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.

257

Album Review

Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet: To Hear From There

Read "To Hear From There" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
February 8, 2011

Trombonist and composer Wayne Wallace knows how to have fun, and on the delightfully upbeat To Hear From There his Latin Jazz Quintet makes that fun leap out of the speakers. The group--Grammy-nominated for 2009's ¡Bien Bien! (Patois Records)--is energetic and exceptionally tight. Wallace leads this fine and funky band through a selection of tunes that combine Latin, African and West Coast styles to create a mix of tunes that swings and grooves from start to finish. ...

176

Album Review

Manuel Rocheman: The Touch of Your Lips: Tribute to Bill Evans

Read "The Touch of Your Lips: Tribute to Bill Evans" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 7, 2011

The French Naive record label, long known for its fine releases of classical music--particularly its ongoing Vivaldi Opera project--has initiated a jazz stream, highlighting French jazz talent, including pianist Manuel Rocheman's The Touch of Your Lips: Tribute to Bill Evans. It is somehow fitting that a tribute to America's last great pioneer in jazz piano (apologies to Cecil Taylor) comes from the land of the Impressionists. Bill Evans, more than any other pianist--not John Lewis, not Jacques Loussier, not even ...

216

Mr. P.C.'s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum

February 2011

by Mr. P.C.
February 7, 2011

Dear Mr. P.C.:People say that when you see a panhandler at the end of a freeway off ramp, you shouldn't give him money. How is that different from a jazz musician with a tip jar? Brent Jensen, Boise

Dear Brent: Ha! A trick question! You want me to cite statistics about panhandlers wasting their loot on booze instead of food or shelter, right? Then I'm supposed to spin some lofty rhetoric about the ...

168

Album Review

Ryan Cavanaugh & No Man's Land: Ryan Cavanaugh & No Man's Land

Read "Ryan Cavanaugh & No Man's Land" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
February 7, 2011

Saxophonist Bill Evans may have headed the marquee, but the surprise of his Soulgrass Band's 2007 Ottawa Jazz Festival performance was 27 year-old banjoist Ryan Cavanaugh. In the wake of Béla Fleck, Cavanaugh has emerged as the inevitable next step, continuing to transition the oft-maligned banjo into a bona fide jazz instrument as flexible as its six-string cousin, the guitar. Cavanaugh combines bluegrass technique with a broader jazz vernacular--on occasion resembling a down south incarnation of John McLaughlin. No surprise, ...

391

Extended Analysis

Tim Berne: Insomnia

by Charles Walker
February 7, 2011

Tim BerneInsomniaClean Feed2011 In the medical world, a blood count is a clinical tool, a method of aggregating data in order to make a diagnosis. In short, it's a way of picturing the lay of the land and from there determining the best path forward. Alto saxophonist Tim Berne's Bloodcount--Berne, multi-reedist Chris Speed, bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Jim Black and sometimes guitarist Marc Ducret--spent much of the mid to late 1990s doing ...

310

Album Review

Peter Erskine / Bob Mintzer / Derek Oles / Alan Pasqua: Standards 2, Movie Music

Read "Standards 2, Movie Music" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 7, 2011

While the songs featured on Standards 2, Movie Music were given an initial audience through the medium of film, some of them have led a fruitful existence beyond the borders of the silver screen. Some melodies--like Tara's Theme," from 1939's Gone With The Wind--will always be associated with their point of origin, but much of Cole Porter's catalog, including the two inclusions on this album ("Night And Day" and “I Concentrate On You"), is more familiar to current audiences than ...

182

Album Review

Roberta Piket: Sides, Colors

Read "Sides, Colors" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 7, 2011

Back in earlier days, when the vinyl, 33 RPM long playing record was the way to listen to music, Roberta Piket's Sides, Colors would have been released as a double disc, with its generous seventy-six minutes of music and two distinctly different moods. After her beautiful piano trio outing, Love and Beauty (Thirteenth Note Records, 2007), Piket now spreads her wings with the subtle addition of strings and horns to her trio 's sound.The first half of the ...

153

Album Review

Ralph Bowen: Power Play

Read "Power Play" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 7, 2011

Saxophonist Ralph Bowen has always been an original, despite being tagged as one of the neo-traditionalist young lions of the '80s. A quarter century has gone by since Bowen came to semi-prominence as a member of Out Of The Blue, yet this mega-talent still manages to fly just under the radar, despite impressive dates like this one. Power Play is a sharp departure from Bowen's previous Posi-Tone albums, which were built on an all-star guitar-bass-drums rhythm section, ...

618

Interview

Microscopic Septet: Chance Meeting with the Future

by Gordon Marshall
February 7, 2011

The Microscopic Septet is all about swing, but swing in a sense extrapolated from the stale, dated pages of the past. Its take on the music of the '30s and '40s is too scholarly to fall off the map as retro, and too deeply felt to be dismissed as a dusty trove of museum pieces. The charts move at the speed of the Coney Island Cyclone, incorporating all that grew out of the world's first love affair with jazz, from ...

252

Afrobeat Diaries

Part 17 - Dele Sosimi: Identity

by Chris May
February 6, 2011

Dele SosimiIdentityHelico Records2007 Keyboard player and singer Dele Sosimi, a member of Fela Kuti's Egypt 80 from 1979-86 and Femi Kuti's Positive Force from 1986-94, returned to London, where he was born in 1963, in 1995. A decade and a half later, he leads three bands in the city: the acoustic Afrobeat Trio with bassist Femi Elias and drummer Kunle Olofinjana, the Gbedu septet (which adds horns to the trio's lineup), ...