The Big Question

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

The Big Question

How do you use All About Jazz & Jazz Near You and how would you like to see them improve?

by Michael Ricci
February 15, 2018

All About Jazz--which includes Jazz Near You--is a 23-year project in the making. We improve the platform daily, grow our community, build our mailing list, and continue to balance a presentation that informs and entertains jazz fans and provides professional services to jazz professionals. Engagement and usage vary from reader to reader and member to member. We're curious to know which areas, sections, or services you value most and how you feel they can ...

The Big Question

Presenting Problem

by Duncan Heining
January 30, 2018

Jazz often appears to exist within its own cultural and artistic paradigm, isolated from other arts and in its own discreet musical corner. Worse still from the perspective of those who would hope to make a living from it, it often seems that more people want to play the music than listen to it or, more significantly, pay for the privilege. No one would want to suggest that jazz should try to compete with the glitz and pomp of rock ...

The Big Question

If you could make one suggestion on how to improve Jazz Near You, what would it be?

by Michael Ricci
July 28, 2015

Jazz Near You is a free event discovery platform for concert goers and a free event distribution platform for musicians, venue owners, and presenters. Like most software, Jazz Near You continually improves: from how we aggregate event information to how we make those events available to our website readers and our mailing list and app subscribers. I've outlined our immediate plans and some recent accomplishments (below), but I'm mostly interested in your thoughts on how we ...

The Big Question

Which jazz musicians produce consistently good music on records or in concert?

by Michael Ricci
June 22, 2015

We all have our favorites, but I'm wondering which of your favorites rarely, if ever, disappoint you on records or in concert? For me, it seems anything Joe Locke releases or plays on, sounds great. His latest, Love is a Pendulum (Motema, 2015), already has a seat assignment on my best of 2015 list and I still occasionally dip into his older recordings like Mutual Admiration Society (Sharp Nine, 1999) and Sound Tracks (Milestone, 1997). Thanks for all ...

The Big Question

If Coltrane emerged today, would he receive recognition and appreciation?

by Maxim Micheliov
May 29, 2015

A while ago I had a chat with Vytautas Labutis, an influential Lithuanian saxophonist, educator and, at the time, curator of jny: Vilnius Mama Jazz Festival. He said: “The list of players with top skills is almost endless. Today we have kids who can do amazing things on their instruments, but the world is waiting for a new Coltrane." This phrase set my mind to thinking about this nearly religious aspect of contemporary jazz reality. If He arrives, how will ...

The Big Question

In search of good jazz radio. What's your favorite station?

by Michael Ricci
May 16, 2015

Thanks to emerging technologies, music discovery options have grown over the last decade: From streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube, to music mapping options found at Amazon, to apps, to websites like All About Jazz—they all assist us in our mission to find new music. Despite all of the music discovery possibilities, however, radio still plays an important role for many of us. Not long ago, you'd hear a new tune in your car, and if you ...

The Big Question

What is your preferred music listening format?

by Michael Ricci
April 27, 2015

Compact disc sales are in steady decline as most younger listeners opt for streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube. Millennials are also the driving force behind vinyl sales growth (since 2008) as 9.2 million units were sold in 2014, up 51.8% from 2013. I was a heavy vinyl collector growing up, made mixtapes, dropped cassettes and vinyl in favor of CDs in the mid 1980s, then years later reintroduced vinyl into my collection while increasing streaming through ...