[1][2][3] Allmusic reviewer Thom Jurek stated "Trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader Malachi Thompson has outdone himself with Blue Jazz ... Thompson and his notion of reinventing the manner in which a brass-driven big band explores the relationships between harmony and rhythm, and the more tenacious linguistic commonalities between bebop and free jazz have never been as articulately or gracefully rendered as they are in this pair of suites.

The spirit is raucous, joyous, and utterly sophisticated; it looks forward and back across 20 years of Thompson's own free bop amalgam, but also through the entirety of jazz history.

[4] In JazzTimes John Litweiler observed "Trumpeter Thompson solos at length throughout Blue Jazz.

But he cares less about hard bop’s flair and great formal sophistication-instead, his lines are diffuse, so inspired passages often jostle uninspired ideas ... There’s pleasure in Thompson’s soulful compositions and arrangements.

Like his friend Lester Bowie, he presents a variety of settings for his five trumpets and four trombones, with plenty of blues and backbeats".