Featured Jazz Articles

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

UNDER THE RADAR February 25, 2021

A Different Drummer, Part 1: Mark Lomax II and Mauricio Takara

The drum is an instrument of power and presence. It is the heartbeat of music but with uncertain origins. In Africa, China, and Turkey, archeologists have found evidence to suggest that any of those regions may have been the forebearers of the beat, of the definitive expression of freedom. Data concludes that instrumental music is at least 40 thousand years old, and drumming is possibly much older. Scientists have determined that pre-human descendants have been beating a drum at repeated ...

INTERVIEW February 22, 2021

Dave Liebman: Placing Free Jazz and the Avant Garde in Musical and Historical Perspective

By Victor L. Schermer

Like free jazz, this interview arose spontaneously from an informal “how are you doin'" telephone conversation between saxophonist Dave Liebman and All About Jazz contributor Vic Schermer. Schermer phoned Liebman to compliment him on his new e-book The Art of Skill: Establishing the Mindset for Unleashing the Music Inside You published by Michael Lake, and how the book captures some of the insights that Lieb, as he is affectionately called, has been transmitting to his groups and his students for ...

PROFILE February 19, 2021

Roy McCurdy: From Cannonball to the Rochester Music Hall of Fame

By Scott Gudell

When we placed a call from New York to Los Angeles in the early part of 2021, the articulate and vibrant drummer Roy McCurdy answered and quickly connected us back to the 1950s. He told us about his hometown of jny: Rochester, New York, his early days performing with Chuck Mangione and Gap Mangione and how he went on to play with world class jazz saxophonists, including Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley and others. Now, as a teacher at the USC/Thornton ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY February 18, 2021

Saxophone Colossi: An Alternative Top Ten Banging Albums

By Chris May

Miles Davis once said you could tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker. You might want to add John Coltrane, you might even want to add Davis. But however you cut it, saxophones and trumpets have been the flag bearers of the music. Trumpets got things rolling and saxophones came into their own a decade later, during the swing era, when Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young legitimised the instrument as a solo voice.

WHAT IS JAZZ? February 14, 2021

Ghosts In The Machine, Part 1: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music

By Kurt Ellenberger

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part I: The MachinesJazz and classical musicians have long had a troubled relationship with pop music. (By “pop music," I mean all styles outside of classical and jazz--country, rock, hip-hop, rap, etc.--any style that enjoys a double-digit market share is properly called “popular," as opposed to the dismal 4-6% (combined) that is shared by jazz and classical music.) Admittedly, most of pop ...

SOCAL JAZZ February 12, 2021

Chick Corea: In The Present Tense

By Jim Worsley

This article was originally published at All About Jazz on November 12, 2020. RIP, Chick. What can you say about music icon Chick Corea that hasn't already been said? His past, his career has been honored, dissected, and revered. As it should be. A composer and pianist of unparalleled skills and accomplishments, Corea's place in music history continues to plateau. In conversation with Corea, we centered mostly on what hasn't been said. We talked extensively about his new ...

INTERVIEW February 9, 2021

Brian Jackson: Winter In America Pt. 2

By Chris May

As Gil Scott-Heron's songwriting and performing partner during the 1970s, keyboardist, composer and arranger Brian Jackson was co-author of some of the most galvanising liberation music of the era. Inhabiting the intersection of jazz, soul and spoken word, Jackson and Scott-Heron, who met while they were both students at Lincoln University, were a team from Pieces Of A Man (Flying Dutchman, 1971) through Winter In America (Strata-East, 1974) and its breakout single “The Bottle," through six subsequent albums on major ...