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.

216

Album Review

Kenneth Whalum III: To Those Who Believe

Read "To Those Who Believe" reviewed by Jonathan Wertheim

by Jonathan Wertheim
February 28, 2011

Perhaps three really is the magic number--at least for today's tenor saxophonists. Walter Smith III has been making waves in the contemporary jazz world for years now, but another “three" has been developing a distinctive and fresh style, albeit more quietly. Kenneth Whalum III is the most recent addition to a venerated musical family. The saxophonist released To Those Who Believe, his self-produced debut, at the end of 2010. It's not just a first release, however, it's ...

215

Album Review

Manfred Kniel and his Reduction Quartet: Low Down Music

Read "Low Down Music" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
February 28, 2011

Drummer Manfred Kniel has leadership status on this release, and all the compositions are his. But this is also, perhaps, the key to the music's shortcomings, especially when the rhythmic vitality the leader habitually imparts is not matched by some other equally compelling element. His sly and sometimes witty melodic sense seems often to be a mere afterthought, something he feels obliged to tack on so as not to run the risk of creating a musical monoculture. The results feel ...

183

Mix Tape

Out Of This World

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
February 28, 2011

Well-suited to late hours, low light, reflection, insomnia. Some new, some not; some French, some not; some jazz, some not. TrackNameTimeArtistAlbum1Séquence Hcm 33:02Daniel HumairPas De Dense21983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)13:39The Jimi Hendrix ExperienceElectric Ladyland3Shaking Peace7:35Orchestre National de Jazz/ Daniel YvinecShut Up And Dance 14Green power5:56Michel BenitaEthics5Linda Manigua6:23SidestepperMore Grip6How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me4:13Erroll GarnerConcert By The Sea7Melodica International [Extended Mix]6:26Glen Brown and King TubbyTermination Dub (1973-79)8Nightclubbing5:05Grace JonesNightclubbing9Greedy Girl3:12Jah StitchIf Deejay Was ...

131

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill: 40 Acres And A Burro

Read "40 Acres And A Burro" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
February 28, 2011

Founded in 2002 by Artistic Director Arturo O'Farrill, The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra of New York's Lincoln Center was created to perform compositions from Latin music masters including the pianist's father Chico O'Farrill, as well as Machito, Tito Puente, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and others. The group separated from Lincoln Center on 2007, becoming part of the new Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA), a non-profit organization dedicated to developing a new audience and educational opportunities for young performers. 40 Acres And A Burro, ...

527

Interview

Roberta Piket: Making a Difference

by Victor L. Schermer
February 28, 2011

Roberta Piket is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger with an exceptional range of expression. In the same tune or performance, she moves fluidly between bebop, hard bop, blues, soft and mellow, up-tempo, contrapuntal, and advanced harmonic motifs, making it all come together in meaningful, coherent statements of ideas and emotions. She thinks hard when she plays, “with big ears," as Dave Liebman once said, and a sense of story. She is a truly contemporary player, pushing the envelope. Among ...

356

Afrobeat Diaries

Part 20 - ?uestlove Curates Fela Kuti Vinyl Box

by Freddy Charles
February 27, 2011

Fela Anikulapo KutiFela Vinyl Box Set 1Knitting Factory Records2011 With the release of the eight-CD and download collection Fela Power Show: Batch 4, two of the strands in Knitting Factory Records' high-end Fela Kuti reissue project have come to a conclusion. All of Kuti's albums are now available on CD and download (and additionally, via Britain's Wrasse Records, collected in one all-encompassing box set, the 27-disc The Complete Works Of Fela ...

203

Album Review

Oliver Lake / Christian Weber / Dieter Ulrich: For A Little Dancin’

Read "For A Little Dancin’" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
February 27, 2011

Alto and soprano sax man Oliver Lake has been a key member of a trio with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille in the past. That band, sometimes with the addition of a pianist, has been responsible for some of this century's most compelling small group jazz. This alto sax-bass-drums trio thus has a lot to live up to, but live up to it they do with For A Little Dancin', and not least because they're a trio whose ...

153

Album Review

Benjamin Drazen: Inner Flights

Read "Inner Flights" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 27, 2011

The peaceful, John Lennon-like face on the cover of Inner Flights is merely a mask. Behind that calm exterior is a musician with killer instincts and serious chops. Sure, saxophonist Benjamin Drazen can be calm and graceful when he wants to, as he is on Inner Flights' closing track, “Polka Dots And Moonbeams," but more often than not, Drazen takes to the skies in spectacularly soaring flights. On his debut album, Drazen dives head first into music ...

394

Extended Analysis

John Williams: Guitar Recital

by AAJ Staff
February 27, 2011

John WilliamsGuitar RecitalDecca Records1996 (1959) In 1958, guitar virtuoso John Williams was a gifted teenager, and had studied with Andres Segovia. In that year he recorded an album of primarily Segovia-inspired (or themed) compositions from the growing classical guitar repertoire. The album, Guitar Recital (originally released on Delyse in 1959), was in two volumes, though the sessions were continuous. (The album has since been released by Decca). It does not contain ...

122

Album Review

Marty Williams: Long Time Comin'

Read "Long Time Comin'" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 27, 2011

Bay Area fixture Marty Williams does not have a pretty singing voice. It doesn't need to be because it is a commanding one--readily identifiable, friendly, accessible and honest. and worth much more than being pretty. Doubly talented, Williams has a piano style right out of the righteous songbook of Junior Mance, Les McCann, and Gene Harris, full of blues, bluster and block chords that inform every song he performs. Together, the two talents make Long Time Comin' a song stylist's ...