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.

223

Extended Analysis

Freddie Hubbard: Pinnacle - Live and Unreleased from Keystone Korner

by Andrew J. Sammut
August 3, 2011

Freddie HubbardPinnacle: Live and Unreleased from Keystone KornerResonance Records2011 As album titles go, Pinnacle is closer to category than hyperbole. These seven previously unreleased tracks feature trumpeter and flugelhornist Freddie Hubbard at the apex of his abilities, recorded live at San Francisco's Keystone Korner. Some impressive West Coast talent joins the action, but Hubbard is the main attraction, and he never disappoints. The medium tempo “Blues for Duane" ...

248

Album Review

Janya: Janya

by Dan Bilawsky
August 3, 2011

Janya's sound is all about Korean-influenced music for the free jazz-loving soul. The members of this female foursome are all of Korean descent, and bring a free yet flowing sensibility to this seven-song program of original music. While the presence of instruments like gayageum, daegeum and janggo--a zither-like string instrument, bamboo transverse flute, and hour-glass shaped drum, respectively-- give this group a decidedly Eastern sound veering toward the mystical and mysterious, Lola Danza's vocals bring diversity and, ...

288

Album Review

Theo Saunders: Intergeneration

Read "Intergeneration" reviewed by Chuck Koton

by Chuck Koton
August 3, 2011

Born into the cultural vortex that is New York City's Upper West Side and raised by Broadway theater-performing parents, Theo Saunders was destined for the creative life. By the time he graduated from New York's prestigious High School for the Performing Arts, Saunders knew his future would be made seated in front of a piano playing jazz. But that future would not be in New York; at a certain point, Saunders knew he had to get out of the city, ...

299

Album Review

Sir Roland Hanna: Colors From A Giant's Kit

Read "Colors From A Giant's Kit" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
August 3, 2011

Sir Roland Hanna (1932--2002) recorded a series of undated solo piano sessions for IPO founder Bill Soren, some of which are now released as Colors From A Giant's Kit. Vault finds--those undiscovered recordings that have been made, shelved and largely unheard for decades--can be some of the most entertaining recordings in jazz. How marvelous to listen to a new album that has never been heard by the masses until long after the artist is passed, like a specter from the ...

421

Extended Analysis

Modern Jazz Quartet: The Complete Atlantic Studio Recordings 1956-64

by John Kelman
August 3, 2011

Even now, nearly sixty years later, it seems improbable that a group which came together as the rhythm section for one of the hottest players in bebop's genesis era, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, could morph into a standalone group that was the epitome of grace, elegance and cool dignity. But that's exactly what happened when Gillespie recruited pianist John Lewis (1920-2001), vibraphonist Milt Jackson (1923-1999), bassist Ray Brown (1926-2002) and drummer Kenny Clarke (1914-1985), giving the quartet an opportunity to shine ...

207

Interview

Quentin Moore: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 2, 2011

Much has been recently written about the “graying" of jazz and the audience who listens to it, young musicians seem to continually discover (and rediscover) its enduring value--and not just the value of jazz as its own standalone genre, but the benefit of incorporating aspects of jazz, such as improvisation and arrangement, into music of every type.Quentin Moore is one such musician. Though his 2009 debut, Vintage Love, and 2011 follow-up, “Quentinized" (Mixtape), both self-produced, unapologetically present large, ...

262

Album Review

Sir Roland Hanna: Colors From A Giant's Kit

Read "Colors From A Giant's Kit" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 2, 2011

When an artist passes on, the true fans mourn and the record companies often search through their vaults to try to capitalize on their passing. This often results in hastily compiled collections of music, or the surfacing of sub-par recordings that weren't released for obvious reasons when the artist was still around. That's not the case with this top-shelf solo recording from Sir Roland Hanna. Shortly before his death, the pianist had entered into a fruitful recording partnership with Bill ...

244

Live Review

Sam Yahel Trio: New York, NY, July 17, 2011

by Dan Bilawsky
August 2, 2011

Sam Yahel Trio The Village Vanguard New York, NY July 17, 2011 The world has changed in numerous and startling ways since pianist Bill Evans recorded Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961) a half century ago, but two things remain as consistent as the rising and setting of the sun: The Village Vanguard still presents the best that jazz has to offer, and boundary-pushing piano trios are still an important part of the mix that ...

187

Album Review

Sasha Masakowski and Musical Playground: Wishes

Read "Wishes" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 2, 2011

The field of female jazz vocals is somewhat bigger than 40 acres...like, a universe bigger. So congested is the musical ether with this flavor of jazz that it is nearly impossible for an artist to carve out a useful niche. Not that a niche is necessary, but it is nice to have some unifying element or theme in a given project, something not unlike Karrin Allyson's Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane (Concord, 2001). While specifically directed in a different way, New ...

378

Album Review

Boom Box: Jazz

by Henry Smith
August 2, 2011

Free jazz can have some fairly antisocial connotations. Too often, the term raises an undeserved fear in the uninitiated, as freedom can be scary. That hardly necessitates that it lack beauty, lyricism or intimacy, however; it simply means that those traits are arrived at by organic means rather than controlled ones. Few artists understand the form's capability for such qualities as the three musicians comprising Boom Box. All veterans of the world, multi-reedist Thomas Borgmann, bassist Akira ...