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.

339

Album Review

Anthony Braxton: 19 Standards (Quartet) 2003

Read "19 Standards (Quartet) 2003" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 18, 2010

Innovative progressive-jazz and avant-gardist Anthony Braxton employs his arsenal of saxophones while covering gems from the past, evidenced by his smoothly swinging spin on Tommy Dorsey's “So Rare," amid a medley of jazz and pop standards. These four discs capture the quartet's 2003 European tour, enamored by the crystalline audio processing and a muse that transmits an antithesis to the musical roads often traversed. Braxton's rippling notes generate a consortium of sublime and heated contrasts with the under-recorded ...

256

Album Review

Various Artists: Jimmy Dawkins Presents the Leric Records Story

Read "Jimmy Dawkins Presents the Leric Records Story" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
August 18, 2010

The term “stalwart" wasn't invented for Jimmy Dawkins, but as far as the Chicago blues scene is concerned that's just what he is. His stinging, succinct guitar has graced too many sessions to mention, while back in the 1980s he owned the label that's compiled on this title. Now the 1980s wasn't a decade that was kind to the blues anymore than it was to a number of other musical forms, but with that proviso in mind, ...

628

Bailey's Bundles

Lawrence Lebo: Rhythm and Roots

by C. Michael Bailey
August 18, 2010

A myth exists in singer Lawrence Lebo's family that the pixie-banged brunette with the warm and humid presence, and encyclopedic American musical view, was conceived during a Saturday night re-run of the Lawrence Welk show--hence, the name. That name. Lawrence Lebo. Delicately avoiding strict political correctness, “what kind of name is that for a girl?" The answer to that question is part of the myth of the image and music. Too clever by half, ...

238

Album Review

Julie Slick: Julie Slick

Read "Julie Slick" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 18, 2010

Despite a sudden explosion of female bassists--from Aussie Tal Wilkenfeld (Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea) to acoustic bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding (Joe Lovano--assessing them on the basis of gender would be wrong, since every one of them easily stands beside their male counterparts. The same can be said for Julie Slick, still on the shy side of 25 and with a remarkable number of high profile credits in the progressive rock world, including King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew's Power Trio, ...

224

Album Review

Fay Claassen with WDR Big Band Cologne: Sing!

by Edward Blanco
August 18, 2010

Internationally recognized Dutch vocalist Fay Claassen joins forces with the Grammy Award-winning WDR Big Band from Cologne, Germany and Berlin's Rundfunk Orchester, for her sixth album as leader with Sing!. Paying tribute to iconic female vocalists, the repertoire contains songs associated with jazz divas from Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington to singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell and Icelandic pop star Björk. Claassen tips her hat to these singers, voicing each song with such conviction that her interpretation becomes unique and ...

173

Album Review

James Zollar: Zollar System

Read "Zollar System" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 17, 2010

It is an unfortunate fact that trumpeter James Zollar is nowhere near as well-known as he should be. But that may be about to change. Zollar Systems may be about to put Zollar in an orbit all his own. A genuine renaissance man of the horn, Zollar is a singular voice on the instrument that is jazz music's vanguard accouterment--the one that heralded the legend of Buddy Bolden and those of Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jabbo Smith and Bubber Miley, ...

1,277

Interview

John Tilbury: A Strong Emotional Response To Music

by John Eyles
August 17, 2010

Pianist John Tilbury is renowned not only for his work in AMM and his other improvising, but also as a peerless interpreter of such contemporary composers as Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff and Howard Skempton. He is uniquely well positioned to reflect on the similarities and contrasts between improvising and playing repertoire. Tilbury's biography of his friend, associate and erstwhile member of AMM, Cornelius Cardew, which took him over two decades to write, ...

269

Album Review

Alexey Lapin / Melvyn Poore / Matthias Schubert / Roger Turner: Seek It Not With Your Eyes

Read "Seek It Not With Your Eyes" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
August 17, 2010

If free improvisation is ever in danger of becoming as stylized and hidebound by convention as the post-bop continuum, then it won't be the responsibility of the musicians featured on this release. Despite the almost half-century of free improvisation on record, examples such as Seek It Not With Your Eyes serve to emphasize how the methodology is still fresh and still a haven for the unexpected; that elusive sound of surprise is evident here in abundance. It goes ...

726

Live Review

Vision Festival 2010: Day 4, June 26, 2010

by John Sharpe
August 17, 2010

Prologue | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7Areni Agbabian, Lorenzo Sanguedolce, Go-Zee-Lah Reggie Nicholson, Borah Bergman, Ned Rothenberg Mark Helias, Tony Malaby, Charles GayleVision FestivalAbrons Arts CenterNew York CityJune 26, 2010Saturday was a long day at the Vision Festival, starting in the afternoon with a series of shows by relative newcomers in the Emerging Artists segment and ...

265

Album Review

Chris Washburne and The SYOTOS Band: Fields Of Moons

Read "Fields Of Moons" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 17, 2010

Keeping a band afloat in today's world is no easy feat. Keeping a band in business with a weekly jazz gig for twenty straight years borders on the impossible. Trombonist Chris Washburne has managed to make both happen, while juggling a busy performing career, studio work and teaching commitments at Columbia University, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Fields Of Moons was created to showcase the softer side of his long-lived SYOTOS Band, but the music still has ...