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.

274

Album Review

Elton John / Leon Russell: The Union

Read "The Union" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 26, 2010

Elton John and Leon Russell are not so unlikely musical colleagues. Russell is slightly the elder, at 68 to John's 63, and within the age difference of two brothers. Both emerged in the early '70s, that fertile period nurtured by Woodstock the year before, and the rise of album-oriented-rock FM radio after. Both are pianists and composers of repute, with similar percussive styles and deep furrows of dirt, church, and Delta. John reveals this to be no accident as he ...

295

Album Review

Jason Robinson: The Two Faces of Janus

Read "The Two Faces of Janus" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
October 25, 2010

Currently serving as Assistant Professor of Music at Amherst College in Massachusetts, multi-reedist Jason Robinson originally obtained his Ph.D. in music from the University of California. A promising new arrival to the East Coast scene, Robinson's academic background imbues his episodic writing with an organically cohesive sensibility, while his years spent co-leading the longstanding bicoastal ensembles Cosmologic and the Cross Border Trio lend his focused improvisations a warm, economical lyricism.The Two Faces of Janus, Robinson's Cuneiform Records debut ...

762

Interview

Jason Robinson: The New Western

by Gordon Marshall
October 25, 2010

Saxophonist Jason Robinson is alert and ready to work his place in the scheme of things, from jazz itself to music at large, to the existential particulars of philosophy. A supple technician with a penchant for abstract thought, he splices together different strains of theory and logic with combinatory takes on period, school and style. A deeply ingrained reverence and sense for jazz history comes out in his carefully calibrated, often composed body of multivalent, multicolored music. Equally informed by ...

575

Extended Analysis

Miles Davis: Previously Unreleased 1980s Recordings

by Chris May
October 25, 2010

Miles DavisPerfect Way: The Miles Davis Anthology: The Warner Bros. YearsWarner Jazz2010 The composer John Cage related a funny story about an encounter with trumpeter Miles Davis. It happened at a US airport sometime in the mid 1980s. Cage was travelling with the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the two were waiting in the same holding pen as Davis and his party. Someone pointed Cage and Cunningham out to Davis--then around 60 but ...

198

Album Review

Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble: Celebrations

Read "Celebrations" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 25, 2010

Celebrations, the Heritage Ensemble's second album following Making The Music Our Own (MEII Enterprises, 2006), is subtitled Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble Interprets Festive Melodies From The Hebraic Songbook. The review copy arrived with a polite but serious covering letter rather than the usual hyperbolic press release. The album's closing track is a lecture by bandleader and keyboardist Marlow on “The Heritage Ensemble: its history, repertoire and philosophy." Not a typical jazz recording, then. A preservation project for musicologists, not fans? ...

438

Book Review

DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews - A 75th Anniversary Anthology

by Florence Wetzel
October 25, 2010

DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary AnthologyFrank Alkyer and Ed Enright, EditorsSoftcover; 352 pagesISBN: 9781423463849Hal Leonard2009 In a 1988 interview, trombonist J.J. Johnson declared: “Jazz is restless. It won't stay put and it never will." There's no better proof than this remarkable anthology from DownBeat magazine, which contains 124 interviews or artist-written articles covering seven decades of jazz history. The interviews are full of ...

406

Album Review

Bireli Lagrene Trio: Gypsy Trio

Read "Gypsy Trio" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
October 25, 2010

While his playing reflects diverse influences, guitarist Biréli Lagrène clearly comes out of the gypsy tradition of Django Reinhardt, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated in 2010. Gypsy Trio captures the feeling of Reinhardt's musical era, with some tunes, rhythms, and the atmosphere of a lively Paris nightclub between the two world wars--energetic and fun, but equally contemplative on lovely ballads, including Lagrène's “Sir F.D," and The Beatles' “Something." Lagrène plays with strong feeling, sometimes reminiscent of Charlie Byrd's acoustic ...

546

Take Five With...

Take Five With Andy Farber

by AAJ Staff
October 25, 2010

Meet Andy Farber:Andy Farber is an award-winning jazz composer, arranger and saxophonist and has spent years performing with the likes of Jon Hendricks and Wynton Marsalis. Since 1994, Farber has been part of the Jazz @ Lincoln Center stable of writers and performers. Through J@LC, Farber has toured with the J@LC Orchestra, written originals compositions and arrangements and been a guest artistic director. Farber has written arrangements for people like Wynton Marsalis, Jon Hendricks, Shirley ...

244

Album Review

Nelson Riveros: Camino Al Barrio

Read "Camino Al Barrio" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
October 25, 2010

Sometimes referred to as “the jazz capital of the world," New York has always served as the inspiration for the works of many actors, writers and musicians as it does once again for the Nelson Riveros debut Camino Al Barrio. Born in the Big Apple of Colombian parents, guitarist and composer Riveros drew inspiration for the album from his experience while living in the different boroughs of New York.The album's sizzling opener “Caipirinha," inhabits obvious authentic Brazilian grooves, ...

116

Album Review

George Brooks Summit: Spirit and Spice

Read "Spirit and Spice" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
October 25, 2010

The road taken by saxophonist, George Brooks on Spirit and Spice may not be new, and is far from the glamorous one that guitarist John McLaughlin blazed through in the 1970s and '80s, with various incarnations of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. However, it remains a significant one if a musician playing in a Western idiom is willing to focus his or her creativity on pushing the boundaries beyond where they had been pushed before. It would have been a steep climb ...