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.

175

Album Review

Vox Arcana: Aerial Age

Read "Aerial Age" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 30, 2010

A list of influences including John Cage, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Anthony Braxton is not the norm for a drummer-led ensemble, and gives notice that preconceptions are about to be challenged. These are the diverse inspirations Tim Daisy draws upon in Aerial Age, the sophomore offering from Vox Arcana, his vehicle exploring that ever fertile borderline between composition and improvisation. Best known for fuelling the fires of the Vandermark 5, the drummer remains a cornerstone of ...

215

Album Review

Jay Clayton: In and Out of Love

Read "In and Out of Love" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 30, 2010

There are just a handful of women vocalists alive today who continue to inhabit the rarefied space of imaginative storytellers while continuing to be unbridled innovators. Abbey Lincoln, Sheila Jordan, Norma Winstone, Cassandra Wilson, and, of course, Jay Clayton are amongst the few continuing to enthrall audiences worldwide. Despite numerous examples of their fine sense of the art of weaving endless adventures in song, the true measure of their craft is often in their reenacting of classic songs, much as ...

196

Album Review

Susie Hansen: Representante de la Salsa

Read "Representante de la Salsa" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 30, 2010

It's hard to tell whether Representante de la Salsa should be classified as “Latin jazz" or “Latin dance." While the eleven tracks presented by electric violinist/vocalist Susie Hansen and her tight band certainly possess plenty of potent improvisation and rhythmic excitability--both hallmarks of the best Latin jazz--the music leans toward more traditional Latin dance styles and is heavy on vocals. As if to drive this point home, Hansen labels each track, identifying the dance styles, such as mambo, or salsa. ...

251

Album Review

Sandrine Piau: Vivaldi!

Read "Vivaldi!" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 30, 2010

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was best known for his many string and reed concertos, and opera seria. The composer also had an impressive catalog of sacred pieces, including his famous Gloria, RV 589. Among his sacred music, Vivaldi composed several settings for the text of Psalm 112, and The Glory be from Vivaldi's setting of Psalm 112 Laudate Pueri Dominum ("Praise the Lord, ye children"). As part of these pieces, Vivaldi cast the Gloria Patri ("Glory Be To ...

806

From Far and Wide

The National Jazz Museum In Harlem

by AAJ Staff
August 30, 2010

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is at 104, E 126th Street, a few steps from the bridge that carries the Metro North trains to and from Connecticut from the 125th Street station. Situated on the second floor, the museum is primarily a suite of offices with a large front area that presents photographs, video documentaries and books on jazz to the public. The Museum's executive director is Loren Schoenberg, saxophonist, arranger and conductor, ...

726

Interview

Abbey Lincoln: African Queen in a Top Hat

by Joan Gannij
August 29, 2010

(This interview was conducted in 2002) Abbey Lincoln made a stop in Amsterdam in 1998 for a rare appearance at the 110-year old Concertgebouw, where Sonny Rollins likes to play when he comes to town. The sellout crowd was composed mainly of seemingly staid yet perennially hip “pensionados" (as the Dutch like to refer to their restless retirees) but by the end of the final encore, the historic hall had reached a collective groove and the ghosts ...

242

Album Review

Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society

Read "Chamber Music Society" reviewed by Eugene Holley, Jr.

by Eugene Holley, Jr.
August 29, 2010

The jazz world hasn't been the same ever since the twenty-something Esperanza Spalding--the Oregon-born, Texas-based bassist/singer/composer/educator--burst on the scene at the change of the century. Her story as a self-taught, home schooled prodigy who graduated from Berklee and became that institution's youngest instructor; who gigged with everybody from Patti Austin and Pat Metheny to Joe Lovano; and who released two critically-acclaimed CDs as a leader (the last one stayed on the Billboard jazz charts for seventy weeks), is already the ...

348

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Zakopane

Read "Zakopane" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 29, 2010

There are several outstanding qualities that emerge in pianist Satoko Fujii's big band writing. She has an extraordinarily sense of color that plays upon the moist exquisiteness of muted shades, as well as recognizing and utilizing the vivid ends of her palette of colors. She also combines ingenious use of the timbre of various elements of a big band--brass, reeds and woodwinds, strings that replicate the rhythmic nature of the piano and those in the lowest register, and brilliant use ...

457

Live Review

Dana Reason Trio: Bellingham, Washington July 24, 2010

by Michael Boyce
August 29, 2010

Dana Reason TrioThe Amadeus ProjectBellingham, WashingtonJuly 24, 2010 The Dana Reason Trio's recent Angle of Vision Tour performance in Bellingham, Washington consisted mostly of new material, which they were preparing to record a couple of days later at Wild Rose Artists' Studio in Oregon. Dana Reason has an accomplished background as both a classical and avant-garde composer and pianist, working and recording with such musicians as Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros, George E. ...

201

Album Review

Phonophani: Kreken

by John Kelman
August 29, 2010

It's been six years since Phonophani, a.k.a. Espen Sommer Eide, released Oak or Rock (Rune Grammofon, 2004), though a 2006 appearance at Punkt provided a rare opportunity to witness the electronic musician at work, as he utilized a wind-driven synthesizer, in conjunction with sound samples on his laptop, to create in-the-moment melodic snippets subsequently processed, reshaped and built into a continuous, ebb and flow of a performance. Working live, of course, presents its own set of challenges, especially for someone ...