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.

318

Live Review

Either/Orchestra: New York City, February 11, 2011

by Daniel Lehner
February 24, 2011

Either/OrchestraLe Poisson Rouge New York, NYFebruary 11, 2011 If you graduated school to work for a law firm or a contracting company, your reunion would probably not be a raucous or joyous event. However, if you and your classmates went on to be the employees of Lee Konitz, Lester Bowie, Sam Rivers, Nnenna Freelon and Morphine--and if one of you founded your own company, called Medeski, Martin & Wood--there'd certainly be cause to celebrate. ...

201

Album Review

Iiro Rantala: Lost heroes

Read "Lost heroes" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 24, 2011

German record label ACT Music is rapidly cornering the market in stylish solo piano albums. With Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala's Lost Heroes, it adds another distinctive and glorious recording to its collection, alongside Gwilym Simcock's Good Days At Schloss Elmau (2011) and Danilo Rea's A Tribute To Fabrizio De André (2010), among others. Rantala has been a jazz musician for many years, most famously with Trio Töykeät, a superbly skillful and inventive band which existed for almost ...

186

Live Review

Red Holloway Quartet: San Diego, February 8, 2011

by Robert Bush
February 24, 2011

Red Holloway Quartet with Plas JohnsonSaville Theater, San Diego City CollegeSan Diego, CAFebruary 8, 2011 Red Holloway has “been there and done that" when it comes to jazz standards and all forms of the blues. While normally his specialties are both playing the tenor saxophone and belting out blues vocals, a recent fall had left him with an injured left hand. But no worries--he just placed a call to his long time friend, Plas ...

268

Album Review

David Caceres: David Caceres

Read "David Caceres" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 24, 2011

Comparisons are odious, and can certainly lead to bias. Moreover, in the case of David Caceres, they simply do not capture the immense character that holds together the artistry of this astounding musician. True, Caceres channels Donny Hathaway, and can wind up closing in on the soaring falsetto of Stevie Wonder, but his phrasing is quite different. Even when he is waxing eloquent, wooing a lost love, or lamenting the end of a relationship, he does so with such strength ...

303

Album Review

Matthew Shipp: The Art of the Improviser

Read "The Art of the Improviser" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
February 24, 2011

Any who have witnessed Matthew Shipp in action over the past few years will know that the pianist's bravura concert displays often eclipse his studio output. Unlike many jazz musicians the vast majority of Shipp's oeuvre has been recorded away from an audience. His previous four releases on Thirsty Ear have alternated between trio and solo format, but now he combines the two on this double-disc live album. With its echo of Ornette Coleman's similarly monikered collection of ...

Album Review

Michael William Gilbert: I Can See From Here

Read "I Can See From Here" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 24, 2011

If the NPR radio show, Hearts of Space, were hipper and less ambient, it would fall over itself playing Michael William Gilbert's I Can See From Here. The recording is a 14-part suite, made up of Gilbert compositions synthetically prepared by the composer. Gilbert plays all instruments--that is, synthesizer, computer samples and loops, as well as percussion, and is joined on “Amerikan Dream" by guitarist Peter Kaukonen, the younger brother of Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna). ...

172

Album Review

Majid Khaliq: The Basilisk

Read "The Basilisk" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 23, 2011

There was once a school of thought that championed, zealot-like, the cause of the violin. To them there was no more perfect instrument than the four-stringed wonder that supports a fretless arm and offers infinite possibilities of melody; one that all but brought to life myriad human emotions via harmonic invention. Were this league of extraordinary gentlemen to convene today, and upon hearing Majid Khaliq bow as majestically as does on The Basilisk, they might be forced to revive their ...

654

Interview

Hubert Laws: Flute Virtuoso and NEA Jazz Master

by Greg Thomas
February 23, 2011

After James Moody and Frank Wess established the flute as a solo jazz instrument in the 1950s, and Herbie Mann popularized it in the 1960s, the musician that has become most identified with virtuosic flute performance in jazz is Hubert Laws, who became a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Masters Fellowship in the class of 2011, the penultimate group of honorees before the program closes after the 2012 ceremony. I've been enamored ...

293

Album Review

Lisa Lindsley: Every Time We Say Goodbye

Read "Every Time We Say Goodbye" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 23, 2011

The jazz vocals standard repertoire is a durable one because it is populated with well-conceived and finely-crafted songs from the Great American Songbook. Of equal importance are the song's lyrics, cleverly constructed, and the melody, hook-filled. This song collection exists as a mountain to be climbed by any singer who believes him- or herself capable, willing and worthy. It is an assemblage of songs that has flooded the vocals market so that it is hard to separate the truly exceptional ...

402

Film Review

Han Bennink: Hazentijd

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 23, 2011

Han BenninkHazentijdData Images2010 Han Bennink, Dutch master drummer and one of the godfathers of European improvised music, may not need an introduction, but this insightful documentary by director Jellie Dekker and producer Dick Lucas--who together made the documentary on another godfather of Dutch improvised music, pianist Misha Mengelberg--proves that most people probably have plenty more to learn about Bennink. Bennink has gained a reputation as a natural, intuitive ...