David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Triple Exposure

For most, a triangle is the shape that readily springs to mind when analyzing, discussing, and/or conceptualizing a trio. There's no mistaking roles and positions, after all, when there are three clearly defined sides. A circle, on the other hand, offers no beginning, no middle, and no end. In many... [ read more ]

Dave Noland: Ripple

Ripple is Dave Noland's second album as a leader, a self-produced endeavor that follows the tenor saxophonist's 2007 recording for the Jazz Excursion label, Nomad. With a mix of four original tunes and three standards, Ripple showcases Noland's considerable talents as a composer, arranger, and impro... [ read more ]

Concha Buika: I Feel the Warmer Side of Life When I Sing

When Spanish singer Concha Buika sings, songs uncoil from her like smoke. Whether she sings jazz classics, Jacquel Brel, Chavella Vargas songs or her own songs, there is a warm intimacy in her husky and seductive voice that easily envelops listeners. 15 years after her debut, Mestizuo, a record with...

Allison Philips Trio: Allison Philips Trio

Straddling her residencies between New York City and Amsterdam, trumpeter Allison Philips has been performing since age fourteen, eventually landing at venues that have included Le Poisson Rouge, Iridium, and The Jazz Standard. Leading a quartet, she played the 2014 Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland... [ read more ]

Lee Fields and The Expressions: Special Night

Pop culture often gets ahead of itself in writing off styles no longer in vogue among the younger set -even when tremendous music is still being made by the original creators.So while big band swing was considered hopelessly dated by the 1970s, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Harry James, and Les Brown wer... [ read more ]

Lucas Rochaix Quinteto: Manovuotometro

Argentinian guitarist m: Lucas Rochaix leads a quintet through his strong A debut recording on A Manovuotometro. A Rochaix composed the entire program, making an impression as both composer and performer. He favors a clean jazz guitar tone--reminiscent of someone like {{m: Peter Bernstei... [ read more ]

Hristo Vitchev: Charting His Own Way

m: Hristo Vitchev isn't a typical guitar hero. Supremely fluent with his instrument, the prolific composer and performer would rather communicate than show off complex technique. His albums and concerts are full of gorgeously understated performances that leave just the right amount of r...

: Christmas Roundup 2016: AguankA^3, Jeff Collins, and Vinnie Zummo

It's that time of year again. While some people genuinely love holiday records, others are just looking for some alternative to have available for self-defense against the onslaught of traditional holiday pop music. Regardless of what camp you're in, here are two new releases, plus three that are ne... [ read more ]

Lauren Bush: All My Treasures

Toronto-bred and now London-based m: Lauren Bush introduces herself --on her debut, All My Treasures--as a traditional, vivacious, and supremely confident vocalist, in the mode of Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O'Day. And the tunes she calls her treasures are mostly from the familiar end of th... [ read more ]

Scott Amendola vs. Wil Blades: Greatest Hits

Hardly the adversarial enterprise its billing implies, Greatest Hits is not keyboardist m: Wil Blades' first duo with a master percussionist: he recorded Shimmy (Amulet, 2012) with m: Billy Martin (of m: Medeski, Martin and Wood fame) in 2012. And any music lover who r... [ read more ]

Samantha Boshnack: A Musical World Without Boundaries

The city of Seattle has an eclectic relationship with jazz historically, in terms of innovation and embracing the notion of music without boundaries, of musical communities interacting and supporting each other. Samantha Boshnack fits perfectly into that musical paradigm. Whether writing and perform...

Take Five with Jared Pauley

About Jared Pauley Jared Pauley is a keyboardist, composer, producer and educator based out of New York City. Originally from Charleston, West Virginia, he started playing the guitar and the piano as a teenager and grew up on a healthy mix of The Doors, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Herbie Hancock, and...

Divergence Jazz Orchestra: Fake It Until You Make It

Fake It Until You Make It is the second recording by Australia's young and ebullient Divergence Jazz Orchestra, ably co-supervised by composer / arranger m: Jenna Cave and trombonist m: Paul Weber (our apology to Weber for not having named him as such in a review of the orche... [ read more ]

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol and Whatsnext?: Resolution

Turkish multi-instrumentalist, composer and ethnomusicologist m: Mehmet Ali Sanlikol has a wide variety of interests and clearly isn't afraid to think big. His second album, Resolution features two distinct ensembles: a 19-member jazz orchestra and a 12- member jazz combo. Each track, ex... [ read more ]

The Common Quartet: The Hive

The first spin of any particular recording is more often than not a cursory affair, a listening experience done without undivided attention; and The Hive, by the Brooklyn-based m: Common Quartet, under these conditions, seemed to have a West Coast cool jazz vibe. And saxophonist {{m: Set... [ read more ]

Steve Fidyk: Allied Forces

The military reference in this record's title is right on the mark. For over a quarter of a century, Steve Fidyk has held down the drum chair in the U.S. Army Blues (part of the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own"), an 18-piece ensemble that has performed America's original art form in a variet... [ read more ]

Eliane Amherd: Skylines

It's five years since Swiss-born, New School graduate singer/songwriter Eliane Amherd released Now And From Now On (Self Produced, 2011). The easy-on-the-ear melodies and upbeat rhythms from that debut album are still a central part of Skylines, but those extra five years show in Amherd's more matur... [ read more ]

Steve Heckman: Legacy: A Coltrane Tribute

Saxophonist m: Steve Heckman has spent a good deal of his career walking in the footsteps of saxophone giant John Coltrane, on CD offerings such as Search For Peace (Jazzed Media, 2014) and With John In Mind (World City Music, 2003). With that in mind, nobody has ever--and almost certain... [ read more ]

