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.

670

Extended Analysis

Eric Vloeimans: V-Flow

by John Kelman
January 18, 2011

Eric VloeimansV-Flow Challenge Records2010 Still on the shy side of fifty, but looking considerably younger--in no small part due to a distinctive image with colorful clothing and funky shoes--it might appear premature to be releasing a five-disc box set that takes a retrospective look at the career of Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans. But as the trumpeter begins to gain international stature through touring with his two main projects--the quirky chamber jazz of Fugimundi, ...

231

Album Review

Led Bib: Bring Your Own

Read "Bring Your Own" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
January 18, 2011

Writing about Led Bib's Mercury Prize-nominated album, the raucous and confrontational Sensible Shoes (Cuneiform, 2009), Britain's Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper--which speaks with as much authority about jazz as Murdoch's Fox News speaks about politics--declared: “Led Bib are the band bringing jazz back to contemporary music's cutting edge." A slightly more measured response came from the Guardian's jazz critic, who described the album as “a gale of fresh air." All About Jazz observed that “the band continues its mission ...

369

Album Review

Donny McCaslin: Perpetual Motion

Read "Perpetual Motion" reviewed by Warren Allen

by Warren Allen
January 18, 2011

Donny McCaslin has long been one of the under-sung superstars of the modern tenor saxophone. In recent years, however, as both a leader and sideman with big band leader Maria Schneider, the Mingus Dynasty band, and trumpeter Dave Douglas, McCaslin has gained more and more well-deserved recognition. Drawing off the best of the 21st century's jazz, funk and rock fusion, Perpetual Motion demonstrates the sheer power of McCaslin as a player, and the individuality of his musical vision.

543

Interview

Mr Ho's Orchestrotica: Endless Bachelor Party

by Gordon Marshall
January 18, 2011

Led by pianist and multi-percussionist Brian O'Neill, Mr Ho's Orchestrotica plays the kind of music you can listen to with your mother. She'll love the '50s atmosphere of The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel (Exotica For Modern Living, 2010)--while you'll pick up all the left-of-center global hints--and she won't even know it's good for her! It's good, indeed, wrought as it is from original charts from lounge/exotica avatar Juan Garcia Esquivel, transcribed from actual recordings by ear. For baby boomers, it ...

314

Album Review

Samo Salamon: Almost Almond

Read "Almost Almond" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 18, 2011

Samo Salamon has been compared to everybody from Ben Monder, John Scofield and John Abercrombie, to Sonny Sharrock and Tal Farlow. This list, referencing a group of guitarists that have little in common, will leave plenty of people scratching their heads, but it points to the fact that this young Slovenian guitarist knows no bounds. Salamon seems intent on avoiding any one label, as proven by his string of albums in the new millennium, mixing European and American artists with ...

171

Album Review

Various Artists: Jazzvox Presents: In Your Own Backyard

Read "Jazzvox Presents: In Your Own Backyard" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 18, 2011

Nich Anderson is a Northwest coast jazz vocalist and jazz vocals champion who has been bringing jazz vocal talent to his “house concerts" in Washington State for the past 10 years. Anderson and Origin Records' house presence Bill Anschell have produced a recording documenting some of this talent. The result is a collection of duets and trios, intimate in presentation, overt in the sheer ability of its participants, that well highlight the state of vocal jazz at the opening of ...

250

Album Review

Bill O'Connell: Rhapsody in Blue

Read "Rhapsody in Blue" reviewed by Woodrow Wilkins

by Woodrow Wilkins
January 18, 2011

Don't let the title, Rhapsody in Blue, fool you. Pianist Bill O'Connell isn't doing an album-length tribute to Gershwin. The title song is just one of three covers in this ten-track set; he rest are O'Connell originals. “Monk's Cha-Cha" features alto saxophonist Steve Slagle. Dave Samuels follows O'Connell with a solo. Bassist Luques Curtis, drummer Steve Berrios and conguero Richie Flores carry the mood of this piece. After the middle solos, Slagle again takes point, while Flores mixes ...

192

Album Review

Joelle Leandre / India Cooke: Journey

by John Sharpe
January 17, 2011

Joëlle Léandre's name on the sleeve guarantees invention and passion. Over the years, the French improvising bassist has made the duet format one of her prime modes of expression, pairing, in recent years, with George Lewis and Jean-Luc Capozzo on just two recent examples from a discography now more than 150 strong. Further swelling the ranks, this live date from the 2008 Conference of the International Society for Improvised Music matches Léandre with Bay Area violinist India Cooke.

837

Interview

Conference Call: Evolution of a Burning Bush

by Gordon Marshall
January 17, 2011

Conference Call can be as balanced and beautiful as an intricate organism, and just as soon rage with holy fire. The quartet--consisting of saxophonist Gebhard Ullman, bassist Joe Fonda, drummer George Schuller and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens--perpetually weaves in all three dimensions, as well as in time--its own, and music history's. Together since the late '90s, the group is going strong, burning away but losing no energy, relating jazz past and political past to hard and fast ...

177

Album Review

Mark Weinstein: Jazz Brasil

Read "Jazz Brasil" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 17, 2011

Flautist Mark Weinstein has enjoyed impressive success with his almost yearly releases. Timbasa (Jazzhead Records, 2010), Tales from the Earth (With Omar Sosa) (Ota Records, 2009) and Straight No Chaser (Jazzhead Records, 2008) were all favorably reviewed within these sacred electrons. Weinstein belongs to an elite club of jazz flautists, a necessarily small one that includes Herbie Mann, James Moody, Frank Wess, and Eric Dolphy; the flute is a demanding mistress in jazz. Over the course of ...