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.

447

Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Taken with Terrasson

by Dan Bilawsky
February 2, 2011

While reading reviews about the 2010 Winter Jazzfest in New York City, I experienced a sensory overload, despite the fact that I hadn't even been in attendance. The list of musicians that performed at the event seemed too good to be true, as did many of the reviews, so I vowed to check it out for myself when the event rolled around again in January of 2011. When the festival dates were announced, I bought my tickets ...

186

Album Review

Paul Desmond: Pure Desmond

Read "Pure Desmond" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
February 2, 2011

With a dry tone, and unhurried phrasing definitive of the emergent West Coast Cool--a relaxed alternative to the edgier hard bop coming from New York--alto saxophonist Paul Desmond had already made a name for himself with pianist Dave Brubeck's quartet on the legendary Time Out (Columbia, 1959). Desmond also wrote the tune that became Brubeck's signature, “Take Five," and, while he passed away too young at the age of 52 from lung cancer, he's left behind a relatively small but ...

240

Album Review

Houston Person: Moment to Moment

Read "Moment to Moment" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
February 2, 2011

Tenor saxophonist Houston Person's Moment to Moment begins with an instant nostalgia trip to the classic Blue Note Sessions of the 1960s. It should not come as any surprise, then, that this album was recorded in the legendary Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ by the man himself, Rudy Van Gelder--rarely a bad thing. The tenor and trumpet front line in the opener, “Bleeker Street," would be at home on an old Donald Byrd or Tina Brooks ...

256

Album Review

David Binney: Graylen Epicenter

Read "Graylen Epicenter" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
February 2, 2011

Saxophonist, composer and producer David Binney, a progressive artist with one foot in the mainstream and the other in the avant-garde, has gracefully skirted the tenuous divide between traditions for over two decades. Regularly alternating between semi-casual blowing dates and far more ambitious projects, Binney follows up the relatively straight-ahead Aliso (Criss Cross, 2010) and lavish Third Occasion (Mythology, 2009) with the expansive Graylen Epicenter. Featuring a host of Binney's longstanding associates, this wide-ranging session offers a compelling portrait of ...

217

Album Review

Mark Weinstein: Jazz Brasil

Read "Jazz Brasil" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
February 2, 2011

Mark Weinstein had a long journey across the trail of music instruments before he settled on the flute. He first played the piano when he was six. He then tried the clarinet and the drums before gravitating to the trombone and string bass in high school. The trombone was the mainstay for quite a while, and he went on to play it with Eddie Palmieri. He finally found his muse in the flute, when he returned to music after a ...

407

Extended Analysis

Matt Haimovitz/Uccello: Meeting of the Spirits

by Ian Patterson
February 2, 2011

Matt Haimovitz/Uccello Meeting of the Spirits Oxingale Records 2010 That the classical music world should visit jazz repertory is not without precedent. As the saying goes, there's nothing new under the sun. However, the spirits summoned here belong to that of visionary musician and internationally renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz and respected composer/arranger David Sanford. Together with the eight-piece cello ensemble, Uccello, the duo reconfigure classics by jazz masters from the 1920s to ...

157

Album Review

John Surman: Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop - April '69

Read "Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop - April '69" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
February 1, 2011

1969 was a watershed year for John Surman. He released his eponymous debut on Dutton Vocalion that year, but it was the recording session for How Many Clouds Can You See? (Vocalion, 1970), that made the year of Woodstock and man's first steps on the moon so portentous for the 25 year-old saxophonist An album effortlessly joining large and small ensembles--right down to a burning duet with drummer Alan Jackson that alluded to John Coltrane's incendiary pairing with Rashied Ali, ...

314

Jazz That Scratches, Swings and Pops

Blackboard, Lit Screen and Red Hot Jazz

by Andrew J. Sammut
February 1, 2011

Teachers must find it hard to leave their job in the classroom, like Olympic runners find it hard to take their time. The best teachers educate out of reflex, and for Michael Steinman that reflex transcends classroom or course listing. Whether it's English at Nassau Community College or hot jazz on the World Wide Web, passion and pedagogy are one and the same for Steinman. Steinman's blog, “Jazz Lives," honors the traditional jazz he's loved his whole ...

179

Album Review

Matthew Rybicki: Driven

by Matt Marshall
February 1, 2011

Driven may seem a curious title for the debut album of a 37-year-old artist. But it's likely bassist Matthew Rybicki chose the title more as a pronouncement of his musical tastes ("It's definitely critical for me to be trying to swing all the time," he has noted) and, perhaps, of the bassist's role within music, generally. A self-described latecomer to the jazz game, Rybicki played in rock bands until entering the Berklee College of Music, and he ...

380

Interview

Led Bib: It's Not Lady Gaga

by Bruce Lindsay
February 1, 2011

Led Bib: a short, sharp shock of a name for one of the hardest-hitting bands on the UK jazz scene. But the name doesn't tell the whole story, for this is also a band that's capable of inventive and intensely emotive music as well as the riff-laden numbers that have helped it to earn the label of “Punk Jazz," among others. In the runup to the release of the band's fifth album, Bring Your Own (Cuneiform, 2011), the band's amiable ...