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.

273

Album Review

Lucian Ban / John Hebert: Enesco Re-Imagined

Read "Enesco Re-Imagined" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
December 7, 2010

The life and music of the prodigiously talented Romanian violinist, composer and conductor, George Enesco has been well-preserved and generously honored--not simply by the cognoscenti, but by the appreciative audiences of Romania's George Enesco Festival, that was set up to propagate the music of the composer beyond its preservation in the museum that bears his name in Bucharest. This ingenious album of some of his best-loved work, by another extremely talented Romanian-born pianist and composer, Lucian Ban, is hardly surprising, ...

865

Interview

Loren Schoenberg: From Benny Goodman to The Savory Collection

by AAJ Staff
December 7, 2010

Saxophonist, band-leader and writer Loren Schoenberg, now Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, spent an interesting childhood and teenager-hood growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s, meeting and befriending both Teddy Wilson and Hank Jones, and ultimately becoming employed by Wilson's famous '30s boss, Benny Goodman. Schoenberg was first an assistant to Goodman and then Goodman's manager, and, as a tenor saxophonist, formed the big band that Goodman was eventually to lead himself for a year ...

404

From Far and Wide

Online Jazz Bookshop Thrives in Ontario Hills

by Fradley Garner
December 7, 2010

Would you pay $8,750 for a used but pampered hardcover copy of the classic Lady Sings the Blues, autographed by Billie Holiday? If you were a jazz bibliophile with deep pockets, and the book was a declared first edition, “boldly and handsomely SIGNED and inscribed at the first blank page"-- and, according to the bookseller's catalogue, with a “strong very good+" dust jacket “unclipped with original price of $3.95" showing--well, you might consider giving yourself, or that ...

218

Album Review

Dmitry Baevsky: Down With It

Read "Down With It" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
December 7, 2010

As jazz moves in many different directions and breaks free from the all too familiar and readily categorized sounds of its first century, how does an artist make bebop sound like something other than an exercise in nostalgia or an academic pursuit? In the hands of the thirty-four year-old alto saxophonist Dmitry Baevsky, bop is still a vein worth mining. Down With It, Baevsky's third date as a leader, contains an inspired selection of material, smart execution, and some marvelously ...

161

Live Review

John Berndt: Boston, USA, December 1, 2010

by Gordon Marshall
December 7, 2010

John Berndt, Joshua Jefferson, Forbes Graham and Flandrew FleisenbergFleisenberg Floft, Fort Point ChannelBoston, MADecember 1, 2010 Alto saxophonist John Berndt of Baltimore, Maryland is a master geometer, and he applies this sensibility to sound. There is a solipsistic quality to his efforts--at work even when he is playing with others--which makes for astounding solo forays and more or less interesting collective endeavors, depending on whom he is playing with. At Fleisenberg Floft in South ...

122

Album Review

Lauren Hooker: Life Of The Music

Read "Life Of The Music" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
December 7, 2010

Singer and pianist Lauren Hooker takes chances on Life Of The Music, her second album. She sets her own compositions up against classics of American music, re-works old favourites and uses some vocal shifts and inflections that other singers might think twice about. And thank goodness she does, because in doing so Hooker has assembled a refreshingly original set that both challenges and brings out the best in the singer and the top-flight band that accompanies her. ...

139

Take Five With...

Take Five With Ark Ovrutski

by AAJ Staff
December 7, 2010

Meet Ark Ovrutski:Ark started building his career in Kiev,Ukraine. By the time he graduated Kiev music college and moved to Moscow where he graduated Russian Academy of music in 1992. In the mid-1990s, Ark left Moscow and relocated to Poland, where he became highly-regarded through performances in multiple groups. From then, Ark's performance and recording credits include Zbiegniew Namyslowski, Piotr Baron,Piotr Wojtasik, Joachim Mencel, Adam Pieronczyk, Kazimerz Jonkisz In 2002, Ark independently released New Age, his debut recording ...

155

Album Review

Christian Weidner: The Inward Song

Read "The Inward Song" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 7, 2010

On The Inward Song, German alto saxophonist Christian Weidner has crafted music that defies categorization more than most--a slippery sound in terms of tagging it with descriptive phrases. Weidner employs a quartet this time out, following up the trio effort of his first Pirouet Records release, 2004's Choral. This new foursome is a remarkably cohesive ensemble, as much a homeostatic sound-making organism as it is a forward thinking jazz band.“St. Paul" opens the disc. Weidner's alto saxophone sound ...

178

Album Review

Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra: Who is This America?

Read "Who is This America?" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 7, 2010

Few American bands have been more influential in the global Afrobeat movement than the Brooklyn collective Antibalas. Keeper of the African protest flame ignited by Nigerian musician/activist Fela Kuti in the 1970s, Antibalas' reach is expansive and impressive: it contributed to the Tony- nominated musical Fela!, their horn section won a Grammy for their charts on Angelique Kidjo's Djin Djin (2007, EMI), other members worked with the Dap-Kings as the rhythm engine behind Amy Winehouse's breakout Back to Black (2006, ...

205

Album Review

Adia Ledbetter: Take 2: Rendezvous With Yesterdays

Read "Take 2: Rendezvous With Yesterdays" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 6, 2010

Take 2: Rendezvous With Yesterdays is a journey through songs of yesteryear with some interesting personal detours thrown into the itinerary from vocalist Adia Ledbetter. Eight years after her first album, Ledbetter returns and uses her sophomore effort as a descriptive odyssey of where she came from, where she is and where she is going. As the album gets underway, with a medley of Ledbetter's “Closer" and “You And The Night And The Music," she seems to ...