contemporary nature. Best known for her various working quintet's that have produced five albums since 1992, Coleman formed the group in January ...

199

Album Review

Duh: In Just

by Nic Jones
September 5, 2011

Free improvisation guarantees the sound of surprise in a way that few other musical strains do. While the primacy of the moment and the players' responses in it and to it are the prime motivations for the music, this will always be the case. This makes the idea of trying to define just what governs the success of the resulting music a slippery notion but, however it might be pinned down, In Just falls very much on the positive side. ...

260

Highly Opinionated

Roswell Rudd: The Musical Magus Turns 75

by Raul d'Gama Rose
September 5, 2011

"Years ago it would have seemed an impossible dream to get to record with this musical magus, but here we are... and what a thrill!" class="f-right">--Charlie Kohlhase, From liner notes to Eventuality: The Charlie Kohlhase Quintet Plays the Music of Roswell Rudd (Nada, 2001) I see him suddenly as if in a dream. His eyes are somewhat cynical, questioning and beautiful. Wrinkles of laughter pucker up at the edges, and he reminds me of my father. ...

161

Interview

Sean Jones: Progress and Passion

by R.J. DeLuke
September 5, 2011

Trumpeter Sean Jones is always moving forward, developing his sound and getting involved in jazz elbow-deep, believing in its richness and its importance as an American art form. He wants to make an impact and he's doing that, whether with the prodigious technique displayed in his solo projects and spots as a sideman, or as an educator. And lately, it's also directing big bands, because he believes jazz needs to be presented in an orchestral setting.Jones was the ...

170

Album Review

Greg Reitan: Daybreak

Read "Daybreak" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 4, 2011

Greg Reitan has, since 1995, carved out a career as an award-winning composer for television and film. It wasn't until 2009, however, that the Los Angeles-based pianist released his first jazz CD, one of the top piano trio recordings of the year, Some Other Time (Sunnyside Records). Reitan followed up this excellent debut with another top-level outing, Antibes (Sunnyside Records, 2010), and now he adds Daybreak, again using the trio format, and again with outstanding results.There's something to ...

239

Big Band Report

BuJazzO: That's German for Swinging Big Band Jazz

by Jack Bowers
September 4, 2011

On August 8, my friend Wes Pfarner and I drove to Santa Fe for a once-in-a lifetime event: a performance by the German Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra, better known to big band enthusiasts by its more condensed and colorful name, BuJazzO. The twenty-piece ensemble, directed by Jiggs Whigham, an American trombonist and educator from Cleveland, Ohio, who has lived in Germany (most of the time) since 1965, was on the last leg of a two-week tour of the States and ...

223

Album Review

Base3: Live From Earth

Read "Live From Earth" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 4, 2011

Culled from shows in the Philadelphia area, BASE3 features lead soloist and very active experimental guitarist Tim Motzer, who integrates jazz-rock, avant-rock and ambient soundscapes into his adventurous repertoire. Having collaborated on albums with German composer, touch guitarist and synthesist Markus Reuter in the recent past, here, Motzer and associates perpetuate a boundary-less trek into innumerable musical galaxies, abetted by a democratic, group-centric focus. “GodParticle" is a prime indicator of what Live From Earth is all about. Largely ...

136

Album Review

Bob Gluck Trio: Returning

Read "Returning" reviewed by Henry Smith

by Henry Smith
September 4, 2011

The piano trio can be a difficult format for free playing. It is too easy for the piano, so easily a dominating instrument, to overshadow the bassist and drummer, rendering them as backup to the more harmonically complex keyboard. This is fine, and an enormous amount of great music has been made in this format, but when it comes to more exploratory veins of jazz, it is difficult for a group to exhibit the simpatico required for simultaneous creativity and, ...