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.

332

Take Five With...

Take Five With Jon Wirtz

by AAJ Staff
October 14, 2010

Meet Jon Wirtz: Arriving on the Denver scene just a few years ago, Jon Wirtz has since performed for millions of people, both locally and nationally. Over the past eight years he has performed mainly as a sideman, having worked with Grammy Award-winning producer Malcolm Burn on multiple occasions, and shared the stage with artists including Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Robbie Krieger (The Doors), Melissa Etheridge, Matt Morris, Charlie Sexton and even Justin Timberlake. In addition to performing ...

110

Album Review

Mississippi Heat: Let's Live It Up!

Read "Let's Live It Up!" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
October 14, 2010

In times like these, the blues form is well-placed to reflect them, and with its sometimes fine balance of the urban and the down-home, Mississippi Heat is a band more than capable of doing it. Pierre Lacocque, a mouth harp virtuoso without any of the negative connotations such virtuosity might imply, has been leading the band for awhile now, and Let's Live It Up! shows he's doing it as effectively as ever, just as he's coming up ...

231

Album Review

Various Artists: I Never Meta Guitar

Read "I Never Meta Guitar" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 14, 2010

There are no fans of the guitar in today's creative music--they are better described as fanatics, or devotees. But then the guitar has always caused listeners to choose sides. I'm a fan of Jimmy Page and you, Pete Townshend--or do you prefer Wes Montgomery to my Jim Hall. John McLaughlin or Pete Cosey? Some of these debates have, thankfully, carried on for years.With a new century comes new names, and allegiances are redrawn as new techniques are introduced ...

914

Record Label Profile

Retrieval Records: Treasures Lost and Found

by Nathan Holaway
October 13, 2010

“The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago."-- Louis Armstrong “You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones."-- Cab CallowayThose two quotes ...

163

Album Review

Peter Schwebs: Stories From Sugar Hill

Read "Stories From Sugar Hill" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 13, 2010

Bassist Peter Schwebs may have only completed his graduate studies in 2008, but he is already an experienced sideman with some major jazz figures, including Dave Liebman, and Chris Potter. On the evidence of Stories From Sugar Hill, his first album as leader, he is more than ready to take center stage. Schwebs composed all of the tunes, inspired by his three-year stay in the Sugar Hill area of Manhattan, their positive and optimistic nature reflecting his obvious love of ...

194

Album Review

Cynthia Felton: Come Sunday: The Music Of Duke Ellington

Read "Come Sunday: The Music Of Duke Ellington" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 13, 2010

Vocalist Cynthia Felton turned a lot of heads with her debut, Afro Blue: The Music Of Oscar Brown Jr. (Self Produced, 2009), and her sophomore effort is bound to gain even more attention. While Brown is an important, if often overlooked figure, Felton ups the ante with her honoree of choice here. Duke Ellington is considered by many to be the alpha and omega of jazz. Artists have been paying tribute to Ellington for generations with single ...

163

From Far and Wide

October 2010

by Fradley Garner
October 13, 2010

Tenants of Tin Pan Alley are showing ever more pride in their habitat. Apartment residents and ground floor shops occupy the row of five historic brownstones on West 28th Street, Manhattan, where America's enormous sheet music industry took root in the 1850s. Here the careers of galleon figures Irving Berlin, W.C. Handy, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, and James P. Johnson were launched. An attorney who wants to do more than keep the wrecker's ball off the buildings, has helped ...

185

Album Review

Chet Doxas: Big Sky

by John Kelman
October 13, 2010

As much as a recent Ottawa, Canada performance was an intimate opportunity for local fans to see John Abercrombie, it was equally noteworthy for the two brothers who brought the veteran guitarist and bassist John Menegon, both from Upstate New York, for a short tour of Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal. Saxophonist Chet Doxas and drummer Jim Doxas are no strangers to Ottawa--especially Jim, a regular at local bassist John Geggie's annual Geggie Concert Series. Chet--who has recorded and/or toured ...

Album Review

Conference Call: What About...?

Read "What About...?" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 13, 2010

One of the finest improvising units working today, Conference Call is a complete band, capable of touching all the jazz bases, be they individual or group improvisation, or the performance of composed music. The quintet's sixth release, What About...? is a two-disc session from the band's 10th anniversary tour, and was recorded live at Alchemia in Krakow, Poland. Conference Call's lineup has remained stable for the past three releases--since drummer George Schuller took a drum chair once held ...

355

Dan's Den

Sonny Brings the Presents to His Own 80th Birthday

by Dan Morgenstern
October 13, 2010

Sonny Rollins threw himself an 80th birthday party at New York's restored Beacon Theater on September 10---he was born on the 7th---and it was he who brought the gifts. And what a cornucopia! This was one of those rare times when you know that you're in the best of all possible places in the world. In inspired form, from first note to last, he never left the stage and, as is his wont, took no intermission. The silver--maned and bearded ...