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.

276

Album Review

Nels Cline: Dirty Baby

Read "Dirty Baby" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
November 21, 2010

Those not hearing Nels Cline's music lately just aren't listening. Besides gracing rock band Wilco's albums and live shows, he seems to be the hottest jazz/improv guitarist of late. Right on the heels of his two-disc Initiate (Cryptogramophone, 2010)--maybe the jazz record of the year--he drops another double set, Dirty Baby, which is part of an art book, published by Delmonico Books Prestel, that re-contextualizes 66 works by artist Ed Ruscha with music and spoken word. These two CDs have ...

447

Album Review

Zoran Madzirov: Roots on a Roof

Read "Roots on a Roof" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
November 21, 2010

Zoran Madzirov is truly one of the mavericks of Macedonian music--a superb and innovative musician, who has distilled a variety of influences from various styles and sounds into something that is uniquely his own. The fire, sensitivity and imagination that drive him seem to make him some sort of a Jimi Hendrix on the bottlephone. The music on Roots on a Roof easily falls into the category of memorable music, with a unique atmosphere and wonderful chemistry that makes it ...

103

Album Review

Colin Dean: Shiwasu

Read "Shiwasu" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
November 21, 2010

Young New York bassist Colin Dean is adept at playing the music of different genres as his jazz debut Shiwasu demonstrates, with its influences from world music and hip-hop styles. Dean is very comfortable in other genres; in fact after graduating from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, he formed the Roots and Groove band, performing jazz for the hip-hop generation. There is no mistaking this recording however--it's not hip-hop, it is jazz, and good modern jazz at ...

380

Live Review

Earshot Jazz Festival 2010, Part 2

by Nathan Bluford
November 20, 2010

Earshot FestivalSeattle, WAOctober 31-November 7, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 Mavis StaplesTown Hall/Earshot Jazz FestivalSeattle, WASunday, October 31, 2010 Did anyone bring a louder, more powerful voice to this year's festival than Mavis Staples? As soon as Staples strolled out on to the stage at Town Hall on Halloween, she lifted everyone in the room with her blazing voice: ...

307

Album Review

Leslie Pintchik: We're Here To Listen

Read "We're Here To Listen" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
November 20, 2010

We're Here To Listen is composer and pianist Leslie Pintchik's third album. Grammatical pedants might feel that You're Here To Listen would be a more apposite title. However, Pintchik, who was once an English Literature teaching assistant at Columbia University, chose the title to emphasize the importance of musicians listening to each other as they perform, and the performances on We're Here To Listen lend an honesty to the title. This is an exquisite quartet with an understanding of each ...

694

Film Review

The Rolling Stones: Ladies & Gentlemen The Rolling Stones

by Doug Collette
November 20, 2010

The Rollling StonesLadies & Gentlemen The Rolling StonesEagle Vision2010 In surmounting the difficulties arising from recording the album Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones, 1972) and the hasty prep work necessary for its release, the Rolling Stones must have known it had something unique to decide to make a movie from the tour to support it. After all, it didn't go to such lengths when it returned ...

109

Album Review

Dan Berg & The Gestalt: Manifesto

Read "Manifesto" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
November 20, 2010

The idea of creation through inclusion seems to be lost on a lot of musicians today. Jazz--like every other area of music--has become highly compartmentalized. A need to place oneself as a direct descendant of a particular artist or style often limits horizon-expanding opportunities and results in stunted creativity. Pianist/composer Dan Berg and his band, The Gestalt, seems to see things differently, with open arms and an open mind. Berg's debut album, or Manifesto, if you will, is a bold ...

159

Jazz Poetry

Trumpet

by Gordon Marshall
November 20, 2010

for Forbes GrahamArc shoots to treble tongue tripfingertip tapping valve topstraps the sinuous sound round the quartet's quartal vibe, tribeof truth, sooth of soothingtunes turned back on themselves lost in vertical vertigo. Thenthe trumpet picks them up,passes brass baton unto the soldered sound until nowa bric-a-brac. Attack! The spearappears, piercing the pieces

151

Album Review

Eldbjørg Raknes: Sense

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 20, 2010

Trondheim, Norway-based Eldbjørg Raknes never ceases to explore and expand her art. In this solo album, the 23rd in her discography, the innovative vocal artist explores the dense interplay between vocal utterance in its most basic forms, free-form texts and intuitive improvisation that culminates in an organic and highly personal manner of composition. Raknes is assisted by guitarist and sound sculptor Stian Westerhus , her collaborator in her previous release From Frozen Feet Heat Came. On this ...

147

Album Review

Conference Call: What About...?

Read "What About...?" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
November 20, 2010

It has been said that live music offers the composer the opportunity to add the final ingredient in the decoction of their creation: the audience. In the case of Conference Call's 2007 concert in Krakow, Poland, documented on the double-disc What About...?, there's the dramatic addition of completely spontaneous, improvisations by one or more of the fiercely creative quartet. It's also why the mercury rises fast and furious from the get-go; the musicians taking ownership of their evolving sound, as ...