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.

343

Take Five With...

Take Five with Jay Beckenstein

by AAJ Staff
September 26, 2010

Status: Jazz artist. Founding member of the group Spyro Gyra. DOB: May 14, 1951 In: Brooklyn, N.Y. First Jazz Memory: “I met Cannonball Adderley when I was 12. He did a school performance around where I lived and I was just blown away." Inspirations: “The greats of jazz. My mother [Lorraine] was an opera singer and my father [Leonard] was a huge jazz fan, he just loved jazz. He turned me on ...

611

Live Review

John Abercrombie / John Menegon / Chet and Jim Doxas: Ottawa, Canada, September 18, 2010

by John Kelman
September 25, 2010

John Abercrombie / Chet Doxas / John Menegon / Jim DoxasCafé ParadisoOttawa, CanadaSeptember 18, 2010 Amongst the elite of mid-to-senior-generation jazz guitarists including Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Bill Frisell and Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie stands alone. Every one of these six-stringers has a definitive voice, and considerable improvisational skill; equally, however, each of them possesses a clear signature--key phrases or linear devices that crop up periodically in their music, defining their unique identities. Speaking with ...

618

Live Review

KSDS Jazz 88 Ocean Beach Music and Arts Festival

by Robert Bush
September 25, 2010

Jazz 88 Ocean Beach Music & Art FestivalWinston's, Hodad's Stage, The Harp Ocean Beach, CA September 11, 2010 Perfect day for a party: the sun shone bright in a cloudless sky, it's heat mitigated by a cool ocean breeze. After a one year hiatus due to the terrible economy of 2009, the KSDS Ocean Beach Music and Arts Festival has re-emerged in 2010 with an imperative commitment to a larger, more diverse and ambitious ...

136

Album Review

Alexander McCabe: Quiz

by Dan McClenaghan
September 25, 2010

Alto saxophonist/composer Alexander McCabe returns from a five-year recording hiatus with the swinging, accessible, and sometimes surprisingly adventurous Quiz.The Round (Wamco Music, 2005), McCabe's previous offering, was a superb mainstream set, with a hint of the Irish barroom on the title tune. Quiz once again displays the artist's mainstream frame of mind in a vibrant ensemble featuring pianist Uri Caine, bassist Ugonna Okegwo, and drummers Greg Hutchinson and Rudy Royston. Where The Round had a more traditional jazz ...

160

Album Review

Sarah Wilson: Trapeze Project

Read "Trapeze Project" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 25, 2010

Few contemporary jazz musicians can have paid their dues in the esoteric environment of a puppet theater, but for Sarah Wilson the Bread and Butter Puppet Theater proved to be an invaluable part of her musical education. Trapeze Project, the trumpeter's second album, is such an engaging and evocative recording that maybe more jazz players should spend their apprenticeships with puppets. Wilson's playing is considered and thoughtful. It may lack power at times, but this lends her ...

379

Album Review

Alex Levin Trio: New York Portraits

Read "New York Portraits" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 25, 2010

Artists do not evolve in a vacuum. Collectively, they assimilate all they have learned and heard into a new creative paradigm that they call their own. A durable respect for the past characterizes the trio art of pianist Alex Levin. Listening to his collection New York Portraits, the spirits of pianists long gone are present in that fecund humus existing between the notes of Levin's treatments of original and standard compositions alike. Levin's treatment of Johnny Mercer's ...

279

Album Review

Univers Zero: Clivages

Read "Clivages" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 25, 2010

Belgian-based chamber-rock pioneer Univers Zero's Clivages is a polytonal and multidimensional sojourn that follows suit with dabs and expansions of its comprehensive discography hearkening back to the late 1970s. The band often aligns dark sensibilities with glimmer, gusto and melodic choruses. “Retour de Foire," serves as a classical interlude among the absorbing, intricate and off-kilter chamber-rock works. The core sextet renders meticulously designed and sweet-toned phrasings, abetted by Michel Berckmans' oboe lines, and regulated by drummer Daniel ...

245

Album Review

Tyree Glenn / Hank Jones Quintet/Sextet: Complete Recordings

Read "Complete Recordings" reviewed by Joe Alterman

by Joe Alterman
September 25, 2010

In the history of jazz, few pianists have been as prolific as the recently deceased Hank Jones. His tasteful and subtle playing is documented on literally thousands of recordings. Many of them are today known as jazz classics--benchmarks to the greatness of this music--and Jones' playing and support on all of them were crucial in creating those historic, beautiful and legendary legacies.For whatever reason, many of Jones' recordings have long been either forgotten, out of print, or very ...

745

Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Bob Dylan: The Bard Of Jazz

by Dan Bilawsky
September 24, 2010

Jazz and rock audiences, at their core, often expect two very different things when they attend a live performance. Jazz audiences thrive on the journey and in-the-moment magic that's created as a one-time-only occurrence, through a partially improvised art. Rock audiences, by and large, prefer to hear it like it sounds on the record. Jazz artists who play it safe at every performance don't usually earn respect from critics, fans and their peers, while rock artists who go out on ...

227

Album Review

Rebecca Martin: When I Was Long Ago

Read "When I Was Long Ago" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
September 24, 2010

The immortal duets of vocalist Sheila Jordan with virtuoso bassists Cameron Brown and Harvie S, and with pianist extraordinaire, Steve Kuhn, now have a boon companion in Rebecca Martin's extraordinary trio album, When I Was Long Ago. Placing it with Jordan's legendary recordings is a must. The bassist on this session, Larry Grenadier, is in fine form, stretching melodically, harmonically and rhythmically, just as Brown and Harvie S did for Jordan. The addition of saxophonist Bill McHenry adds a second ...