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.

315

Multiple Reviews

Daniel Humair in the Lions' Dens

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
January 17, 2011

Drummer Paul Motian is well-known for his “melodic" percussion, in which he skits and dodges arrhythmically, letting the guitars and saxophones mark the pulse of the composition. But for all the praise breathlessly--and deservedly--heaped upon Motian for this approach, the number of drummers who follow his example somewhere on this side of the free-jazz frontier, is relatively small. Swiss drummer Daniel Humair is one such example. Humair is too little known in the US, despite having worked with reed players ...

769

Live Review

Guelph Jazz Festival, September 8-12, 2010

by Kurt Gottschalk
January 17, 2011

Guelph Jazz FestivalGuelph, CanadaSeptember 8-12, 2010 Some music festivals are holidays and some are expeditions. The annual Guelph Jazz Festival & Colloquium in Ontario has a way of being more safari than respite. The days are long, with lectures and panel discussions on some days beginning at 9:00am and concerts on others as early as 10:30, and then running on into the early hours of the morning. The rewards, too, are plentiful--more so, in fact, than ...

332

Album Review

Plunge: Tin Fish Tango

Read "Tin Fish Tango" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 17, 2011

Plunge is a drummer-less trio, featuring leader/trombonist Mark McGrain teamed with bassist James Singleton. The “no drums" approach allows flexibility in the music's time element, and a fluidity of the flow of notes, while horns and bass make room for space as a major component of the sound.The slippery tango of the title track to Plunge's third CD, Tin Fish Tango, opens the disc, featuring brief, concise soloing, entwined with jaunty bass lines. McGrain and saxophonist Tim Green ...

483

Album Review

Petter Wettre: The Only Way To Travel 2

Read "The Only Way To Travel 2" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
January 17, 2011

Saxophonist Petter Wettre cannot help but draw many references to the great Sonny Rollins. It's his sound--a big, warm voice with muscular articulation. On the download-only The Only Way To Travel 2, he teams up with drummer Audun Kleive, to reprise Volume One (2000), made ten years ago.With t"Medley," it's only Wettre's horn that's heard; a transport back to 1959 and the sounds of someone practicing on New York City's Williamsburg bridge. If there were such a thing ...

361

Album Review

Dan Block: From His World To Mine: Dan Block Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington

Read "From His World To Mine: Dan Block Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington" reviewed by Woodrow Wilkins

by Woodrow Wilkins
January 17, 2011

Stevie Wonder referred to him as “the king of all"--him, being Duke Ellington, a master bandleader from the golden era of big band jazz. Dan Block pays tribute to Sir Duke with From His World to Mine. Block is a saxophonist, clarinetist and composer who has associated with such artists as Clark Terry, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Feinstein and Rosemary Clooney. He has appeared numerous times on television's A Prairie Home Companion and has been heard on commercials and ...

173

Album Review

Jane Ira Bloom: Wingwalker

Read "Wingwalker" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 16, 2011

The soprano saxophone often gets a raw deal. Many people see it as a relic from the early ages of jazz, a smooth jazz delivery method or a secondary axe that's only to be used when their alto saxophone, tenor saxophone or clarinet needs a break. While these attitudes are prevalent throughout a large portion of the jazz community, a few artists have bravely soldiered on, making the soprano their instrument of choice. Jane Ira Bloom--along with a few other ...

317

Multiple Reviews

All Together Now: Improv’s World Wide Web

by John Eyles
January 16, 2011

Since the turn of the millennium, improvised music has increasingly become a global phenomenon. Rather than improvising players forming inter-continental links as they have since the 1970s, they now make links across the globe, a process made easier by the advent of the world-wide web and social networking sites. If you were to draw onto a map of the world the links that connect current improv players, the end result would soon start to resemble the world-wide web itself. For ...

346

Album Review

Ballake Sissoko / Vincent Segal: Chamber Music

Read "Chamber Music" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
January 16, 2011

Until quite recently, the kora was a curiosity which generally required the bracketed explanation (a 16 or 21 string West African harp) when referred to in print. Today, with “world music" part of the cultural mainstream, the instrument is almost commonplace. More so, in jazz anyway, than the cello (a four string viol pitched above a double bass), which--despite a lengthy pedigree going back to Fred Katz's work in drummer Chico Hamilton's chamber group of the 1950s--remains on further shores. ...

626

Book Review

From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1 to 3

by Florence Wetzel
January 16, 2011

From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1 to 3Nathaniel MackeyPaperback; 560 pagesISBN 9780811218443New Directions2010 Nathaniel Mackey's magnum opus From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1 to 3 is a literary adventure of the highest order, a feat of prose and imagination that takes the fiction genre into new territory. It's also a classic jazz novel, due to the narrative, ...

220

Album Review

Jake Fryer / Bud Shank: In Good Company

Read "In Good Company" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 16, 2011

Young British composer/alto saxophonist Jake Fryer joins forces with veteran bopper Bud Shank and his favorite West Coast rhythm section, to form the Jake Fryer / Bud Shank Quintet for In Good Company. It's a lively and engaging album, a mix of standards and Fryer originals that brings the two alto saxophonists together for a recording date full of spontaneity, mutual respect and enjoyment. Sadly, it also proved to be the 82 year-old Shank's valedictory recording, as he was not ...