Featured Jazz Articles
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Joe Lovano: Finding New Adventures
by R.J. DeLuke
The loss of gig and the accompanying income stream, caused by the insidious and evil coronavirus, has hurt musicians across all genres. It has separated them from friends and band mates, from projects and from going to special places--physically and artistically. Coping with it is the order of the day. It has created some dark moments and also shed light on the characteristic of resiliency that dwells in the human spirit. Creativity, the hallmark of jazz, has kept ...
read moreJohn Coltrane: An Alternative Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Miles Davis once said that you could recite the history of jazz in just four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker. To that you need to add two more: John Coltrane. A giant during his lifetime, Coltrane continues to shape jazz and inspire musicians decades after he passed. No other player has come remotely close to eclipsing him. New tenor saxophone stars such as Britain's Shabaka Hutchings, Josephine Davies and Binker Golding have Coltrane as their key formative influence, while Nubya ...
read moreEmiliano Sampaio: Rising Transatlantic Star
by Kurt Ellenberger
In 2013, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach and to work on a research project at the Kunstuniversität Graz ("University of the Arts in Graz"). I taught a first-year course in jazz theory that was really a delight. These students were already extremely accomplished performers and composers. About half of the class was comprised of students from China, the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic, and other countries. One of those students was Emiliano Sampaio, a Brazilian trombonist ...
read moreA Different Drummer, Part 2: Royal Hartigan
by Karl Ackermann
Drums of Life—Drums of DeathThe ruins of the Anasazi people stand undisturbed in the cliffs between the high mesas and the canyon floors of the southwest. Dating to 2500 B.C., the multi-story adobe pueblos and stone cities were the sites of the ancient indigenous peoples of North America. Archeologists have uncovered an assortment of percussion instruments in the ruins: suspended stones that resonated when struck, gourd rattles with seeds inside. Rasps were pieces of wood or bone with serrated edges ...
read moreLogan Richardson: On Afrofuturism and finding Mom
by Friedrich Kunzmann
As the twenty-first century takes its course, a jazz musician's musical path seems to be becoming less and less linear. Derivatives of genres, shifting technological approaches and possibilities as well as a growing amount of proactivist political and social advocacy are increasingly gaining passage into this century's art form with deep American roots. In that respect and over twenty years deep into a fruitful career with now five albums as a leader under his belt, jny: Kansas City-native ...
read morePhilippe Coignet: The Fusion of Paris, Rio, and New York
by Jim Worsley
A thirteen-piece ensemble ensconced in the immersion of three unique and divergent cultures is enough to get your attention. Veteran musician Philippe Coignet [pictured above with saxophonist Sulaiman Hakim, on the right] set out to do just that, skillfully fusing the rhythms, harmonic structures, and variant melodicism of Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and New York City. The French guitarist, composer, and arranger let us in on the many-faceted process of creating this highly dense, and highly spirited creation.
read moreEddie Sauter: A Wider Focus
by Chris May
For many people, composer and arranger Eddie Sauter's reputation begins and ends with Stan Getz's Focus (Verve, 1962). The album is, indeed, a masterpiece. But it is only one of the pinnacles of Sauter's career, which started during the swing era. Nor is Focus Sauter's only collaboration with Getz. The partnership continued with the less widely celebrated Mickey One (MGM, 1965) and the even more obscure At Tanglewood (RCA Victor, 1967). Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Sauter ...
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Cleveland Time by Matthew Alec
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