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.

194

Extended Analysis

Konitz/Mehldau/Haden/Motian: Live at Birdland

by John Kelman
May 11, 2011

Grist for what seems like an endless flow of recordings, The Great American Songbook has, ultimately, become as much a crutch as it is an inspiration. There's no denying the staying power of music that's near-Jungian in its collective familiarity, but if an artist is simply running down the tunes, à la Real Book--head, solo, head--the music too easily becomes nothing more than a tired retread, a kind of whitewashing that, rather than moving jazz forward, stops it in its ...

Album Review

Ariel Shibolet / Nori Jacoby: Scenes From An Ideal Marriage

Read "Scenes From An Ideal Marriage" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
May 11, 2011

Having existed for decades, free improvisation can be argued to have settled into a kind of routine regardless of the music's underlying abstraction. The soprano sax has become readily associated with the music thanks to the efforts of such pioneers as Steve Lacy, Evan Parker and Trevor Watts. Ariel Shibolet seems only too aware of this, but such is the depth of his musical expression that he plays largely free of the influences of such precedents. As a violist, Nori ...

108

Album Review

Agustí Fernández / Barry Guy / Ramón López: Morning Glory

Read "Morning Glory" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 11, 2011

In what could easily mistaken for a release on the ECM label, Morning Glory inhabits that crisp minimalist style so familiar to producer Manfred Eicher. Surprisingly enough, this studio recording, with bonus Live In New York disc, is delivered by three of today's most zealous improvisers and outcats. Formed in 2005, the trio's previous release, Aurora (Maya, 2006), began bassist Barry Guy established their improvisation bona fides with saxophonist Evan Parker's intellectual explorations and Mats Gustafsson's noisier ones. ...

135

Album Review

Roberto Magris Quintet: Morgan Rewind: A Tribute to Lee Morgan, Vol. 1

Read "Morgan Rewind: A Tribute to Lee Morgan, Vol. 1" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 11, 2011

For one who left us far too soon (he was shot to death at age 33), Edward Lee Morgan left quite an extensive legacy as a trumpeter, composer and recording artist. In paying tribute to Morgan, pianist Roberto Magris has a splendid idea. What he does not have, of course, is Lee Morgan or any of the celebrated saxophonists who played alongside him (Hank Mobley, Benny Golson, Pepper Adams, Clifford Jordan, Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, to name only ...

218

Album Review

Fred Frith: Clearing Customs

Read "Clearing Customs" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
May 10, 2011

Over the decades of his solo career, Fred Frith's music has grown more reflective of the range of his musical interests. As well as being an improviser of significance he has also shown an interest in a diversity of folk musics, with initial signs showing up already, in his work of the late 1970s. Clearing Customs might, in a sense, be a culmination of the process started back then. An unusual instrumentation enhances the singularity of the ...

225

Interview

Omar Sosa: Bringing The World To The World

by AAJ Staff
May 10, 2011

Pianist/composer Omar Sosa was born in Cuba in the first decade of Fidel Castro's rule over the island, and grew up listening to forbidden American jazz with his music school friends in secret, the radio discretely turned low, though eventually the rules changed and the music was broadcast in Cuba, too. After Cuba and a short time in Mexico, Sosa discovered his calling in the Esmeraldas region of Ecuador, where he found music that was, like Cuba's music, founded in ...

196

Live Review

Omar Sosa Afri-lectric Quintet: New York, May 5, 2011

by Dan Bilawsky
May 10, 2011

Omar Sosa Afri-lectric QuintetBlue NoteNew York, NYMay 5, 2011 Cuban-born/Barcelona-based Omar Sosa doesn't simply perform for an audience when he brings his music to a club. He conjures musical spirits and creates a magical realm, unlike any other. The pianist fuses the most ancient and modern ideals imaginable into a wholly organic production, and his latest band--Afri-lectric Quintet--might be his finest creation yet. There was plenty to marvel at during Sosa's ...

233

Album Review

Don Sebesky: Giant Box

Read "Giant Box" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 10, 2011

It's a bit bizarre to find an album called Giant Box in a small cardboard case, or as a download lacking physical form, but times change. When Don Sebesky's grand musical statement on CTI hit the marketplace in 1973, it came in a classical-type record box, befitting the stature of the music. Opinions vary as to whether Sebesky can be said to have been a savior of jazz in the '70s, or a jazz Judas who helped ...

211

Album Review

Alec Spiegelman / Lefteris Kordis / Thor Thorvaldsson: Bebop Trio

Read "Bebop Trio" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 10, 2011

The theme of “walk, don't run" occurs throughout the entirety of Bebop Trio, a suite of improvisations on the sometimes pell-mell music of Herbie Nichols, Lennie Tristano, Elmo Hope, Bud Powell, George Shearing and Duke Ellington. Played by three accommodating and adaptive musicians, the familiar and frenetic becomes casual and conversant. Where Powell's “Celia" is usually consumed with a bebop pulse, the trio skirts the conventional approach, serving the meal as mere aroma, though there is quite enough ...

161

Album Review

Ohad Talmor: Newsreel

Read "Newsreel" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
May 10, 2011

Tenor saxophonist Ohad Talmor was born in Israel, grew up in Switzerland, and now lives in America. Talmor started out on piano before switching to the saxophone while in the US. Over the years, he has assembled an impressive list of band associations. In Switzerland he co-founded Zounds Collective with trumpeter Carlos Baumann to experiment with and play a wide range of music. He later went on to collaborate with Steve Swallow and Lee Konitz among others and formed several ...