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.

146

Live Review

Tamia + Mario + Chrisette Michelle, Central Park Summerstage August 22, 2010

by Ernest Barteldes
September 11, 2010

Tamia + Mario + Chrisette MichelleCentral Park Summerstage New York, NYAugust 22, 2010During an afternoon dedicated to neo-soul music, Canadian-American vocalist Tamia took the stage backed by a solid five-piece band. Her set list comprised mostly of romantic-tinged tunes that explored her wide vocal range that brought to mind the early work of Mariah Carey. She also demonstrated eclecticism by including a few tunes with a Latin influence (which featured her guitarist playing an acoustic ...

386

Album Review

Gretchen Parlato: In A Dream

Read "In A Dream" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 11, 2010

Vocalist Gretchen Parlato is part Bobby McFerrin, part Theo Bleckmann, and David Binney. All men, yes. Parlato's voice is light as an apparition, ethereal and implied. She is fond of vocal gymnastics as is McFerrin. She shares a sense of humor in art with Bleckmann and a musical adventurousness with Binney. In A Dream is the recording Chet Baker would have made, had he been a woman. Both vocalists share an opaqueness in an otherwise transparent instrument. ...

351

Live Review

Fay Victor At The Local 269 in New York

by AAJ Staff
September 11, 2010

Fay VictorThe Local 269New York, NYSeptember 6, 2010 New York jazz and avant-garde/free vocalist Fay Victor performed two sets with a new jazz ensemble at The Local 269 on September 6, 2010. The Local 269 is a jazz and rock club/bar on East Houston Street, on New York's Lower East Side. It has been open for a year or so and has hosted a stream of progressive music. The Local 269 ...

195

Album Review

Terje Rypdal: Crime Scene

Read "Crime Scene" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
September 11, 2010

Such is the strength of the ECM aesthetic--visually as well as musically--that it's one of very few record labels in the history of jazz that is referred to describe a person's musical tastes. The northern European jazz sound which Manfred Eicher has made synonymous with his fabled label--cool, spacious, pastoral--colors the majority of ECM releases, so it's something of a surprise to be confronted by guitarist Terje Rypdal rocking out, backed by the seventeen-piece Bergen Big Band, crashing drums, swirling ...

474

Take Five With...

Take Five With Chris Massey

by AAJ Staff
September 11, 2010

Meet Chris Massey:Chris Massey is fast becoming one of the most talked about young talented players in the world of jazz. Growing up in small town Ohio where he picked up his first pair of drumsticks a the age of nine he took his first steps into his musical career as a Jazz Performance major at Youngstown State University in 2000. In 2003, Chris began performing with world-renowned artists such as former Jazz Messenger Donald Harrison ...

176

Album Review

Either/Orchestra: Mood Music for Time Travellers

Read "Mood Music for Time Travellers" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
September 11, 2010

The past 25 years have been a time of transition for The Either/Orchestra. Members have come and gone and come back again. Their music has imbibed several styles and genres and grown all the richer. One of the sagest moves they made was the long, and fruitful, collaboration with Ethiopian music and with musicians that included Mahmoud Ahmed, Getachew Mekurya and Mulatu Astatke,For this recording, Russ Gershon wrote a couple of tunes geared to the organ after he ...

253

Album Review

Bob Mamet: Impromptu

Read "Impromptu" reviewed by Woodrow Wilkins

by Woodrow Wilkins
September 11, 2010

No gimmicks. No trends. All business. The Bob Mamet Trio gets straight to the point with Impromptu.Chicago-born Mamet studied at Peabody Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles, where he has worked a composer and session musician, showing his versatility in television, film, advertising and performance. Associations include Alex Acuna, Larry Carlton, Eric Marienthal, Gerald Albright and David Benoit. For Impromptu, Mamet is accompanied by Darek Oles on bass and Joe La Barbera on drums.The title song ...

145

Album Review

Keith Jarrett / Charlie Haden: Jasmine

by Joe Alterman
September 11, 2010

Keith Jarrett, like Sonny Rollins, is quite hard to pin down. Like the iconic saxophonist, for many years now, the equally legendary pianist has been leaning towards the songs of his youth, and even earlier. Compared with their song choices of, say, twenty years ago, it would seem that these players have become more conservative over the years; that is, however, simply not true. Again, like Rollins, Jarrett's improvisations have evolved through the years, with an even greater searching and ...

654

Live Review

Jazz em Agosto 2010

by Kurt Gottschalk
September 10, 2010

Jazz em AgostoLisbon, PortugalAugust 6-15, 2010 If music-making were as simple as putting things in a box, a review of Lisbon's 2010 Jazz em Agosto festival might go something like this: The duo of John Surman and Jack DeJohnette put as much as they could in the box, while Evan Parker's Electro- Acoustic Ensemble realized the box didn't need to be filled all the way. Guus Ganssen and Han Bennink discovered you can put more in if ...

184

Album Review

Jon Irabagon: Foxy

by Troy Collins
September 10, 2010

The classic late 1950s trio recordings of Sonny Rollins are widely revered by up and coming saxophonists as a benchmark against which to prove themselves. Saxophonist Jon Irabagon, winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and a celebrated member of the infamous quintet Mostly Other People Do the Killing, wryly acknowledges this fact on his first trio record, Foxy, which takes a cue (visually and conceptually) from Rollins' seminal 1957 masterpiece, Way Out West (Contemporary).Though boasting ...