Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

YEAR IN REVIEW December 26, 2020

Geno Thackara's Best Releases of 2020

However strange the year has gotten, the urge to create clearly hasn't lessened at all--either that or the circumstances have left us more appreciative of art where we find it. Most likely it's some of both. Whatever the case may be, 2020 has still seen no shortage of musical treats good for the soul. Jazzrausch Bigband Beethoven's Breakdown ACT Music Jazzrausch pulls off something wonderful here, adapting revered material with house-shaking ...

ALBUM REVIEW May 29, 2020

GoGo Penguin: GoGo Penguin

By Geno Thackara

Calling GoGo Penguin a jazz group is sort of like calling Canada a big snowy place. Nobody would consider such a simple term adequate to describe the trio today, least of all the members themselves--bassist Nick Blacka explains that with album number five, GGP has “finally come to accept that we really just aren't a jazz band ... That has been really liberating and freeing for all of us." If anything, it's surprising that these three might have ever felt ...

ALBUM REVIEW October 19, 2019

GoGo Penguin: Ocean in a Drop

By Geno Thackara

While William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, and the poet Rumi wrote that each person is not a drop in an ocean but rather the opposite, GoGo Penguin's ever-expanding sonic world hints at similar multitudes yet to be experienced. It rarely sounds like “just" piano, bass and drums in these hands, and the scope of Ocean in a Drop doesn't feel limited by the brevity of its EP length. They hit the ground running and pack ...