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.

Album Review

Charles Chen: The Long Way Home

Read "The Long Way Home" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 26, 2026

The Long Way Home is a fascinating album, not so much for the music alone--even though that is first-class--but for the lengthy interviews with the Charles Chen quartet's bassist and drummer, 98-year-old Bill Crow and 91-year-old Steve Little, respectively, who still anchor a regular weekly gig at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City. Crow and Little, each of whom has played and recorded with a veritable who's who of jazz luminaries, talk informally about their early influences, ...

Radio & Podcasts

Mike DiRubbo, Lisa Rich, Elias Haslanger, Douye & Larry Goldings

by Joe Dimino
July 26, 2026

The 968th Episode of Neon Jazz ignites with the unmistakable chemistry of acclaimed organ master Larry Goldings, reunited with his legendary trio featuring guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart. We launch the hour with the title track from their stellar 2026 release, Rhombus, a powerful statement from one of the longest-running and most celebrated organ trios in modern jazz. From there, it's a midsummer celebration as a wave of outstanding new releases pours into the Neon Jazz mailbox. We ...

Album Review

Nicholas Payton / Butcher Brown: A Supreme Blue

Read "A Supreme Blue" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
July 26, 2026

Is it an act of bravery or simple foolhardiness to revisit two of the most revered albums in jazz history--records that transcend popularity and occupy a near-mythic place in the music's collective psyche? In this centennial moment for both Miles Davis and John Coltrane, the question carries not only artistic weight but commercial implications as well. Nicholas Payton joins forces with the Richmond-based collective Butcher Brown on A Supreme Blue, a thoughtful and stylistically hybrid reimagining of Kind ...

Multiple Reviews

Patricia Brennan And Sylvie Courvoisier, Ambrose Akinmusire And Mary Halvorson, Mick Goodrick And Fred Hersch: Playing Doubles

by Doug Collette
July 25, 2026

Watching a musician perform solo vividly illustrates how difficult it is to play music well. And observing a pair of instrumentalists in action together graphically depicts how hard it is for musicians to play well together. In the case of these three teams of doubles, no one individual leads, except occasionally in transitions. Rather, the two individuals move parallel in ascent and descent, to the right or left and forward/backward. The respective dynamics reveal uncanny symbioses, of which the participants ...

Play This!

Melissa Aldana's Sensory Journey Transports Listeners… Elsewhere

by Keith Flint
July 25, 2026

There is little wonder why Melissa Aldana was nominated in 2019's 61st Annual Grammy Awards for her extraordinary solo on “Elsewhere." The Chilean saxophonist and composer creates a gallery of sound on this piece from her album Visions, inspired by the life and work of the artist Frida Kahlo. Bassist Pablo Menares leads listeners into the track with a steady, trance-inducing, ostinato accompanied by Tommy Crane's metrical rim clicks and light cymbal rhythms, from which Aldana's initial spare tenor sax ...

Album Review

Samuel Blaser Quartet: Rosina

Read "Rosina" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
July 25, 2026

Samuel Blaser has established himself as one of Europe's most compelling trombonists, a Swiss musician whose artistic identity has been shaped as much by formal study as by the Italian folk traditions that surrounded him in childhood. In recent years, he has spoken openly about reconnecting with those roots, particularly the songs his grandmother sang, simple melodies carrying equal measures of tenderness and resilience. Rosina, named in her honor, reflects that personal journey while filtering those influences through a contemporary ...

Album Review

Rodrigo Amado / Joe McPhee / Kent Kessler / Chris Corsano: Wailers

by John Sharpe
July 25, 2026

Wailers captures Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's This Is Our Language quartet at a fascinating juncture, revealing fresh dimensions within one of his most compelling working bands. An unchanged lineup features reedman Joe McPhee (restricting himself solely to tenor), bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Chris Corsano alongside the leader's tenor saxophone. Recorded in a Lisbon studio in 2019, the album now arrives with the feel of an archival issue. But it constitutes the first since Let The Three Be Men (Trost, ...

Radio & Podcasts

Suzanne Ciani: The Buchla's Orchestral Homecoming

by Lawrence Peryer
July 25, 2026

This week, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on five-time Grammy-nominated composer Suzanne Ciani.Suzanne has spent decades innovating electronic music on the Buchla synthesizer, an instrument as intimate to her as any acoustic musician's.Suzanne has multiple projects out this year: CIANI/ORKEST, a live album with the fifty-piece Metropole Orkest, conducted by Simon Dobson; a collaborative live album with British electronic producer Actress; and the score for John Wilson's idiosyncratic new documentary, The History of Concrete.We ...

Interview

Crouching Pop, Hidden Jazz: A Conversation with Johnny Manchild from Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards

by Kurt Ellenberger
July 24, 2026

Preamble: In my previous articles, I have highlighted how important jazz and jazz musicians have been in the background of the development of pop music, and how the influence of jazz is sometimes in the foreground as well. My interview with Johnny Manchild is part of this broader discussion of how jazz aesthetics find their way into popular music. Johnny Manchild has an unusual background for a pop musician--he is a multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter/producer who has a jazz degree ...

Live Review

Kenny Garrett at Ronnie Scott’s: The Ancestors in the Room

by Kofi Adjepong-Boateng
July 24, 2026

Kenny Garrett Ronnie Scott's London July 17, 2026 There are jazz clubs and there is the basement on Frith Street. Kenny Garrett, whom Miles Davis heard and hired nearly forty years ago, is back, and at the first notes of 'Haynes Here' the room understood this would be not a night of repertory, but where the repertory comes from. The band is worth naming slowly, a lesson in transmission before a note sounds. ...