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.

267

Album Review

Samuel Blaser: Consort in Motion

Read "Consort in Motion" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 21, 2011

There is something positively celestial about Consort in Motion. It's like listening to a soundtrack of the workings of a Jovian planetary system: a substantial mass in the middle (Samuel Blaser's trombone), orbiting moons and scatterings of interplanetary debris (bass and drums); and flashes and sparkles twinkling off of space dust (piano), with things making sense in the milieu of a sonic version of planetary physics.Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser leads Consort in Motion, but there is an egalitarian ...

199

Album Review

Sir Roland Hanna: Colors from a Giant's Kit

Read "Colors from a Giant's Kit" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 21, 2011

This 1990s recording, produced by William Sorin, a loving fan of pianist Sir Roland Hanna is a riveting one. Featuring the maestro alone, playing what must have been some of his favorite charts, was carefully thought out. And though it does not come with too many of Hanna's own compositions it does--like Jaki Byard's fable recordings, Sunshine of My Soul--Live at the Keystone Korner (HighNote, 2007) and its companion volume, A Matter of Black and White--Live at the Keystone Korner, ...

191

Live Review

North Fork Rock & Folk Festival: Cutchogue, NY, July 30 - 31, 2011

by Mike Perciaccante
August 20, 2011

North Fork Rock & Folk Festival Peconic Bay Winery Cutchogue, New York July 30-31, 2011 The second annual North Fork Rock & Folk Festival was held in the fields at the Peconic Bay Winery in Cutchogue, NY on Saturday. The lineup featured Long Island-based local acts as well as national artists with ties to both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Sponsored by Suffolk County National Bank, Bridgehampton National Bank, Tanger Outlets, Blue Point Brewing Company, Hamptons.com ...

190

Album Review

Jim Tomlinson: The Lyric

Read "The Lyric" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
August 20, 2011

Saxophonist Jim Tomlinson originally released The Lyric in 2005 on his own Token Records label, winning the 2006 BBC Jazz Award for Best Album. It's a skillfully crafted collection of standards, given graceful and stylish life by the husband and wife partnership of Tomlinson and singer Stacey Kent. The recording gets a 2011 mid-price rerelease on Blue Note Records, the couple's label since 2007's Breakfast On The Morning Tram. While the packaging has been updated--Tomlinson adds a few more sleeve ...

123

Live Review

The Psychedelic Furs: Copiague, NY, August 5, 2011

by Mike Perciaccante
August 20, 2011

The Psychedelic Furs Tanner Park Copiague, NY August 5, 2011 A jam-packed Tanner Park came alive with the sounds of modern rock as '80s icons, the Psychedelic Furs, turned back time for an hour and a half on this warm and cloudy Friday evening in August. The stage, nestled less than one hundred feet from the ocean in a large, open field in the Suffolk County, Long Island park, played host to a large group of ...

284

Album Review

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes

Read "Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 20, 2011

Recorded for John Zorn's Tzadik Records, and sustaining the spirit of radical Jewish music, Pitom's second album is a psychodramatic crash-and-burn event. Spanning Sonic Youth-like reckless abandon, hardcore grunge, jazz improvisation and the blasphemous morphing of traditional Jewish music stylizations with jazz-rock, the unit abides by a take-no-prisoners approach. Offering an antithesis to the norm, with a titanium edge, complex unison choruses and punishing grooves, Pitom's “punkaassjewjazz" credo erves as a fitting depiction of its moving parts. ...

209

Album Review

Dominick Farinacci: Dawn of Goodbye

Read "Dawn of Goodbye" reviewed by Lewis J Whittington

by Lewis J Whittington
August 20, 2011

No lyrics necessary. The black and white cover photos of Dominick Farinacci's Dawn of Goodbye evokes the early 1960s, but the trumpeter is not just striking a pose. He may only be 28, but the tone of his trumpet is that of a multi-era jazz soul. Farinacci's concept for this collection, sans lyrics, is an instrumental narrative collection of standards that tell bittersweet love stories, and it displays an understated theatricality--from show-stopping to back alley film noir. ...

150

Album Review

Linley Hamilton: Taylor Made

Read "Taylor Made" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 20, 2011

It's rare that an artist names an album after one of his sidemen, but Belfast-based trumpeter Linley Hamilton clearly values the contributions that pianist Johnny Taylor made to this recording. Both men share a vision, regarding the manner in which they should address traditions while also putting their own stamp on these well-known numbers, and their empathetic rapport is evident from the very start. Linley's horn coasts over Taylor's tremolo licks on the loose introduction of the ...

208

Live Review

Fred Hersch Trio: New York, NY, July 19, 2011

by Warren Allen
August 19, 2011

Fred Hersch TrioThe Village VanguardNew York, NYJuly 19, 2011 It's reassuring to see that, within the highly fragmented and divided genre of jazz, a player like Fred Hersch flourishes and pushes the music forward as a modern form. He plays it like it doesn't need an explanation, which is to say he plays jazz at its very best. He eschews easy definitions--playing in a variety of contexts from solo piano, to a variety of trio ...

194

Album Review

Terell Stafford: This Side of Strayhorn

Read "This Side of Strayhorn" reviewed by Kevin Davis

by Kevin Davis
August 19, 2011

The preservation of traditional values in jazz has long been at the core of the art form's most bittersweet dichotomy, which is essentially a spin on the age-old idea that even moderate-level progressions in any given field require ideological breakdowns that generally make everyone mad. Miles Davis, for example, decried this preservation outright, and the jazz community gave him the finger, banishing him to Bill Graham's Fillmore East where they figured his wonky voodoo rock would be of greater use ...