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.

211

Album Review

Joyce Cobb with the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio: Joyce Cobb with the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio

Read "Joyce Cobb with the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 13, 2010

If New York City is the cultural center of the universe, then Memphis, Tennessee is its crossroads, with the cutting edge and the traditional mingling in Memphis like two best friends. Jazz vocalist Joyce Cobb hails from Memphis, and that city's myriad of influences are evident in her singing. Certainly sophisticated as a jazz singer, Cobb's delivery has the slurring grit of the blues. It is the sound of her meaning business when she steps up to the microphone to ...

634

Live Review

Ernie Watts, Jeremy Monteiro & Organamix: Chamber at the Arts House, Singapore

by Ian Patterson
August 13, 2010

Ernie Watts, Jeremy Monteiro & OrganamixChamber at the Arts HouseSingaporeJuly 31, 2010 As Jeremy Monteiro's composition “One People, One Nation, One Singapore" filled the air, jet planes roared at supersonic speed overhead followed by formations of helicopters. Armored personnel carriers and tanks rolled down the streets and fireworks filled the sky. This is not a typical set-up for a Monteiro gig. It had been his fiftieth birthday celebration recently and sax legend Ernie Watts ...

149

Album Review

New York Art Quartet: Old Stuff

by Nic Jones
August 13, 2010

Hindsight can be a wonderful thing. For instance, if this music is imbibed with a measure of it, it's possible to hear that the frontline of trombonist Roswell Rudd and saxophonist John Tchicai is one of the most distinctive in improvised music of recent decades. Rudd enjoyed, of course, a similar musical relationship with Steve Lacy, and while nothing can be taken away from that arrangement, his pairing with Tchicai sounds astonishingly fertile on this Old Stuff, from almost half ...

130

Album Review

Paul Dunmall: Identical Sunsets

Read "Identical Sunsets" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 13, 2010

If history is to be served properly, saxophonist Paul Dunmall's Identical Sunsets reaches, with much nervous energy, that part of the sonic universe that John Coltrane reached in the last months of his playing career. In the stellar regions of that universe, the heart--and, therefore, Dunmall's instrument of choice (in this case, the tenor saxophone)--does not beat as it does on earth. It fibrillates as life reaches a rarefied plane--the life of an artist who must now bow to the ...

197

Album Review

Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band: Fields Of Moons

Read "Fields Of Moons" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 13, 2010

Latin jazz is typically characterized by its passion and rhythms. For the past twenty years, trombonist Chris Washburne has been leading his SYOTOS band through the fervor and the pulse of Latin jazz. His home cooked meals are featured every week in New York City. His band, SYOTOS, has released four prior discs, the most recent being The Land Of Nod (Jazzheads, 2006). While those discs tended to be red hot burners, Fields Of Moons turns down the ...

1,353

Live Review

Montreux Jazz Festival 2010: Grand Geneva Finales

by Phillip Woolever
August 12, 2010

Montreux Jazz 2010 Montreux, Switzerland July 15-16, 2010 Planet Jazz For a city with census figures at under 25,000 citizens, Montreux throws one hell of a party. For summer music fans, its heaven. The 44th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival wrapped up this season's two week engagement on some very high notes. Constant capacity crowds witnessed inspired collaborations and programming exemplified a continuing standard through another July jubilee that ...

211

Album Review

Tom Jones: Praise and Blame

Read "Praise and Blame" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
August 12, 2010

In his brilliant alternate reality novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (HarperCollins, 2007), Michael Chabon has a fellow Jewish detective tell plot-protagonist Meyer Landsman that, “it's a strange time to be a Jew." Apparently, it is a strange time to be a Christian also. In what time would it not be strange that 1960s Welsh sex symbol Tom Jones turns 70 and releases an album of American gospel and spirituals, one that is really quite excellent? These are strange times, indeed. ...

176

Album Review

Javid Afsari Rad: Afarinesh

Read "Afarinesh" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 12, 2010

Every festival has its sleeper hit, the show that leaves attendees talking long after it's over, and those who missed it wishing they hadn't. Iranian expat Javid Afsari Rad's Molde 2010 performance was, with perhaps 75 people crammed into the small wooden chapel of the Romsdal Museum, one of the festival's most unexpected gems--a gentle but passionate early afternoon show that demonstrated the evocative breadth of his chosen instrument, the 72-stringed santur. For those unable to catch this stunning duo ...

914

Live Review

Pori Jazz and its Ultra Music scene

by Anthony Shaw
August 12, 2010

Pori Jazz Festival--Ultra Music NightsPori FinlandJuly 17--25, 2010 Pori Jazz trucks on--this was its 45th year of action, still housed on the banks of the River Kokemäki and with links spread to all corners of this normally rather sleepy town on Finland's west coast. This year it ran concurrently with the Molde Festival in southern Norway, with which it shares similar history and a new profile--a long established festival of contemporary music now ...

412

Live Review

Third Annual Double Bass Summit Live At Dizzy's

by Robert Bush
August 12, 2010

San Diego Double Bass Summit Dizzy's San Diego, California July 25, 2010 The greater San Diego area has long been deep in double bass talent, eight of whom were on stage at Dizzy's for the third annual bass summit. Organized and emceed by Rob Thorsen, (who had to manage on crutches as the result of a motorcycle accident). Thorsen who has played with alto saxophone master Charles McPherson, and flautist Holly Hoffman is a ...