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.

177

Album Review

Phil Woods and Bill Mays: Woods & Mays

Read "Woods & Mays" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 3, 2011

Putting two musicians of this caliber in a room and recording the results is a surefire recipe for success. Pianist Bill Mays and saxophone icon Phil Woods have little to prove at this point in their respective careers and their music isn't about defying expectations. Both men, on the contrary, carry the reputations that they do because they live up to the very expectations that surround them. On this duo set, Woods and Mays engage in classy conversation that flow ...

366

Album Review

Bill Carrothers Trio: A Night At the Village Vanguard

Read "A Night At the Village Vanguard" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 3, 2011

The sonic character of New York City's Village Vanguard is one of sound as memory. There is a pillow of pungent warmth and familiarity surrounding the sounds captured that can be heard on the early recordings, like Sonny Rollins' A Night At the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957), Bill Evans' The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions, 1961 (Riverside, 2005), and John Coltrane's The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!, 1997), as well as the later recordings like Tom Harrell's Live At ...

130

Live Review

Gretchen Parlato: Norwich, UK, May 20, 2011

by Bruce Lindsay
June 3, 2011

Gretchen ParlatoThe PlayhouseNorwich, UKMay 20, 2011 Gretchen Parlato has achieved something that is increasingly difficult in contemporary jazz, where originality and innovation seem too often to be viewed as barriers to a vocalist's success, rather than qualities to be praised and nurtured. She has merged her distinctive vocal style with an intriguing selection of material to create a sound that is unique and utterly compelling. Parlato's first British appearance outside London, courtesy of the Norfolk ...

187

Album Review

Russ Lossing Trio: Oracle

Read "Oracle" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
June 3, 2011

There are rolling, wide open spaces in the music of Russ Lossing. Much of this is traversed in the seemingly sprawling beauty of Oracle, an album that meanders in the absorbing colors and textures of what that which the trio offers up for seduction. It is easy to be swept up in the diaphanous gusts of sound that sweep across the terrain, which, in turn, opens up with Lossing's gorgeously cadenced arpeggios that skitter and ramble startlingly across the interminable ...

318

Album Review

Tonight At Noon: To Mingus With Love

Read "To Mingus With Love" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
June 3, 2011

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Charles Mingus has been well and truly flattered. Tonight at Noon, a typically enigmatic free jazz piece written by the legendary bassist/bandleader, went on to become the title of a loving and extremely well-crafted memoir by his wife, Sue. Now, confusingly, it is also the name of two separate Mingus tribute bands. The one featured here is Finnish, while the other is based in Toronto, Canada. The Finns ...

109

Album Review

Bastian Weinhold: River Styx

Read "River Styx" reviewed by Warren Allen

by Warren Allen
June 2, 2011

Drummer Bastian Weinhold recorded River Styx in one day in Brooklyn. It's the young drummer's self-funded debut, though he has already developed a name for himself alongside players such as saxophonists Seamus Blake and Dave Liebman, and the results are exceptional, as Weinhold brings together a series of his own endlessly intriguing charts with a quintet of great young players, including bassist Linda Oh and tenor saxophonist Adam Larson. High caliber quintets of sax-guitar-keys-bass-drums seem to be ...

176

Live Review

Charlie Haden Quartet West: Norwich, UK May 19, 2011

by Bruce Lindsay
June 2, 2011

Charlie Haden Quartet WestSt Peter Mancroft ChurchNorwich, UKMay 19, 2011 The warm and sunny spring weather meant that queuing outside the venue was more of a pleasure than a chore for the jazz fans waiting to see and hear Charlie Haden Quartet West in the impressive surroundings of St Peter Mancroft church, in the centre of Norwich. Good-natured conversation, often with strangers, added to the pleasure and when the doors of this beautiful Norfolk church ...

Album Review

Otherways and Free Space: Life Amid the Artefacts

Read "Life Amid the Artefacts" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
June 2, 2011

The music of Otherways and Free Space unfurls throughout Life Among the Artefacts at a consistently high crest of improvisation during unselfconscious, unguarded moments when the musicians were, quite simply, being extensions of their instruments. They were forces of nature and allowed the music to tumble freely, incorporating songs which had internal combustion mechanisms that were all their own. As a result, the library of music was enriched when the literature of music and the linguistics of humanity collided. If ...

181

Live Review

Dave Liebman Group at Café Paradiso

by John Kelman
June 2, 2011

Dave Liebman Group Café Paradiso Ottawa, Canada May 20-21, 2011 When saxophonist and recent NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman brought his longstanding group to Ottawa's Café Paradiso a little over three years ago in April, 2008, it was truly one of the hottest, most memorable shows this city has seen in years--if not ever. Now two decades old, with three of its original members--Liebman, guitar underdog Vic Juris and the equally underappreciated bassist Tony Marino--still ...

112

Album Review

Roseanna Vitro: The Music of Randy Newman

Read "The Music of Randy Newman" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
June 2, 2011

Randy Newman is an American treasure hidden in plain sight. An Academy and Grammy Award-winning soundtrack composer since the 1980s, a decade earlier, Newman established himself as a preeminent American song writer with Randy Newman (Reprise, 1968), 12 Songs (Reprise, 1970), and Sail Away (Reprise, 1972), and his songs have been covered by everyone from Three Dog Night to Joe Cocker. Few popular American songwriters have captured Americana as well as Newman. Singer Roseanna Vitro and Newman ...