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.

182

Album Review

Benny Green: Source

Read "Source" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
May 7, 2011

Pianist Benny Green has not been in the studio leading a recording date since his collaboration with Russell Malone, Bluebird (Telarc, 2004). Far from stagnating, Green has most recently been found providing support on recordings like Hilary Kole's You Are There (Justin Time, 2010), Kenny Burrell's Be Yourself (HighNote , 2010) and Anat Cohen's Clarinetworks: Live at the Village Vanguard All this adds up to his attractiveness to Jazz Legacy Productions, a label that specializes in recording ...

131

Album Review

Matt Renzi: Happy Hour

Read "Happy Hour" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 7, 2011

Reedman Matt Renzi's Happy Hour is curiously titled, given the music at hand. A “Happy Hour" brings cheap drinks and cacophonous good times in the bar room to mind. The CD of that name opens with a tranquil reverie, as mystical, inward-looking and spiritually directed as a late-period Impulse! John Coltrane rumination. The trio format is Renzi's primary form of expression. He and bassist Dave Ambrosio, along with drummer Russ Meissner, have performed together as a group since ...

Album Review

The International Street Cannibals: The Chamber and Electronic Music of Gene Pritsker

Read "The Chamber and Electronic Music of Gene Pritsker" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
May 7, 2011

Gene Pritsker is a remarkable contemporary composer. His short repertoire, represented on Solo-Duo-Trio-Quartet-Quintet: The Chamber and Electronic Music of Gene Pritsker (Composers Concordance Records, 2011) testifies to this fact. He has an acute sense of his own place in the history of music and this is marked by the contemporariness of his work, that is derived from an association with Darius Milhaud. He is inspired to delve into dissonance by composers such as Paul Hindemith, with whom he enjoys more ...

345

Big Band Report

Confessions of a Mad Journalist

by Jack Bowers
May 6, 2011

The headline above this column has almost nothing to do with its contents; it was designed simply to grab your attention. That's what we writers do: offer a modest prize with one hand while concealing a more desirable treasure in the other. It's what we have in common with magicians. Actually, as last month marked the 13th anniversary of my having started writing for All About Jazz, I wanted to say a few words about that; hence the overblown caption. ...

Album Review

Stanley Turrentine: Salt Song

Read "Salt Song" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 6, 2011

Stanley Turrentine's Sugar (CTI, 1970) has always stood out as the defining album in the tenor saxophonist's post-Blue Note discography, but that recording only marked the beginning of his beautiful relationship with Creed Taylor's CTI imprint. Turrentine's time with the label spanned the first half of the '70s and produced a few other winning albums that draped his thick, soulful sound in more modern aural fabrics of the times. Salt Song (CTI, 1971) was his follow-up to ...

441

Extended Analysis

Red Nichols: The Red Heads

by Andrew J. Sammut
May 6, 2011

Red NicholsThe Red HeadsJazz Oracle2003 If you play on your own terms for small audiences without any recognition, you're a hero; if you do it while earning a steady paycheck and selling plenty of records, you're a sell-out. Or so it might seem for Ernest Loring “Red" Nichols (1905-1965): trumpeter, composer, bandleader, polarizing figure in American music and possibly the most well employed musician of the Jazz Age. ...

126

Album Review

Paul Winter Consort: Miho - Journey to the Mountain

Read "Miho - Journey to the Mountain" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
May 6, 2011

Paul Winter's music pulsates with the earth's polyrhythmic heartbeat. Various incarnations of his Consort have been so in tune with the ground beneath their feet that this ensemble, in all its forms, has come to be the harbinger of the wellspring of all life. From time to time, Winter's soul has roamed the realms where mysticism rubbed cricket-legs with the limbs of Gaia, as in Missa Gaia/Earth Mass (Living Music, 1982). At other times, he has aligned his heart with ...

239

Album Review

Marius Neset Golden Xplosion: Golden Xplosion

Read "Golden Xplosion" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
May 6, 2011

The claim on the postcard that accompanies saxophonist Marius Neset's second CD is straightforward: “This album will simply blow you away!" A spot of marketing hubris, perhaps, but there are plenty of moments when Golden Xplosion matches this bold statement. Neset is a member of two of leading composer and musician Django Bates' ensembles, stoRMChaser and Human Chain, and has studied with the pianist at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, in Copenhagen. Bates has a strong presence on ...

198

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 Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
May 6, 2011

With this first installment of a two-CD tribute to Lee Morgan, Italian jazz pianist/composer Roberto Magris delivers Morgan Rewind: A Tribute To Lee Morgan Vol. 1. A longtime fan of the late trumpeter, since his humble beginnings in the '70s, Magris gladly accepted a challenge from Paul Collins, producer of the Kansas City jazz label JMood Records, when he recommended the project. Making this a unique endeavor, Collins also managed to convince drummer Albert Tootie" Heath to perform with Magris' ...

164

Album Review

District 97: Hybrid Child

Read "Hybrid Child" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 6, 2011

The popular talent show, American Idol is often smothered with male Bob Segar wannabes or female divas striving to be the next Jennifer Lopez. But it's a welcome surprise when a talented finalist delves into a nouveau progressive-rock schema. Such is the case with vocalist Leslie Hunt, who broadcasts a formidable presence with District 97, a unit that aligns convention with inviting arrangements, spanning assorted rock and pop genres. A sample of the ensemble's artistic prowess is highlighted ...