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.

322

Album Review

David Weiss and Point of Departure: Snuck In

Read "Snuck In" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 26, 2010

The term “hipster," although appropriated to everyday use from slang and rarely used today, has a special connotation in music--especially the jazz idiom. It is a dusky, almost nocturnal word, and it has made way for new epithets that stream from rap and hip-hop, but no matter what it describes, it's always someone with certain, unmistakable contemporariness. Having completely absorbed the history of his/her art, an artist begins to live in a novel way, personifying it with a swaggering attitude. ...

481

Extended Analysis

Riviere Composers’ Pool: Summer Works 2009

by John Eyles
August 26, 2010

Rivière Composers' PoolSummer Works 2009Emanem2010 It is rare for Emanem to issue a three-CD album, but whenever it happens they are a bit special--witness the most recently recorded one, Strings with Evan Parker, from 2001, plus the label's two excellent Iskra 1903 compilations. Now, to join such exalted company, comes Summer Works 2009, an album which more than deserves its place alongside them. The album features duo, trio and ...

859

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Cold Sun

Read "Cold Sun" reviewed by Warren Allen

by Warren Allen
August 26, 2010

Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff works in that rarified area between modern classical chamber music and progressive jazz. Born and raised in Russia, Eckemoff attended the Moscow State Conservatory, where she studied concert piano and grew up in a strong classical foundation. She came to the United States before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and continues to compose and perform. While many of her albums have tended towards a classical vein, Cold Sun provides an exploration of improvisation ...

427

Multiple Reviews

Eclectic electric jazz comes of age

by Mark Corroto
August 26, 2010

Back in the 1980s, the marriage of jazz and electronics produced the unfortunate, creativity destroying “jazz fusion" genre. That was because drum machines, synthesizer produced horn lines and computer generated hand claps were often too perfect. A sort of “sanitized for your protection" version of motel drinking glasses. Think about the then innovative trumpeter Miles Davis' album Tutu (Warner, 1986) with all its studio generated electronic gloss. The production (maybe overproduction) by Marcus Miller left little room for the human ...

364

Album Review

Antonio Sanchez: Live in New York at Jazz Standard

Read "Live in New York at Jazz Standard" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 26, 2010

With a schedule as busy as Antonio Sanchez's, it's hard to image where the tremendously in-demand drummer finds the time to write, much less put together a group to record. Amidst a relentless touring schedule with artists including Pat Metheny, Gary Burton and Chick Corea, Sanchez released Migration (Cam Jazz, 2007), a heavyweight session featuring his twin-tenor/bass/drums quartet. An egalitarian leader, it also served notice of Sanchez's emergent writing skill, motivating a group whose primary purpose was to blow, and ...

207

Take Five With...

Take Five with Kjetil Husebø

by AAJ Staff
August 26, 2010

Meet Kjetil Husebø:35 years-old, from Bergen, Norway, currently living in Oslo. Pianist, synth, electronics, live-sampling, programming. Main project: Optical Substance. Instrument(s):Piano, synth, laptop, samplers, electronics.Teachers and/or influences?Jan Garbarek, Bendik Hofseth, Nils Petter Molvaer, Biosphere, Jan Bang, Bugge Wesseltoft, Eivind Aarset.I knew I wanted to be a musician when...I heard Arild Andersen`s Sagn (ECM, 1991) and Jan Garbarek`s I Took up the Runes (ECM, 1990), when I ...

225

Album Review

Univers Zero: Clivages

by Nic Jones
August 26, 2010

It's no small achievement for a band to be around for over thirty years and still sound distinctive, but the Belgian Univerz Zero manages the feat with no sign of strain. Over that time, the group has cleaved pretty closely to its original template, which can only be described as chamber music for a dark, forbidding world, the likes of which makes even this second decade of the twenty-first century seem welcoming by comparison. There are, however, ...

190

Album Review

Hector Martignon: Second Chance

Read "Second Chance" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza

by Jerry D'Souza
August 26, 2010

In his notes to Second Chance, pianist Hector Martignon reflects on second chances and the wide ranging impact they can have on a person. On another plane, he muses on the second chance he has given to some of the compositions he had played with other bands, or to which he had given a different interpretation. Martignon's compositions sing eloquently, as they embrace a wide framework of styles. As a pianist, he essays a fine skill that is ...

1,417

Interview

Nobu Stowe: Beyond Free

by Glenn Astarita
August 25, 2010

The music of NS (Nobu) Stowe is synonymous with the musical storytelling characterized with spontaneity and melodic romanticism--a true rarity in the field of fully improvised music. Stowe has not only mastered the art of total improvisation--a method of fully improvised music that embraces song-like melody, tonal harmony and rhythmic propulsion as well as more commonly improvised free elements--but also unique sets of fully improvised music, incorporating his own vast musical influences, from Baroque and progressive rock to soundtracks, ethnic ...

271

Album Review

Nobu Stowe: Confusion Bleue

Read "Confusion Bleue" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
August 25, 2010

Pianist Nobu Stowe continues developing and honing his quest of “total improvisation" with the marvelous Confusion Bleue. The music hovers within the world of free jazz but almost always contains elements that imply structure, allowing the compositions to feel more or less anchored as time flows by. Stowe's explorations are supported by many of the same musicians from his previous efforts, Hommage an Klaus Kinski (Soul Note, 2007) and the Brooklyn and New York Moments (Konnex, 2006). ...