Featured Jazz Articles
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Kendrick Scott: Making Walls into Bridges
Kendrick Scott authored one of the most compelling jazz releases of last year with A Wall Becomes a Bridge (Blue Note, 2019), a nuanced meditation on identity, history and prejudice, shepherded under the direction of producer and former band mate Derrick Hodge. Pairing gorgeous, searching improvisatory canvases with break beat interludes and samples from guest DJ Sundance, it's a record that feels unmistakably engaged in its moment, and marks the culmination of Scott's work with his quintet Oracle, unmistakably colored ...
read moreVijay Iyer at Sonic Laboratory
Vijay Iyer Sonic Laboratory, Sonic Arts Research Centre jny:Belfast, N. Ireland January 13-14, 2020 Queen's University's world-renowned Sonic Laboratory, at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in Belfast, got the new decade off to fine start, with two evenings in the company of Vijay Iyer. The first evening was a solo piano performance; the second, a presentation-cum-Q&A session. Iyer's concert came almost a year after the solo piano gig in SARC by Craig ...
read moreBob Lanzetti: Snarky Guitars, Part 2
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 For the second installment in our series on the guitarists of Snarky Puppy, we spoke with Bob Lanzetti. In addition to being the guitarist who logged the most miles with the band in its early days, he has also appeared on every recording SP has ever released. In 2017, Lanzetti independently released his debut solo album Whose Feet Are These That Are Walking? He is also a member of the ...
read moreJonathan Kreisberg: A Spirit Captured in Constant Motion
Over 3,000 miles separate jny: New York City from Europe. A distance that feels a little smaller every day--traveled in a virtual way in less than a second, even physically in a matter of only roughly 7 hours. Musicians especially are prone to crossing the pond rather frequently. New York-based guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg tends to make the trip a few times a year, either touring in an intimate duo set with Brazilian nylon-string guitarist Nelson Veras, with Lonnie Smith's trio, ...
read moreAdam Rudolph: Ragmala and Prototypical Music
Adam Rudolph has been seeking to push the boundaries of musical creativity for decades, developing a unique concept of composition, ensemble interaction, and conducting. As many writers have commented, his music resists critical commentary due to its prototypical nature. Said another way, Rudolph's music doesn't sound like anything else, and its antecedents are so varied that reducing the music to common labels such as “jazz" or “world music" quickly feels trite. The reality is Rudolph's music taps into ...
read moreMark Lettieri: Snarky Guitars, Part 1
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 For the first interview in a series on the Snarky Puppy guitar triumvirate, we spoke to Mark Lettieri. Unlike most of the original core members of the band, Lettieri did not come out of the jazz program at the University of North Texas. Oddly enough, he was a marketing and advertising major at nearby Texas Christian University who got hooked into the burgeoning jny: Dallas/Fort Worth gospel and R&B scene ...
read more2019: The Year in Jazz
The year 2019 was robust in many ways. International Jazz Day brought its biggest stage to Australia. An important but long-shuttered jazz mecca was revived in a coast-to-coast move. ECM Records celebrated a golden year. The music and its makers figured prominently on the big screen. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four new NEA Jazz Masters. The jazz world said farewell to one other who was among the many industry-associated musicians and figures who passed away during the ...
read moreFeatured Video
Balinese Butterflies by Frank Macchia & Brock AveryFeaturing the music of Frank Macchia
Contest Giveaway
ELIGIBLE WINNERS: 10 | DAYS REMAINING: 28
Prize: 10 copies of Rhythm Abstraction: Azure by Frank Macchia
Rhythm Abstraction: Azure is the first volume of new compositions created as a follow up to 2018’s release Rhythm Kaleidoscope. As with that release, Brock Avery improvised drum and percussion solos. Frank Macchia then composed music for woodwinds and orchestra to Brock’s creations. Azure is the first of three extended play albums of 6-7 compositions which will be released starting in January and followed up in April and July. In Azure we have a created a group of pieces that continue our quest for honoring the art of improvisation with a “stream-of-consciousness” sense of composition,...
Sign in to enter Sponsored by Frank Macchia
