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.

337

Album Review

Gowanus Reggae and Ska Society: G.R.A.S.S. On Fire

Read "G.R.A.S.S. On Fire" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
February 10, 2011

The Gowanus Reggae and Ska Society was fermented when a group of jazz musicians who shared the same vision for reggae got together for jam sessions at the home of keyboardist Nate Shaw. Their love of the music coalesced into a more tangent form when they presented the soundtrack to the 1972 film, The Harder They Come, at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York in 2009. The concept was well-received, and the band was fired up enough to focus ...

406

Take Five With...

Take Five With Ferit Odman

by AAJ Staff
February 10, 2011

Meet Ferit Odman:Ferit Odman is an in-demand and busy jazz drummer based in Istanbul. He started his music studies in Sweden as an AFS exchange student (1999), got a full scholarship to get his B.A. in Music at Istanbul Bilgi University (2001), attended the School For Improvisation workshops in NYC (2004), and has been granted a Fulbright Scholarship to further build on his studies at William Paterson University (2006). He spent/played two years in New York City, and ...

210

Album Review

Open Graves: Flight Patterns

Read "Flight Patterns" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 10, 2011

Recording in an empty water cistern, specifically the one in Port Townsend, Washington, must be something like conversing with Stephen Hawking, the brilliant physicist and cosmologist, whose battle with ALS has left him to communicate through tapping words on a voice synthesizer. Each note produced in the cistern has the capacity to overwhelm every other sound, as it bounces and reverberates; in effect, making every gesture, every choice, painstakingly critical.The significance of each gesture might be the motive ...

409

Album Review

Johannesson & Schultz: Johannesson & Schultz

Read "Johannesson & Schultz" reviewed by Chris Mosey

by Chris Mosey
February 10, 2011

Johannesson & Schultz is an album that triggers memories of those heady days in the late 1960s when fusion was all the rage. One that evokes distant echoes of Miles Davis' In A Silent Way (Columbia, 1969) and the work of guitarist Larry Coryell. It harks back to the quieter, more meditative end of the genre, free of electronic excess and pretension. So just who are Johannesson and Schultz? Peter Johannesson is a Swedish drummer hitherto best ...

370

Album Review

David Binney: Graylen Epicenter

Read "Graylen Epicenter" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 10, 2011

Alto saxophonist and producer David Binney has become a ubiquitous presence in jazz in the last 20 years fronting his own bands while appearing with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, Joel Harrison, Edward Simon and Bobby Previte. He might be considered the logical next step in jazz saxophone after Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker (Sonny Rollins remains in an orbit by himself), never mind that he is not a tenorist. Binney has been sharpening his direction over his last two recordings ...

342

Extended Analysis

Geoffrey Keezer / Peter Sprague Band: Mill Creek Road

by Robert Bush
February 9, 2011

Geoffrey Keezer / Peter Sprague BandMill Creek RoadSBE Records2011 Pianist Geoffrey Keezer and guitarist Peter Sprague have combined their considerable musical forces in forming this band, the first fruits of which are available now as Mill Creek Road on Sprague's own SBE Records. They are joined in this effort by the up and coming Los Angeles double bass virtuoso Hamilton Price and the ubiquitous Duncan Moore on drums for this (mostly) quartet ...

225

Album Review

Mark Isaacs: Aurora

by John Kelman
February 9, 2011

As Tell It Like It Is (ABC Jazz, 2009), amply proved, sometimes it's better to work with local musicians who, through regular touring, establish a singular collective voice. That's not to say Resurgence (ABC Jazz, 2007) was bad--it's hard to imagine anything with bassist Jay Anderson, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and saxophonist Bob Sheppard as lacking in the firepower department. Still, when looking at Australia-based pianist Mark Isaacs' discography of the past decade, the standout albums have invariably been those featuring ...

123

Multiple Reviews

Milt Jackson and Paul Desmond: Elder Statesmen on CTI

by Dan Bilawsky
February 9, 2011

Popular music is usually a young person's game. Older artists, in any genre, often get pushed to the periphery to make way for the next big thing that can sell in numbers. But the CTI label was age-blind when it came to its artist roster. While it's certainly true that the stable of musicians on the majority of CTI albums skewed towards the young and the majority of success stories on CTI--like trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine--had their ...

348

Album Review

Brad Shepik Quartet: Across the Way

Read "Across the Way" reviewed by Matt Marshall

by Matt Marshall
February 9, 2011

The opening strains to Brad Shepik's Across the Way--repeated six-string figures of wistful longing, tending toward melancholy, with strains redolent of Radiohead's OK Computer (Capitol, 1997)--signal that the guitarist is exploring darker, more insular spaces than on his previous effort, Human Activity Suite (Songlines, 2009). To be sure, that work, which takes on global climate change and humanity's active role within the growing disaster, could hardly be labeled trivial or lighthearted. But Shepik's tone and the music as a whole ...

398

Live Review

Kristin Korb / Cosmologic with Anthony Davis at Conrad Prebys Recital Hall in San Diego

by Robert Bush
February 9, 2011

Kristin Korb / Cosmologic with special guest Anthony DavisConrad Prebys Recital Hall, UCSDSan Diego, CAJanuary 22, 2011 UCSD's internationally heralded music department hosted concerts by returning alumni and faculty in a weeklong celebration of the program's many successes. Saturday night's affair featured singer/double-bassist Kristin Korb playing solo and the wonderful, cooperative free jazz quartet Cosmologic. Kristin Korb The pristine acoustics of the recital hall made Korb's solo appearance ...