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

Cory Weeds: Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News

Read "Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 8, 2026

In 2013, saxophonist Cory Weeds and organist Chris Hazelton used Hazelton's father's van to make a four-hour-long trip from Kansas City to a gig in St. Louis. There was one CD in the van's player: Huey Lewis & the News Greatest Hits. After several listens, an idea started to form in Weeds' head, namely that the music might work well in a classic jazz organ quartet setting. Weeds and Hazelton sat on the idea for more than a decade before ...

Radio & Podcasts

Cory Weeds, Mike Dillon, Lisa B, Russell Gunn & Hayes Greenfield

by Joe Dimino
November 8, 2026

From the brilliant New York City-based musician, educator, and business mind Hayes Greenfield, we kick off the 983rd episode of Neon Jazz with the imaginative sounds of “Micasso and Patisse" from his groundbreaking audio adventure, Painting in Sound. It's a creative opening that sets the tone for another musical journey full of surprises. From there, Cory Weeds and Chris Hazelton put their own jazz-soaked spin on Huey Lewis and the News with “I Want a New Drug." That album has ...

Radio & Podcasts

Jim Hall's Concierto de Aranjuez, New Releases and more

by Adam Sieff
November 8, 2026

This week's Jazz on the Beach features new releases, live tracks and some rewarding catalogue discoveries. There are interesting father-and-son connections, with the McCravens (drummers Stephen and Makaya) and the Sidrans (Ben and Leo). New music comes from Sarah Tandy, The Filthy Six and Jakob Bro's collaboration with Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy featuring the great Charles Lloyd. Among the established names are Eddie Harris, Jackie McLean, Elvin Jones and Clifford Jordan, and at the centre of the playlist is ...

Radio & Podcasts

Music for Election Night Returns

by Jon Greenbaum
November 8, 2026

Amidst rumors of looming ICE raids on polling stations, the actual deployment of intimidating DOJ monitors in Georgia, legal threats to polling workers from DOJ and Homeland Security, and expectations that polling data would be confiscated around the country, we took to the air to play jazz as a national political realignment reshaped the possibilities for the United States.Playlist John Surman, Mike Osborne, Alan Skidmore “Country Dance" from S.O.S. (Ogun Records) 00:00 Jane Ira Bloom “St. Mark's Tomorrow" ...

Radio & Podcasts

How Can You Lose? (Worst Form of Government Except All Those Others)

by Katchie Cartwright
November 8, 2026

"A democracia é o pior de todos os sistemas, com exceção de todos os outros," sings Sérgio Godhinho, Porto-born composer of musica de intervenção (Portuguese protest songs), on “A Democracia (Aforismos)." Winston Churchill had said in 1947: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms." The seed for this week's show is Amy London's lyric and vocalese to a mid-50s Benny Carter tune from London's wonderful new release, Alto Madness. She waxed topical ...

Live Review

Floating with Emile Parisien at 1000jazz 2026

by Daniel Mège
November 8, 2026

Emile Parisien FloatingThéâtre de l'heure bleue1000Jazz, Third EditionLa Chaux-de-Fonds, SwitzerlandOctober 25, 2026 “If you did not like this, the record is really different!" quips Emile Parisien in a mock-desperate attempt to promote Floating (ACT Music, 2026), released the month before (reviewed by AAJ). Fair enough, but what if we did like? It is true that the concert ran almost twice as long as the digital and CD editions, which themselves include two ...

Book Review

Music Sets You Free

by Nenad Georgievski
November 8, 2026

Music Sets You Free Ryuichi Sakamoto 496 Pages ISBN: 9780063416505 HarperVia 2026 There is something fitting about the fact that Ryuichi Sakamoto was never particularly interested in the idea of becoming something. As a child, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wrote “nothing." He could not imagine the future self that adults seemed so certain was waiting for them somewhere ahead. Decades later, looking back on a ...

Rising Stars

Introducing the New Jersey All-State Jazz Ensemble and Choir

by Sanford Josephson
November 7, 2026

"Ordinary People," a ballad about an up-and-down romance, was released as the second single on John Legend's 2004 inaugural album, Get Lifted (Columbia). It became his signature song. On Friday evening, November 13, the New Jersey High School All-State Jazz Ensemble and Choir will perform Michael Philip Mossman's arrangement of it at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center as part of the TD James Moody Jazz Festival. “This a rare opportunity to collaborate with both big band and ...

Album Review

Blumer-Dell-Geisser-Morgenthaler: Live at Loft Köln

Read "Live at Loft Köln" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 7, 2026

Free improvisation can be a demanding proposition, particularly when four musicians dispense with familiar melodies, predictable rhythms and conventional solo structures. Yet the most accomplished practitioners understand that freedom alone does not guarantee compelling music. On Live at Loft Köln, bassist Fridolin Blumer joins vibraphonist Christopher Dell, percussionist Heinz Geisser and trombonist Robert Morgenthaler for six performances that emphasize collective intuition, contrasting textures and the delicate balance between restraint and confrontation. Recorded in Cologne, Germany in October 2025, ...

Album Review

RGG: The Soul Of Soil

Read "The Soul Of Soil" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
November 7, 2026

Polish piano trio RGG celebrate their 25th anniversary with the release of The Soul of Soil. Formed in 2001 by bassist Maciej Garbowski, drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk and pianist Przemysław Raminiak, who were students at the Jazz Institute of the Music Academy in Katowice at the time, the group has since established itself as one of Poland's leading piano trios with Łukasz Ojdana replacing Raminiak in 2013. The trio frequently uses existing compositions as springboards for improvisation, and here they turn ...