King Crimson: King Crimson: On (and Off) The Road

Sometimes the best music--and some of the best bands--are those that come from the most difficult of births. When King Crimson co-founder/guitarist m: Robert Fripp had the idea for a new band after dissolving the last incarnation of the '70s-era Crimson lineups seven years prior, it was... [ read more ]

Leonard Cohen: Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker

On first listen, Leonard Cohen's album You Want it Darker is a great album. On second listen, it could rank among his best and on third listen, it is obvious that it is the best contender for a Nobel Prize in literature in the next turn of awards. But so are the other albums that have preceded it. I... [ read more ]

Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones: Sweet Summer Sun and Havana Moon DVD/CD

It might be fair to say that any concert appearance by a band with fifty years plus history is an occasion in itself and doubly so (or more) to offer that observation about the m: Rolling Stones. Who would've guessed in 1963, 1973 or 1983 that the group would not only still be together in... [ read more ]

Jesper Lundgaard Trio: 2016

Danish bassist Jesper Lundgaard likens the making of the latest album with his trio to cooking a successful meal: "Eight new songs, two standards, sax, bass, guitar, three microphones, the recording machine, 12 hours playing, 12 hours mixing, 12 hours design stuff, 12 hours practical stuff, four wee... [ read more ]

Festen: Festen

Does the world really need another Scandinavian group from the Clean Feed stable? Well in the case of Festen, the answer is a resounding yes! Further confounding the by now tired Nordic tone stereotype, and even diverging from the outfits influenced by the 1960s avant-garde, this quartet comprising... [ read more ]

Tony Kadleck Big Band: Tony Kadleck Big Band: Around the Horn

One of the best and most unique things about All About Jazz is that discovering wonderful music is not limited to the narrow window around someone's release date. Whenever you stumble on something especially delicious, you can share your sentiments about it--and even if another reviewer has gotten t... [ read more ]

John Escreet: The Unknown

Stepping into the void without a map, compass, or guide can be an incredibly scary experience. But the very same scenario can also be liberating. Musicians freed of the shackles of preconceived ideas are the ones, after all, who speak the lingua franca of jazz--improvisation, that is--in its purest... [ read more ]

Mara Rosenbloom Trio: Prairie Burn

When thought outpaces action in music, the results are often staid and forgettable. Conversely, when thinking is suppressed in favor of ceaseless activity, the end results are often turbid, shambolic, and largely unlistenable. It's the power struggle between the two, along with the personalities con... [ read more ]

Martin Bejerano: Trio Miami

While nobody could successfully argue that the cost of playing with jazz legend m: Roy Haynes outweighs the benefits--a wealth of experience and time to connect with one of this music's greatest figures, tremendous exposure and opportunity on the performance front, time to build a group d... [ read more ]

Keith Jarrett: A Multitude of Angels

In the last solo concert tour of the first half of Keith Jarrett's career, the preeminent pianist of our time had, himself, recorded the performances across four Italian locations, on his digital audio tape machine. These would be the final public performances Jarrett would give for a number of year... [ read more ]

Shye Ben Tzur: Music For The Upliftment of the Soul

The Urdu word Junun denotes "Passion"and that is the perfect term to describing not just the breathtaking interplay and common purpose among the many diverse musicians taking part in this project, but also the deep spiritual love that emanates from this music and takes up everyone in the excitement...

Nikolett Pankovits: Magia

Vocalist m: Nikolett Pankovits was born in Hungary, but she found her musical direction in New York City melding Hungarian songs with Latin American rhythms. She has a lovely warm voice, with almost no vibrato. Magia (the Spanish and Hungarian word for magic) is an eclectic mix of tradit... [ read more ]

Glen Phillips: Swallowed by the New

It's not wholly fair to say Glen Phillips' is the sound of Toad the We Sprocket (with whom he still works when not going solo). But it was usually his insinuating voice and engaging way with words that shaped the group's sound and those virtues are readily apparent on this exotic sounding record Swa... [ read more ]

Allison Miller: Allison Miller and Honey Ear Trio: Lean; Swivel

Alison Miller may well be the renaissance woman of modern jazz. High-profile mainstream gigs like appearing with the band on Late Night with Seth Myers hardly hint at the diverse complexity of her collaborations and work under own name, most conspicuously including the band Boom Tic Boom. She parses... [ read more ]

Bill Cunliffe: A Day In the Life

Grammy award-winning arranger and pianist m: Bill Cunliffe has been on the cutting edge of large ensemble arranging and jazz trio performance for the past few decades. An avid composer, performer, film scorer, educator and author of several jazz piano books (and online workshops), Cunliff...

Carol Robbins: Taylor Street

In the context of jazz, the harp is a rare instrument indeed and there are proportionately few players in the field. Two exponents of this rare art are m: Alice Coltrane and the British harpist David Snell whose library composition "International Flight" is a jazz harp classic. A third is... [ read more ]

Jasmine Lovell-Smith's Towering Poppies: Yellow Red Blue

Soprano saxophonist/composer m: Jasmine Lovell-Smith released her excellent debut CD, Fortune Songs in 2012, two years after her move from her native New Zealand to New York. Four years later--after studies with Anthony Braxton and a move to Morelia, Mexico--she offers a follow-up effort... [ read more ]

Michiel Stekelenburg 5: Layers

Dutch guitarist/composer m: Michiel Stekelenburg expands his group to a quintet for his second album as a leader. Joined by saxophonist m: Efraim Trujillo, pianist m: Jeroen Van Vliet, bassist m: Guus Bakker, and drummer m: Pascal Vermeer h... [ read more ]