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.

233

Album Review

Justin Kauflin: Introducing Justin Kauflin

Read "Introducing Justin Kauflin" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 1, 2011

Sight and vision are not the same thing, and pianist Justin Kauflin is a testament to this fact. While a rare eye disease robbed Kauflin of his sight by the time he was eleven years old, his artistic vision and sense of purpose remain intact. Kauflin's classical training initially placed him on a certain path, but a detour toward jazz during his high school years, followed by further studies at William Patterson University, where he earned a degree in Music/Jazz ...

391

Take Five With...

Take Five With Juergen Reiter

by AAJ Staff
February 1, 2011

Meet Juergen Reiter: Juergen hit the local music scene of his hometown, Munich, at age 17. Shortly after his debut as a bassist he played in an opening act for Ray Charles. He honed his skills at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam, in Paris under John Cage colleague Joelle Leandre, and, finally, at SUNY Purchase, New York. He graduated with a Masters degree in music in 2001. Juergen has played and studied with artists ...

186

Album Review

Pierre Favre: Albatros

Read "Albatros" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
February 1, 2011

Renowned Swiss drummer Pierre Favre imparts his kaleidoscopic tonal palette into these intricately exercised and probing duets with fellow countryman, guitarist Philipp Schaufelberger. The musicians cover a gamut of twists, turns and subtle theme building maneuvers, including airy environs and an abundance of tradeoffs. Moreover, Favre balances out the set with structured patterns and asymmetrical rhythms in concert with his melodic fills. “Seeing" presents an ambient vista, with Favre's delicate drumming and soft cymbal hits offering a ...

224

Album Review

Ben Wolfe Quintet: Live at Small's

Read "Live at Small's" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 1, 2011

Ben Wolfe is a commanding presence beside the gravitational weight of his bass violin. On Live at Smalls, Wolfe brings something of the fabled Charles Mingus' authority and leadership to his own quintet. It had to be so; Wolfe undertakes to have four towering individualists interpret the charts performed on this date at the club that is now becoming all the rage of Greenwich Village, NYC. Pianist Luis Perdomo, somewhat better-known for his tumbao, is heard here negotiating the knife ...

239

Album Review

Dizzy Gillespie: Four Classic Albums

Read "Four Classic Albums" reviewed by David Rickert

by David Rickert
January 31, 2011

Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was one of the few jazz musicians equally adept (and influential) in small groups and fronting big bands. After the bebop heyday, he spent the fifties equally divided between smaller groups and a larger orchestra. His days as a bebop pioneer and a developer of Afro-Cuban music behind him, he now had a new role: ambassador. The sessions covered by this compilation come from around the time that Gillespie led a crack big band for a State ...

658

Interview

Marcus Miller: The Perfect Balance

by Esther Berlanga-Ryan
January 31, 2011

Marcus Miller is a master musician of calm wisdom and impeccable taste, whose talent has been exposed to the elements under different kinds of light through the years, only to magnify the evident supremacy he so gently seems to hold over the bass guitar in recent years. As a multi-instrumentalist of deep musical curiosity, he has also placed a difficult instrument like the bass clarinet as one of his most distinctive trademarks. His recordings are always surprising, and his soul ...

187

Album Review

Jacques Coursil: Trails of Tears

Read "Trails of Tears" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
January 31, 2011

Trumpeter, Jacques Coursil's Trails of Tears is quite simply, a monumental undertaking and a major work that ought to bring to light some of the earlier work that comments on colonialism in America, such as the equally important Gorée (Schemp, 1984), from Beaver Harris/Don Pullen 360˚ Experience; that composition itself being a strident dirge about the history of slavery in the western-most point of Africa, which was, at one time the centre of the slave trade. It was from Gorée ...

134

Multiple Reviews

CTI Masterworks: The Second Batch

by John Kelman
January 31, 2011

After a mighty kickoff near the end of 2010, CTI Masterworks is pushing ahead full-steam with another set of six remastered reissues, beautifully packaged in soft digipak editions. Its first batch of reissues included a tremendous, four-disc retrospective box set, CTI Records--The Cool Revolution, and an expanded, double-disc version of 1971's California Concert: The Hollywood Palladium, alongside a half dozen of some the label's cream of the crop such as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's influential Red Clay (1970), saxophonist Stanley Turrentine's ...

306

Album Review

Frank Gratkowski / Jacob Anderskov: Ardent Grass

Read "Ardent Grass" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
January 31, 2011

The reeds-piano duo is hardly overdone within the recorded canon, but then neither has it been as rare or unusual as some lineups. This particular duo is apparently not unaware of this, and there's a personality to its work that's entirely its own.There's a little of Anthony Braxton about Frank Gratkowski's alto sax playing on the opening “Narrative" but not enough to distract the ear from the profundity of the music-making. Pianist Jacob Anderskov's touch is, by turns, ...

574

Take Five With...

Take Five With Mike DiRubbo

by AAJ Staff
January 31, 2011

Meet Mike DiRubbo:Born on July 25, 1970 in New Haven, Connecticut, Mike DiRubbo began his musical life as a junior high school clarinetist, and switched to alto saxophone at 12. A primarily self-taught saxophonist, he developed into a talented instrumentalist drawn inexorably to the notion of improvising. At a high school band concert, Mike had the opportunity to perform with the Dwike Mitchell--Willie Ruff duo, an experience that would add to his desire to be a professional musician ...