Featured Jazz Articles

In Tribute To...

Points of View: Celebrating Dave Holland

by Ludovico Granvassu
October 1, 2026

Birthdays offer an annual opportunity to celebrate. Milestone birthdays offer something more: a chance to take stock. But when a towering figure in jazz turns 80 after six decades of music-making, how do we even begin to take the measure of a musical life so rich, so wide-ranging, and so influential? A comprehensive interview could tell part of the story. An in-depth analysis of a discography could tell another. But perhaps the most tangible, and personal, way to ...

Musician 2 Musician

Steve Coleman on Dave Holland

by Anthony Tidd
October 1, 2026

Prologue On September 16, 2026, I sat down with groundbreaking saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman at a penthouse apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Coleman was four days shy of his 70th birthday, which itself was just three days before the great John Coltrane's centennial birthday. However, our conversation focused largely on another musician, and a relationship that had played an important role in Steve's development: bassist, composer and bandleader Dave Holland. This conversation holds particular significance for ...

Interview

Without a Net, and with Love, Uncle Miles

by Emily Steinhilber
September 29, 2026

When I called Vince Wilburn Jr. to talk about Miles Davis at 100 (read our own tribute), he answered from the Chicago house where he grew up--the same house where Davis used to telephone his mother and ask her to lower the receiver toward the basement so he could listen to his teenage nephew rehearse. More than forty years later, that telephone became the spine of our conversation about family memory, musical inheritance, grief, and Davis' insistence that the musicians ...

In Tribute To...

John Coltrane At 100: A Global Perspective

by Ian Patterson
September 23, 2026

With the advent of his birth centenary, John William Coltrane is on our minds again. But then he nearly always is. His influence on generations of saxophonists is palpable. For countless musicians the term “Coltranesque" can be a badge of honor or a millstone around the neck. With the exception perhaps of Miles Davis--whose centenary also fell in 2026--arguably no other jazz musician has been so imitated--knowingly or otherwise. His main influence, however, is not so much in ...

Website News

By Jazz Fans, For Jazz Fans: How All About Jazz Works

by Michael Ricci
September 21, 2026

When All About Jazz launched in 1995, one of our earliest taglines was simple: “By jazz fans, for jazz fans." At the time, those six words pretty much said it all. We were people who loved jazz, writing about jazz for other people who loved jazz. There wasn't much need to explain the organizational philosophy behind it because there wasn't much of an organization yet. More than thirty years later, All About Jazz has ...

Jazz Raconteurs

Julius Hemphill: Marty Ehrlich and Tim Berne Remember a Musical Visionary

by Dave Kaufman
September 20, 2026

Julius Hemphill, a brilliant alto saxophonist and extraordinary composer, was a towering figure in avant-garde jazz and creative music. Yet his body of work remains surprisingly little known, even among aficionados of this sort of adventurous music. Hemphill's music demonstrated a deep feeling for the blues and other African American traditions. His creative vision extended well beyond jazz performance, incorporating chamber music, theater, dance, and other forms of artistic expression. Hemphill came of age during a period when Black experimental ...

Paul's Picks

New York City Jazz Performance Preview: Fall 2026

by Paul Reynolds
September 16, 2026

New York season includes the first fall programs from two recently opened midtown clubs--The Pocket and Jazzcultural and higher-profile shows for fine emerging performers such as singer Ekep Nkwelle and pianist/arranger Joe Block. The preeminent departure is that of Wynton Marsalis who, after 30 years in the job, will lead his last season as the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Consequently, 2026-27 sees The House That Jazz Built programming an even bigger dose of Marsalisiana than ...

Live Review

Detroit Jazz Festival 2026: A Gathering in a Great Jazz City

by Paul Rauch
September 15, 2026

Detroit Jazz Festival 2026 Hart Plaza Detroit, MI September 4-7, 2026 Thursday evening is when artists, media and event staffers begin to file into the Detroit Marriott, arriving from points around the globe. The common purpose is the 47th annual Detroit Jazz Festival, an annual tradition on Labor Day weekend. The largest free jazz festival in the world is four days of music, fellowship, celebration and counting one's blessings. In 2026, Mother Nature decided to ...

Building a Jazz Library

Ronnie Cuber: Baritone Boss

by Mark McKergow
September 14, 2026

Ronnie Cuber (1941-2022) made his mark on the jazz world as a versatile and muscular baritone saxophonist. Born in New York on Christmas Day 1941, he started on tenor saxophone but switched to baritone at 17, attracted by the vacant chair in Marshall Brown's Newport Jazz Youth Band (which also featured lifelong colleagues Eddie Gomez and Michael Abene). He grew from sideman to leader to icon over half a century of hard-blowing hard work. Cuber always gave full value ...

Chats with Cats

Mark Gross: Jazz for Teens

by B.D. Lenz
September 8, 2026

For many young musicians, learning jazz is about much more than learning how to play an instrument. It's about developing confidence, learning to listen, finding your own voice, and discovering how to work with others.Few people understand that better than Mark Gross. As Director of Jazz Instruction at NJPAC, Gross has spent years helping shape the next generation of jazz musicians through programs like TD Jazz for Teens, while also drawing on his own experience as a performer ...