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.

385

Live Review

Kurt Rosenwinkel, Charles Lloyd and Chucho Valdes at the Barcelona Jazz Festival

by Joao Moreira dos Santos
November 29, 2010

Translated from Portuguese. Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio42 Barcelona Voll-Damm Internacional Jazz FestivalLuz de GasNovember 14, 2010 Every year, from October to December, the city of Barcelona, in the north of Spain, becomes a true European jazz center. Musicians and journalists from all over the world converge to the Barcelona International Jazz Festival (founded in 1966), where several fine performances proudly support this cultural event, sponsored mainly by a Catalan beer ...

359

Album Review

Argenti & Rosa: Boston Gig

Read "Boston Gig" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
November 29, 2010

When Hank Mobley's “Funk in the Deep Freeze" and Eddie Harris' “Freedom Jazz Dance" are brought close together on a recording, hard bop critical mass occurs, giving rise to music like guitarist Enrico Rosa's “Stress Me" that opens the Argenti/Rosa recording, Boston Gig. But this is a controlled detonation. So breezy and strolling are the performances that the artistic exigence may be likened to a train decelerating to a more relaxed velocity. That is not to say ...

282

Album Review

Rudresh Mahanthappa / Steve Lehman: Dual Identity

Read "Dual Identity" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 29, 2010

Alto saxophonists Steve Lehman and Rudresh Mahanthappa are prime forces and motivators for the new jazz; artists who can boast impressive resumes as leaders, and first-call session champions that assist with surging the modern jazz element into diagonally opposed schemas. Dual Identities is a fascinating glimpse of what happens when two saxophonists merge their respective styles into dense compositional soundscapes.With countering maneuvers, off-centered metrics and scintillating aerial assaults, the quartet primes for the kill on “The General." Here, ...

150

Album Review

Lol Coxhill and Roger Turner: Success with your Dog

Read "Success with your Dog" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
November 28, 2010

Saxophonist Lol Coxhill and drummer Roger Turner go back a long way. They first played together in the early '70s and ever since they have come together regularly in a variety of settings, including The Recedents, their trio with guitarist Mike Cooper. Recently, they have most often played as a duo, and remarkably, Success with your Dog is their first release as a duo; for that reason, it is a welcome arrival. Three of its tracks date from a 2003 ...

605

From the Inside Out

40 Year Old Bitches, New MilesTones & Others, Too

by Chris M. Slawecki
November 28, 2010

AntibalasWho is This America? Ropeadope Records2010 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 ...

161

Album Review

Ibrahim Maalouf: Diasporas

by Chris May
November 28, 2010

Paris-based trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf's moody mix of jazz, groove and Lebanese traditional music comes across rather like a cut-up novel by William Burroughs or a collection of short stories by Paul Bowles, or at least a shot in that direction. Partly it's the source material, in which Maalouf's east Mediterranean musical heritage replaces those authors' fascination with Morocco; partly it's the structure of the album, in which a series of relatively brief, cross-referential tracks, most lasting between two and less ...

242

Album Review

Radar Favourites: Radar Favourites

Read "Radar Favourites" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
November 28, 2010

Full credit is due to Mike King and Reel Recordings for this exercise in historical reclamation. For a brief period back in the mid-1970s, Radar Favourites was a band with a pedigree. For one thing, it was saxophonist Geoff Leigh's first venture after his departure from Henry Cow, while guitarist G.F. Fitz-Gerald was responsible for the album Mouseproof (Sunbeam Records, 1970), a highly singular title from an era not lacking in singularities. Drummer Charles Hayward, a man who once played ...

374

Album Review

Times 4: Eclipse

Read "Eclipse" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 28, 2010

San Francisco Bay Area quartet Times 4 finely tunes its compositional prowess on Eclipse. Sparked by snappy pulses, and memorable hooks, the unit attains an attractive balance between radio-friendly jazz and several instances of serious-minded improvisation. At times strutting its stuff, the quartet imparts a stylistic up-tempo rendition of sax great John Coltrane's timeless classic, “Naima."Times 4 transforms “Naima" into a peppery groove-centric piece that is not overly-technical or way out of line. Here, saxophonist Lincoln Adler's notes ...

479

Website News

Help Us Keep All About Jazz Going Strong!

by Michael Ricci
November 28, 2010

Think about it. How many times have you visited the All About Jazz website over the past year? How many times has AAJ turned you on to a recording or a new or overlooked artist? How many times have you read an AAJ review, clicked on AAJ for quick background on an artist, or exchanged thoughts with fellow jazz fans and musicians through the AAJ online community? Now is the time to show your support.

742

Extended Analysis

Italian improvisers break out of Musica Improvvisa box

by Mark Corroto
November 27, 2010

VariousMusica Improvvisadie Schachtel2010 Sometimes a box set of music becomes a fetish item. One that listeners (or collectors) form an irrational or excessive commitment to because it embodies some sort of magical or spiritual powers. Such may be the case for the 10-CD/DVD set Musica Improvvisa, a collection of improvised music from Italy.The names of the artists heard here will undoubtedly be new to most, as ...