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.

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Take Five With...

Take Five With Libby Richman

by AAJ Staff
April 22, 2011

Meet Libby Richman: Composer, reed player Libby Richman leads an ensemble that plays original contemporary jazz. Her sound echoes the influences of Classical, Latin, and Pop music. She is a Meet the Composer grant recipient. Open Strings, released in February, is her third CD. She has traveled widely as a professional musician, leading her jazz quartet and as a side musician for big bands and touring musical theater productions. Libby lives in the Bronx ...

243

Album Review

Jared Gold: All Wrapped Up

Read "All Wrapped Up" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 22, 2011

There's a noticeable change in organist Jared Gold's sonic template of choice, before All Wrapped Up even begins. While two out of Gold's three prior releases were quartet outings that used saxophone as the lone horn voice, all three releases were rooted in the traditional organ trio instrumental format. A different guitarist graced each one of those records, with Randy Napoleon, Ed Cherry and Dave Stryker each putting their own unique stamp on Gold's music, but the organist clearly felt ...

172

Album Review

T.K. Blue: Latin Bird

Read "Latin Bird" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
April 22, 2011

For a fellow who's been dead since 1955, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker is having a really good year. Several high-profile projects have been released featuring his music, with various adjustments, tints, and abstractions, and some of these have been quite good. Now comes multi-woodwind player T.K. Blue, with Latin Bird, which adds some Latin flavor to a group of well known Parker classics. The challenge to covering an icon like Parker--particularly if the musician in question is playing ...

136

Album Review

Ezra Weiss: The Shirley Horn Suite

Read "The Shirley Horn Suite" reviewed by Wilbert Sostre

by Wilbert Sostre
April 22, 2011

Portland based pianist/composer Ezra Weiss' fifth release is a tribute to Shirley Horn, who died in 2005 at age 71. Horn was an excellent pianist and sensitive vocalist, and a Grammy Award-winner in 1991, for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Weiss is certainly an extraordinaire composer, the winner of three ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards. Five of the nine compositions on The Shirley Horn Suite are Weiss originals, including “Shirley Horn's Sound Of Love," “May The Most You Wish ...

235

Live Review

Student Ensemble and Martial Solal: Philadelphia, April 9, 2011

by Victor L. Schermer
April 22, 2011

Berklee Global Jazz Institute/ Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University Martial Solal Perelman Theater,Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts,Philadelphia, PAApril 9, 2011 This was the final concert of the 2010-2011 season of the popular Jazz Up Close series, celebrating the legendary Thelonious Monk, organized by pianist/curator Danilo Pérez. It consisted of two disparate sets. The first brought together young musicians from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, based in Boston, and the ...

225

Live Review

Fieldwork: Philadelphia, March 12, 2011

by Dylan McGuire
April 21, 2011

Fieldwork Christ Church Neighborhood House TheatrePhiladelphia, PAMarch 12, 2011 To describe the music of avant-garde jazz trio Fieldwork--featuring polymath/pianist Vijay Iyer, drummer Tyshawn Sorey and saxophonist Steve Lehman--as complex may be an understatement as broad as the group's dedication to exploring the far reaches of harmony, ensemble dynamics, and the physical capabilities of their traditional acoustic instruments. Fieldwork's ability to take a single, stark musical passage and build it and twist and transform it until ...

211

Album Review

Iro Haarla Quintet: Vespers

by John Kelman
April 21, 2011

It's been six years since Iro Haarla released Northbound (ECM)--while not her actual debut as a leader, certainly her first with international exposure--an album of remarkable beauty that cemented the Finnish pianist/harpist/composer's position as the silent voice behind the music of her late husband, drummer Edward Vesala. There's no denying the import of Vesala's work for ECM, beginning with 1976's Nan Madol--truly a momentous album that spoke, in cinematic terms, of the landscape and culture of Finland--but, equally, a fundamental ...

248

Extended Analysis

Daniel Bennett Group: Peace & Stability Among Bears

by AAJ Staff
April 21, 2011

Daniel Bennett GroupPeace & Stability Among BearsBennett Alliance2010 The New York-based Daniel Bennett Group has released its third “bear album," Peace & Stability Among Bears (Bennett Alliance, 2010). The disc is the last in a trilogy of what the former Bostonian describes as a “trilogy of fables" that follows the progress of a group of fictional bears. The two earlier releases were notable for their bright and mobile music, and a ...

306

Album Review

Seamus Blake Quintet: Live At Smalls

Read "Live At Smalls" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
April 21, 2011

Recorded at the Greenwich Village club on August 31st and September 1st 2009, Live At Smalls showcases the inventive sound of English-born, Canadian-raised and New York-based Seamus Blake. The tenor saxophonist's career to date includes membership in the Mingus Big Band, BANN and the Victor Lewis Quintet, as well as his own combos. Live At Smalls finds Blake leading a sharp and swinging quintet on a series of post-bop originals and a cover of “Stranger in Paradise." ...

216

Album Review

KLANG: Other Doors

Read "Other Doors" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
April 21, 2011

Though he has long admired the small combo recordings of legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, Chicago-based clarinetist James Falzone never intended to record a tribute to the revered King of Swing. As a former student of modern composition at the New England Conservatory with a strong presence in Chicago's fertile free-improvisation scene, Falzone assumed his youthful gigs playing retro-swing dances were long behind him. An invitation to celebrate the Benny Goodman centennial at the 2009 Chicago Jazz Festival led him to ...