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.

281

Album Review

Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore: Three Kinds of Happiness

Read "Three Kinds of Happiness" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 22, 2011

Locksmith Isidore's third release is a study in improvisational and composition-based contrasts. Led by bass clarinetist Jason Stein, the program is underscored by a frothy outlook amid temperate interludes and more than enough pop, snap and fluid progressions. Other than his inventive soloing jaunts, Stein communicates a keen jazz vernacular, molding conventional jazz fare with a nouveau slant. These compelling attributes radiate on “Little Bird." Stein launches the ballad with subtle phrasings, entrenched in a soul-stirring gait. He ...

610

Race and Jazz

Jazz vs Racism

by Greg Thomas
March 22, 2011

Jazz saved me from becoming a racist. Back in the early to mid-1980s, while attending Hamilton College in central New York, I learned details about the transatlantic slave trade that sickened and angered me. I read about the history of the abolitionist movement in the 1800s, and the civil rights movements of last century, as well as the apartheid-like Jim Crow system that arose in between those movements. “Jim Crow," particularly in the U.S. South, maintained the economic, ...

182

Album Review

Michael Feinberg: With Many Hands

Read "With Many Hands" reviewed by Charles Walker

by Charles Walker
March 21, 2011

Atlanta is not known as a hotbed of jazz activity. Pianist/arranger Duke Pearson hailed from the city, and trumpeter Russell Gunn has a longstanding residency at the club Churchill Grounds, but on average, the metropolis rarely registers on the jazz map. On With Many Hands, 23-year old bassist Michael Feinberg's second album as a leader, the Atlanta native and his cohort of young whiz kids (the oldest is 24) make his hometown proud. The sextet heard here comfortably speaks the ...

240

Album Review

Albatrosh: Mystery Orchestra with Grenager & Talfjord

Read "Mystery Orchestra with Grenager & Talfjord" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
March 21, 2011

Duos can represent a double-edged sword: on one hand, no other context is as intimate, where the level of communication can be as deep, the lines of communication so open; equally, however, there are the inherent limitations on its possible sound worlds, the result of the specific textural, harmonic and rhythmic capabilities of the instruments involved. Still, through the use of preparation and extended techniques, Norway's Albatrosh managed, with its 2009 debut, Seagull Island (Inner Ear), to expand on an ...

406

Album Review

The Uptown Jazz Collective: She Do What She Do

Read "She Do What She Do" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 21, 2011

She Do What She Do is hard to pin down. While continuity is created through solid performances from the rhythm section, and bluesy baritone saxophonist B. J. Jansen, the material and stylistic presentation is all over the map. The most palatable selections come in the form of standards, as delivered by vocalist T. C. III. His style comes straight out of the Eddie Jefferson school of singing and, while an occasional tendency to warble or yodel can ...

275

Album Review

John Leighton: Dramatic Life

Read "Dramatic Life" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 21, 2011

Jazz composers can be inspired by the oddest things, but it's rare to find inspiration coming from those seminal icons of the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale and John Keats. Northern Ireland-based pianist/songwriter John Leighton puts that right on his beautiful debut, Dramatic Life, and it isn't just his inspirations that are original. Leighton's chosen musical compatriots are superb. The pianist wrote the songs, but leaves Anna Stott to deliver the lyrics, and she does so with an ...

273

Album Review

Frank Macchia: Son Of Folk Songs For Jazzers

Read "Son Of Folk Songs For Jazzers" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 21, 2011

Saxophonist Frank Macchia keeps racking up the Grammy nominations. He got his third nod for the award with his big band interpretation of “Skip to My Lou," from his Folk Songs for Jazzers (Cacophony, 2010), following up his recognition for Emotions (Cacophony, 2007) and Landscapes (Cacophony 2008). In addition to his work in producing these excellent CD offerings, Macchia also works extensively in film and TV, as one of those musicians many have heard without knowing who it ...

316

JazzLife UK

It's Been A Very Good Year

by Bruce Lindsay
March 21, 2011

The New Year is past its infancy, leaving toddlerhood behind and heading into those difficult pre-school years. Olympic Fever jostles with a forthcoming Royal Wedding for the attentions of the Great British Public (at least according to the more populist media). Across the Atlantic, Esperanza Spalding won a first for jazz: the Grammy Award for Best New Artist--a story which interested the UK media, almost exclusively because of the unseemly response of some of Justin Beiber's young enthusiasts. And JazzLife ...

486

Interview

Abdullah Ibrahim: Perpetual Change

by Ian Patterson
March 21, 2011

For legendary pianist/composer Abdullah Ibrahim, music is always in a state of evolution. This philosophy is common to nearly all great composers, from [pianist] Duke Ellington to [trumpeter] Miles Davis and from [saxophonist] John Coltrane and [pianist] Ahmad Jamal to [guitarist] Bill Frisell. A piece of music is born, it grows and gradually matures but it never withers.And, like the Lesotho mountains, which, in part, inspired Ibrahim to revisit compositions--some of which he penned a quarter of a ...

154

Album Review

Fred Hess Big Band: Into the Open

Read "Into the Open" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 20, 2011

Denver, Colorado-based tenor saxophonist/bandleader Fred Hess isn't one to sit around and wait for the muse to pay a visit. He boasts fifteen CDs as a leader, cranking one out every year now for better than a decade. His profile rose on the surge of a set of small group outings, beginning with Crossed Paths (Tapestry, 2005), and culminating--small group-wise--with Single Moment (Alison, 2008), on which he experimented by expanding, very successfully, his free jazz quartet to a sextet.