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.

987

Interview

Lenny White: Jazz/Rock Collides Again

by Carl L. Hager
August 9, 2010

When that cool, overcast dawn arrived in Bethel, New York, neither the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair's expired permit, nor the rain, mud, and technical problems could have kept Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsys from playing. It was destiny. Believe it. A hundred miles south on that same morning of August 18, 1969, Miles Davis had gathered the four other members of his famous quintet at his New York City home for a short rehearsal: ...

243

Album Review

Lenny White: Anomaly

Read "Anomaly" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 9, 2010

At twenty-five, Lenny White had established a reputation as one of the best drummers in jazz-rock and fusion, having featured as a nineteen year-old on trumpeter Miles Davis' epochal Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969) and forming one-half of the formidable rhythm team, alongside bassist Stanley Clarke in Chick Corea's seminal fusion group, Return to Forever. In the thirty-plus years between RTF's break up and 2008 reformation, White has also recorded with a long list of topnotch jazz musicians including saxophonists Stan ...

638

Film Review

Jaga Jazzist: Live at Cosmopolite

by John Kelman
August 9, 2010

Jaga Jazzist Live at Cosmopolite Smalltown Supersound 2010 With 30 dates already performed in 2010 since the release of One-Armed Bandit (Ninja Tune, 2010)--its first studio record in five years--Jaga Jazzist is keeping the momentum of its comeback rolling, with a variety of free download tracks and a vinyl-only remix EP, Bananfluer Overalt (Ninja Tune, 2010). While the current nonet incarnation of this true Norwegian curiosity--a large, multi-instrumentalist ensemble featuring some of the country's most ...

319

Album Review

Jaga Jazzist: Bananfluer Overalt

Read "Bananfluer Overalt" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 9, 2010

At a time when the amount of new music being released each and every month is at an all-time high, it's hard enough for artists to get their music heard, let alone maintain momentum between releases. For many, gigging is the only way to ensure their names remain on the radar, but for bands like Jaga Jazzist, that's no small challenge. Hovering between a nonet and dectet, and featuring some of Norway's busiest young players, the cost of touring--and finding ...

252

Album Review

Thomas Maintz: This is the Color...

Read "This is the Color..." reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 9, 2010

There's an idiomatic expression in English called “thinking outside the box," which means that trying to think creatively, unimpeded by conventional restraints. In the case of Danish guitarist Thomas Maintz, the expression is taken quite literally. Using a box with postcards of famous paintings, Maintz randomly picked a card and improvised over it, and the result is three lyrical pieces inspired by Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and Edward Hopper. Miro's painting, “This is the Color of my ...

770

Film Review

Dan Phillips: Jazz Guitar - Basics and Beyond

by Ian Patterson
August 9, 2010

Dan PhillipsJazz Guitar: Basics and Beyond Self Produced2010 With 20 years' experience as a jazz educator, guitarist Dan Phillips in a position of some authority to be giving advice to guitarists learning their craft. Two decades and many musical adventures later, Phillips occupies the chair of guitar teacher in the faculty of music at Bangkok's Silpakorn University. This useful instructional DVD is suitable for guitarists with a fair degree of competency. If ...

266

Album Review

The Vocal Jazz Collective: Redefinition

Read "Redefinition" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 9, 2010

Jeff Baker, one of the best male jazz vocalists around today, is also the vocal director at ArtsWest School for Performing Arts in Eagle, Idaho. Working with high school age performers must be a gas, because Baker has produced a very engaging vocal jazz outing, featuring his students backed by an Origin Records all-star band, with pianist Justin Nielsen sitting in the piano/arranger's chair.Redefinition takes a batch of familiar jazz tunes by the likes of George Gershwin, Henry ...

251

Album Review

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers: Mojo

by Doug Collette
August 9, 2010

Given the earthy currents of electric blues coursing through this Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album, right from the start of the wailing harp on “Jefferson Jericho Blues," Mojo is an appropriate title indeed. It should be no surprise the group hearkens to the late, great Muddy Waters, because anyone who's heard them live understands that this band knows its roots. But it is mildly shocking, at least, to hear an album totally bereft of the craftsman-like pop ...

158

Album Review

Contact: Dave Liebman / John Abercrombie / Marc Copland / Drew Gress / Billy Hart: Five On One

Read "Five On One" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 9, 2010

If, indeed, albums are living breathing beings--and this might well be so--then the beating heart of Five on One, by the marvelous Contact ensemble, is “Lost Horizon," a mighty, burbling piece of music that appears to come from a cornucopia of modern sound. It is mysterious, magical and hypnotic, and brings waves of sound that lap incessantly into the inner ear with that warm undertow made memorable by five of the most eminent musicians of this day. Incandescent saxophonist Dave ...

233

Album Review

Wildbirds and Peacedrums: Rivers

by Bruce Lindsay
August 8, 2010

Rivers is beautiful; haunting, evocative, dreamlike, sad, confusing, scary and bewildering, it's a truly original work. Wildbirds and Peacedrums is a Swedish husband and wife team: percussionist Andreas Werliin and singer and composer Mariam Wallentin. Werliin is also the drummer with Dan Berglund's Tonbruket, while Wallentin has been compared to Nina Simone, although on this album she more closely resembles European singers such as Paula Rae Gibson or Propaganda's Claudia Brücken. Rivers, the band's ...