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.

167

Album Review

Mostly Other People Do the Killing: The Coimbra Concert

Read "The Coimbra Concert" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 1, 2011

The stand-up comic begins, “I went to a day of rage riot the other day, and a Moppa Elliott concert broke out." He might continue with, “Take my jazz canon, please." That is just what the bassist's quartet, Mostly Other People Do The Killing, does--seize the jazz standard and demolish it. The Coimbra Concert is the first live recording by the group, following its fourth studio record, Forty Fort (Hot Cup, 2009).Just as beboppers were criticized for ruining ...

224

Live Review

Nicholas Payton: Boston, February 24, 2011

by Andrew J. Sammut
March 1, 2011

Nicholas PaytonScullers Jazz ClubBoston, MAFebruary 24, 2011 Pressing the unmuted bell of his trumpet right up to the microphone, trumpet player Nicholas Payton invited, impressed, seduced and surprised the crowd at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston. Yet he never assaulted the audience, despite power and confidence to burn. Immense energy was being channeled, but never restrained. Thursday's 8:00 pm set began at the darkest ends of both register and mood. Payton's ...

197

Album Review

Jane Stuart: Don't Look Back

Read "Don't Look Back" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 1, 2011

Jane Stuart is as complete a jazz singer as they come. With the timing of a tap dancer, the emotive responsiveness of a stage performer, a voice for the ages, and the experience to put it all together into one unified whole, Stuart deserves more exposure than she currently gets. To her credit, Stuart is able to bring all of these different elements into her performances due, in large part, to her vast experience in every one of these areas. ...

234

Take Five With...

Take Five With Mike Lee

by AAJ Staff
March 1, 2011

Meet Mike Lee:Mike Lee is a tenor saxophonist originally from Cleveland, OH and now living in Northern New Jersey. He's currently leader of the Cecil's Monday Night Big Band at Cecil's Jazz Club in West Orange New Jersey and co-leader of the acclaimed jazz quartet, New Tricks. He has released five albums as leader or co- leader, recorded as a sideman on albums by such jazz luminaries as Joe Lovano and Eliot Zigmund. Active as a jazz educator, ...

103

Album Review

Kit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger

Read "Quiet Tiger" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
March 1, 2011

The Kit Downes Trio's first album, Golden (Basho Records, 2009), won a Mercury Music Prize nomination and put the group firmly at the forefront of British jazz. Quiet Tiger finds the Trio eager to move forward, redefining its sound. Not content to rest on the laurels garnered by Golden, pianist and composer Downes has augmented the band, expanding its musical palette with the unusual addition of tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and cello. At heart, though, this is ...

183

Album Review

Diego Urcola Quartet: Appreciation

Read "Appreciation" reviewed by Charles Walker

by Charles Walker
March 1, 2011

Subtlety seldom brings rewards in the life of a journeyman jazz musician. In a field overcrowded with competent colleagues, plagued by spotty media coverage and half-starved by the problems facing the music industry more generally, a gimmick is often required to garner even scant attention. Argentinian-born, New York-based trumpeter Diego Urcola--a long-time member of Paquito D'Rivera's quintet and a stalwart of the late-night NYC scene--avoids the gimmicks on Appreciation, his fourth outing as a leader. Instead, he pushes his Sisyphean ...

528

Interview

Geni Skendo: Breaking Free

by Gordon Marshall
March 1, 2011

Flautist and shakuhachi master Geni Skendo does not genre-mash so much as genre-crash, like a late-night interloper joining a lame party and livening it up with exotic sound. It's miraculous, this color he brings to anything, given the drab Iron Curtain he exited under on his flight from his native Albania, traveling to Boston, Massachusetts to study at Berklee College of Music in 2002. Shy but my no means timid, he has rendered his jolt of culture shock into a ...

265

Album Review

Kit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger

Read "Quiet Tiger" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 28, 2011

When it's time to follow up an album nominated for a major, mainstream award such as Britain's Mercury Prize, jazz artists face a conundrum. Having enjoyed a year or so of unprecedented publicity, and keen to keep it coming, the choice is between a carbon copy of the nominated album, designed to maintain the lucrative, but fragile connection with non-specialist critics and listeners, and a less commercially considered trajectory, going where the music dictates. Led Bib's Bring Your ...

182

Album Review

Corea, Clarke & White: Forever

by John Kelman
February 28, 2011

As successful as its massive 2008 world tour was--stopping at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, and yielding both a live CD (Returns) and DVD (Returns: Live at Montreux 2008) from Eagle Entertainment the following year--it was patently clear that Return to Forever couldn't continue with guitarist Al Di Meola. It was, however, equally certain that RTF's remaining members--keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White--felt great about coming together, nearly forty years after they first met, as they subsequently ...

417

Extended Analysis

Roberta Piket: Sides, Colors

by Victor L. Schermer
February 28, 2011

Roberta Piket Sides, ColorsThirteenth Note Records2011 Roberta Piket is a pianist with rich musical abilities who is making a name for herself as one of the best of her generation of keyboard players. Her 2011 release, Sides, Colors is a well-conceived recording, using her trio supplemented by strings and horns in a potpourri of originals and standards. It was realized in a creative manner, embodying several interesting ideas. First, it was recorded in ...