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.

774

Extended Analysis

Very Much Alive

by John Kelman
September 30, 2010

[NOTE]: This review is being republished as a celebration of just one aspect of the life of drummer Paolo Vinaccia, who passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer on July 5, 2019. Best-known in Norway, where he emigrated from Italy in 1979, enjoying a busy career with artists including Arild Andersen, Terje Rypdal, Mike Mainieri, Bendik Hofseth, Bugge Wesseltoft and Palle Mikkelborg, amongst many others. Vinaccia's big heart and warm concern for others made him everybody's best friend, and ...

359

Live Review

Vandermark 5 and Atomic: Double Bill at the Vortex in London

by John Sharpe
September 29, 2010

Vandermark 5 and AtomicThe VortexLondonSeptember 16, 2010It was difficult to avoid a frisson of pleasurable anticipation at the sight of the handwritten sign proclaiming “Totally sold out" taped onto the door of north London's Vortex Jazz Club. A feeling compounded by the presence of the BBC's mobile recording unit parked outside. This was going to be a good night. And why shouldn't it be with a double header by the Vandermark 5 and Atomic, two ...

342

Album Review

Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium Novum

Read "Officium Novum" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
September 29, 2010

With the unexpected massive success of Officium (ECM, 1994), Jan Garbarek's first collaboration with The Hilliard Ensemble, it would be all too easy for the Norwegian saxophonist and British vocal ensemble to rest on their not inconsiderable laurels, and simply repeat the formula. But while Officium featured a repertoire of structured early music--from Gregorian chant to early polyphony, over which Garbarek soared improvisationally--the double-disc follow-up, Menemosyne (ECM, 1999), expanded the quintet's purview by introducing music of a more contemporary nature, ...

173

African Jazz

The Majestic “Return” of King Sunny Ade & His African Beats

by Chris May
September 29, 2010

King Sunny AdeBaba Mo TundeIndigeDisc2010 A leading exponent of Nigerian juju music since the late 1970s, and in 2010 still the most sought after live artist for expatriate Nigerians in Europe and north America, vocalist and guitarist King Sunny Ade once rivalled Afrobeat's Fela Kuti and Zairean rumba's Franco with the frequency of his album releases. Between 1975 and 1984, Ade and his band, the African Beats, released over 40 albums domestically, ...

394

Album Review

Asaf Sirkis: Letting Go

Read "Letting Go" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
September 29, 2010

The quiet evolution of drummer Asaf Sirkis as a composer has been fascinating to behold and almost as beguiling as his playing. The confluence of influences that give shape to his rhythms--Middle Eastern, Indian and jazz--combined with a love of Sun Ra's music and an interest in astronomy, results in music which is difficult to pin down, yet which is undeniably hypnotic, in a slightly dark and brooding manner. Where Letting Go differs fromThe Monk (SAM, 2008) is in the ...

223

Album Review

Mary Halvorson Quintet: Saturn Sings

Read "Saturn Sings" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
September 29, 2010

One of the things that make Mary Halvorson's music so distinctive is the sense of flux which ensures that every release under the guitarist's own name seems like a report back from musical territories as yet uncharted. Making Saturn Sings something of a milestone, as the addition of horns might have had a detrimental effect on the music of her trio, which has already reached a state of almost telepathic understanding. But there's no reason to fear, ...

203

Album Review

The Glenious Inner Planet: The Glenious Inner Planet

Read "The Glenious Inner Planet" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 29, 2010

This is not yourt parent's Dave Brubeck. For that matter, if you put Brubeck in the Telepod from the 1958 film The Fly, with the spirit of Shawn Lane, and teleported them into the future, that might come closest to describing this “Blue Rondo a la Raad." Brubeck is replaced by Chris Cortez's precisely reverberated electric guitar. Paul Desmond morphs into Woody Witt, and the festivities are started by bandleader Glen Ackerman, who is the product of a gamma-ray irradiated ...

322

Album Review

Suresh Singaratnam / Gretchen Parlato / Jamie Reynolds: That Is You

Read "That Is You" reviewed by Mark F. Turner

by Mark F. Turner
September 29, 2010

The art of the ballad seems almost forgotten in today's environment of programmed beats, Auto-Tune and sampled music. But in the hands of three gifted young artists--trumpeter Suresh Singaratnam, singer Gretchen Parlato, and pianist Jamie Reynolds--the magic of intimate songwriting and beautiful music can still capture the heart as heard in the lovely “That Is You." Its warm ambiance is perfected: first by the trumpet's glowing introduction; then by Parlato's supple and poignant voice, softly pouring out heartfelt lyrics of ...

362

Album Review

Mary Halvorson: Saturn Sings

Read "Saturn Sings" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 28, 2010

The arrival of a new star in the jazz guitar cosmos, and the chance it offers to wrest a little more of the instrument back from the smooth and fusion apes, is always something to celebrate. The emergence of Brooklyn-based Mary Halvorson, who debuted as a bandleader in 2008 with Dragon's Head (Firehouse 12 Records), has been accompanied by even more bunting than usual. “The most impressive guitarist of her generation" was an early verdict in All About Jazz. “Probably ...

431

Live Review

Kenny Barron and Mulgrew Miller at Jazz at the Bistro, St Louis, September 23, 2010

by James Henry Smith
September 28, 2010

Kenny Barron/Mulgrew MillerJazz at the Bistro/Season OpenerSt Louis MOSeptember 23, 2010 St Louis' prime jazz venue opened its current season with Kenny Barron and Mulgrew Miller, two legendary pianists whose inaugural appearance kicked off the first Jazz at the Bistro season fifteen years ago. “Love For Sale" set the pace for the hard swingin' bluesy exchange which was to be the hallmark of the show. The styles of these giants have so much in ...