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.

313

Album Review

Carl Palmer: Working Live - Volume 3

Read "Working Live - Volume 3" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 24, 2010

Volume 3 represents the third chapter of celebrated drummer Carl Palmer's reinventions of past group works, including Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP). His technical gifts are legendary, and with this live recording, the drummer instills a distant relative viewpoint of routes previously traversed. On the ELP favorite “Bitches Crystal," guitarist Paul Bielatowicz re-fabricates an English folk theme into a power-packed rock regimen. He elevates the primary melody into a brooding, guitar heavy rendition, supported by Stuart Clayton's steely ...

626

Extended Analysis

Various Artists: CTI Records - The Cool Revolution

by John Kelman
December 23, 2010

Various ArtistsCTI Records--The Cool RevolutionCTI Masterworks2010 The late 1960s was, in many ways, a time of reckoning for jazz. While the music had continued to evolve over the previous half century, it was coincident with the emergence of rock music as a serious force that jazz began to evolve in bigger leaps and bounds, and polarize to greater extremes--from the far left-of-center free jazz to the accessible sound of soul jazz--and, increasingly, ...

140

Album Review

Eastern Boundry Quartet: Icicles

Read "Icicles" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
December 23, 2010

Bassist/composer Joe Fonda continues to enjoy a most eclectic career. Whether in collaboration with saxophonist Anthony Braxton, or leading an international group comprised of musicians from Europe and China, Fonda is never far from the bleeding edge of creative improvisation. In its second outing, the Eastern Boundary Quartet continues to connect musical worlds and styles. Frequent colleague Michael Jefry Stevens (piano), and two exceedingly skilled Hungarians, Balazs Bagyi (drums) and Mihaly Borbely (saxophones), are onboard with Fonda, with Borbely's tarogato ...

354

Year in Review

Mark F. Turner's Best Releases of 2010

by Mark F. Turner
December 23, 2010

With the sheer amount of artists heard and undiscovered, it's impossible to narrow down the list to a just a few releases. But one thing that holds true, whether it's technical ability, progressiveness, or music that touches the spirit; it's all about the re-spinability that these recordings garnered on my music players throughout 2010.Jazz New Releases Myra Melford's Be Bread The Whole Tree Gone (Artistshare) Apex Rudresh Mahanthappa / Bunky Green (Pi ...

143

Album Review

HNH: HNH

by Glenn Astarita
December 23, 2010

Three well-versed progressive jazz musicians from Germany, now calling New York City home, inject a starkness that uncannily transmutes into an upbeat program on HNH, the debut recording, led by drummer Joe Hertenstein. The differentiator here pertains to Thomas Heberer's use of the quarter-tone trumpet; by working with a horn that cuts a pitch halfway between notes in the chromatic scale, he executes an edgy and gruff overlay, linked with jazz-centric improvisation. Moreover, Hertenstein and bassist Pascal Niggenkemper paint a ...

211

Album Review

Paolo Sorge Electric Guitar Quartet: Tetraktys

Read "Tetraktys" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 23, 2010

A few years ago, there seemed to be a new saxophone quartet springing up every five minutes. The configurations typically featured differing sounds from the saxophone family, from the tiny sopranino to the huge baritone. So why not showcase the various sounds of the electric guitar in a quartet?Led by Paolo Sorge, this foursome does just that. Together with Giancarlo Mazzù, Fabrizio Licciardello and Enrico Cassia, Sorge's quartet winds its way though a jazz program. with some classical ...

642

Record Label Profile

Storyville Records: A Treasure Trove of Swinging Jazz

by Chris May
December 22, 2010

Since its foundation during the European revivalist movement of the early 1950s, Copenhagen-based Storyville Records has grown into a major repository of New Orleans, big band and mainstream recordings. With something approaching 600 releases in its back catalogue, the label is a treasure trove of jazz that swings. Founded in 1952 by Danish jazz fan Karl Emil Knudsen, Storyville's original mission was simply to reissue US recordings for Scandinavian revivalist fans, though within a year it was also ...

320

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

Read "The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer" reviewed by Clifford Allen

by Clifford Allen
December 22, 2010

Since the Ornette Coleman Quartet's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), the trumpet's historical bar in creative music has been set in great part by Don Cherry. Not that Cherry's way was the only way and, in fact, the work of Bill Dixon, Donald Ayler, Lester Bowie, and a few others certainly paved significant directions for the instrument's place and growth in the ensuing decades. But Cherry, even as his language was a condensed, rambunctious and decidedly expansive ...

264

Year in Review

Mark Corroto’s Best Releases 2010

by Mark Corroto
December 22, 2010

Who says jazz is dying? This was one of the best years for music, at least to these ears. Here's a list of my favorite discs of 2010. Jazz New Releases Nels Cline/OJM Initiate (Cryptogramophone) Magnus BrooSwedish Wood (Moserobie) Allison MillerBoom Tic Boom (Foxhaven Records) Jason MoranTen (Blue Note) Jason Adasiewicz Sun Rooms(Delmark) ...

293

Album Review

Jerome Sabbagh / Ben Monder / Daniel Humair: I Will Follow You

Read "I Will Follow You" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 22, 2010

How do you cook up innovative and inspiring jazz these days? Take a standard quintet and peel away the bassist (time keeper), then eliminate the pianist or chordal steward, and you are left with maybe the purest form of improvisation and interaction: the jazz trio. Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh's trinity, heard on I Will Follow You, includes guitarist Ben Monder and drummer Daniel Humair.Sabbagh is a French-born tenor/soprano saxophonist who now lives in Brooklyn. His previous discs--the standards sax/bass/drums ...