Album Review
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Derek Brown and The Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra: All Figured Out
Whatever you imagine when you think of big bands, it's nothing quite like this. While Derek Brown can ably channel the snappy spirit of golden-age jazz--and certainly does here, with happy hard-swinging results--his spirit in composing and bandleading could not be more thoroughly modern. The same can be said of his approach to his instrument, as shown by the breathy percussive “beatbox sax" which has become a social-media-famous trademark. Brown's catchy hooks and grooves here sound like those of an ...
read moreSteph Richards: Supersense
With all the threatening weirdness and desperate surrealism that has become life in the USA, it makes absolute sense that Supersense, daring trumpeter/composer Steph Richards' third full length album, starts out like an encroaching invasion of ants, or microbes, or a disruptive, divisive, myopic political movement. As with such forward seeking rebels as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, Richards' modus operandi is chiseled in the very foundations of the music itself. Never ...
read moreJason Robinson: Harmonic Constituent
If you've ever visited Mendocino County you would have a head start to appreciate saxophonist Jason Robinson's Harmonic Constituent. His week-long retreat to this magnificent Northern California coast inspired this ambitious and diverse recording. Robinson, a musical omnivore previously recorded with the quartet Cosmologic, his Henry Threadgill inspired Janus Ensemble, in duos with Anthony Davis and Eric Hofbauer, and in electro-acoustic settings, to name just a few of his diverse interests. Robinson's quartet here includes pianist Joshua White ...
read moreAlex Moxon Quartet: Alex Moxon Quartet
After gigging and teaching in his native Canada for almost two decades, guitarist Alex Moxon has recorded the first album solely under his name, and it is a well-played, mostly middle-of-the-road studio session in which his quartet may not turn any heads but should not turn anyone off either. It is simply pleasant, non-unnerving music--much of it written by Moxon--into which the ensemble pours its collective talents to produce a bright and agreeable outcome. Happily for prospective ...
read moreJosh Nelson: D+N+A: David/Nelson/Agreement
Vocalist Mon David and pianist Josh Nelson's D+N+A: David/Nelson/Agreement has two recorded antecedents in John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (Impulse!, 1963) and Emilia Vancini's And If You Fall, You Fall (Espira, 2020). This new release favors the former in that David is a baritone voice as was Hartman and his repertoire on D+N+A is one of jazz standards, some more standard than others. The project resembles Vancini's later efforts in its uncompromising artistry and fearless iconoclasm. Mon David ...
read moreRachel Musson: I Went This Way
Let's agree that, by a consensus of one, Debbie Sanders recital of saxophonist Rachel Musson's thought-through and through-read play-by- metaphoric-play/lecture on improvisation gets annoying as all hell so quickly that one may find oneself searching madly for a bonus instrumental version. But the music on saxophonist Musson's I Went This Way is an ambitious, teasingly ambiguous album, all shift, riddle, and hijinks. And that's a really good thing because it takes a lot for anyone to be so sure of ...
read moreLionel Loueke: HH
Hulk Hogan? Harry Houdini? Hugh Hefner? As tempting as it is to imagine Lionel Loueke cheerily following some absurdist impulse, the HH of the title instead honors Herbie Hancock--a long-time mentor and source of inspiration to the Benin-born guitarist. A jurist on the audition panel who selected Loueke for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Hancock thereafter called upon Loueke's six-string services on Possibilities (Hear Music, 2005), River: The Joni Letters (Verve, 2007) and The Imagine Project (Herbie Hancock Music, ...
read moreShowcase
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Starburst by AXIOM
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The Prospector by Bruno Raberg
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Touched by Love by Yola Nash
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Nada Será Como Antes by Ricardo Bacelar
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VMP Anthology: The Story of Herbie Hancock
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