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.

244

Album Review

Stelios Petrakis / Efrén López / Bijan Chemirani: Mavra Froudia (Black eyebrows)

Read "Mavra Froudia (Black eyebrows)" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
June 16, 2011

It is quite rare to find, in so-called world music, a unique and original meeting of cultures, striking in its obvious, organic and modest simplicity. As if that is the way things should be, without artificial political/artistic/cultural conventions and free of the new-age baggage of superficial slogans about one world without borders. But that is exactly the magic behind the Mediterranean trio of Cretan lyra player Stelios Petrakis, Spanish multi-instrumentalist Efrén López and Iranian/French percussionist Bijan Chemirani (son of the ...

180

Album Review

Carolyn Nelson: Come a Little Closer

Read "Come a Little Closer" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 16, 2011

Carolyn Nelson has one of those voices that might lead you to think you've heard her sing before. And you might have: although Come A Little Closer is her solo debut, Nelson has performed throughout the US and Canada plus two tours of Spain (she can sing in five languages), has appeared on the daytime TV drama One Life To Live and in front of a big band at the Rainbow Room in NYC, plus too many background vocal sessions ...

195

Album Review

Clifford Lamb: One

by Larry Taylor
June 16, 2011

It's a pleasure to discover a jazz performer. whose style is unique. Pianist Clifford Lamb is in this category as he displays in One. Hailing from Oakland, California, he has put together San Francisco Bay area musicians, Darrell Green on drums and Ron Belcher, bass, who help considerably to bring out his individualistic touch. In most numbers, he takes the familiar and creates something out of the ordinary. The opener, Miles Davis' classic “All Blues," ...

224

Album Review

Lee Jones: Songs From The 13th Hour

Read "Songs From The 13th Hour" reviewed by Douglas Payne

by Douglas Payne
June 15, 2011

This enjoyable and engaging album--guitarist Lee Jones's second as a leader--aims to throw some much-needed wrinkles in to the smoothness of so much contemporary jazz. That's not really newsworthy, of course, but hardly anyone thus far has succeeded in doing it so successfully. While so many of today's new breed of jazz guitarists are either trying to forge their uniqueness into some been-there-done-that formula or regurgitate the sound or style of a guitar hero of the past, Jones ...

182

Extended Analysis

Bill Evans: The Sesjun Radio Shows

by Dan McClenaghan
June 15, 2011

Bill EvansThe Sesjun Radio ShowsOut Of The Blue/Naxos2011 (1973-79) Pianist Bill Evans (b. 1929, d. 1980) changed the way of the piano trio, beginning with a handful of brilliant studio recording for Riverside Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A pair of live recordings for the label, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, both released in 1961, cemented his reputation as a genius and agent of ...

247

Album Review

Daniel Bennett Group: Peace & Stability Among Bears

Read "Peace & Stability Among Bears" reviewed by Josep Pedro

by Josep Pedro
June 15, 2011

Multi-instrumentalist Daniel Bennett concludes his trilogy of fables about bears, deepening his unique mixture of jazz, folk, minimalism and trance musics with Peace & Stability Among Bears. Following melodic exploration as the main idea, Bennett combines lightness and subtlety with dreamlike passages that define his particular sound universe. Entertaining and complex, Peace & Stability Among Bears keeps pouring fresh ideas into the jazz world. Polyphony, catchy melodies, African-tinged percussion and open door folk atmospheres all form part of an organic ...

200

Big Band Report

Gold Medalists Abound at Big Band Olympics

by Jack Bowers
June 15, 2011

As this is being written, Betty and I are just back from a ten-day visit to California, the first six days of which would be of absolutely no interest to readers of this column. The last four, however, were spent at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel attending the L.A. Jazz Institute's “Big Band Olympics," which brought together bands from a number of countries around the world (well, the leaders at least were from various countries; the bands were comprised ...

224

Take Five With...

Take Five With Tim Kuhl

by AAJ Staff
June 15, 2011

Meet Tim Kuhl: Drummer / Composer Tim Kuhl was born in June 1982 and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Kuhl relocated to New York City in 2003 and has been working as a band leader and sideman in the NYC area. Kuhl is celebrating the release of this third album as a leader called, Doomsayer. He resides in Brooklyn, NY.Instrument(s): Drums, percussion, piano.Teachers and/or influences? My family, friends, many teachers, and ...

148

Album Review

Art Pepper: Blues For The Fisherman

Read "Blues For The Fisherman" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
June 15, 2011

What jumps out of Art Pepper's Blues for the Fisherman is his alto saxophone's boldness and overt expressiveness. If prior exposure has only scratched the surface of Pepper's work--perhaps with the ubiquitous Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (Contemporary, 1957)--this live recording fairly smashes expectations of a polite, cool performance. Recorded in two nights at Ronnie Scott's London jazz club in 1980, Pepper is simply on fire, this set burying any lingering misconceptions that Pepper was just a west coast ...

101

Album Review

JJ Grey & Mofro: Georgia Warhorse

Read "Georgia Warhorse" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 15, 2011

JJ Grey's eleven new tunes for Georgia Warhorse, named for the notoriously resilient Southern lubber grasshopper, reflect and broadcast his love for the rustic Florida backwoods where Grey and his family have lived for generations. Grey not only wrote all the tunes but played just about every instrument, except for the slide guitar that Derek Trucks (like Grey, a Jacksonville native) slices and dices into the closing “Lullaby," and sang all the vocals except for one duet. ...