Download or read book Visions of Jazz written by Gary Giddins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-18 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit that have endeared his prose to Village Voice readers for decades, Giddins also widens the scope of jazz to include such crucial American musicians as Irving Berlin, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra, all primarily pop performers who are often dismissed by fans and critics as mere derivatives of the true jazz idiom. And he devotes an entire quarter of this landmark volume to young, still-active jazz artists, boldly expanding the horizons of jazz--and charting and exploring the music's influences as no other book has done.
Download or read book Weather Bird written by Gary Giddins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-15 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gary Giddins's Weather Bird is a brilliant companion volume to his landmark in music criticism, Visions of Jazz, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. More then 140 pieces, written over a 14-year period, are brought together for the first time in this superb collection of essays, reviews, and articles. Weather Bird is a celebration of jazz, with illuminating commentaryon contemporary jazz events, today's top muscicians, the best records of the year, and on leading figures from jazz's past. Readers will find extended pieces on Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Benny Carter, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson, Tony Bennett, and many others. Giddins includes a series of articles on the annual JVC Jazz Festival, which offers a splendid overview of jazz in the 1990s. Other highlights include an astute look at avant-garde music ("Parajazz") and his challenging essay, "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead?" which advances a theory about the way art is born, exploited, celebrated, and sidelined to the museum. A radiant compendium by America's leading music critic, Weather Bird offers an unforgettable look at the modern jazz scene.
Download or read book Jazz Visions written by Peter Ind and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2007 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lennie Tristano was one of jazz's most extraordinary innovators, possessing a superb piano technique and an awesome musical imagination. Unheralded by the general public, the blind pianist's work was revered by many jazz greats including the legendary Charlie Parker. Tristano's persuasive personality made him an ideal teacher, and he proved that (against the accepted theory of the time) jazz improvisation could be taught. His guidance played a big part in the development of many instrumentalists including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh and double-bassist Peter Ind. It is Ind's long, direct involvement with his subject that makes this such a revealing book: the story of an English musician going to New York to study with a neglected Jazz giant. In the process, Tristano's genius is examined and his reputation revalued, with Ind making a persuasive case for the pianist to be placed at the centre of jazz developments in the mid-20th century.
Download or read book Jade Visions written by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Best Book of 2009, Jazz Division, sponsored by AllAboutJazz-New York, 2009. Selected for "The Best of the Best" from University Presses, ALA Conference, 2010. Winner of the 2010 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research in Jazz, 2010. Jade Visions is the first biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential jazz musicians, bassist Scott LaFaro. Best known for his landmark recordings with Bill Evans, LaFaro played bass a mere seven years before his life and career were tragically cut short by an automobile accident when he was only 25 years old. Told by his sister, this book uniquely combines family history with insight into LaFaro's music by well-known jazz experts and musicians Gene Lees, Don Thompson, Jeff Campbell, Phil Palombi, Chuck Ralston, Barrie Kolstein, and Robert Wooley. Those interested in Bill Evans, the history of jazz, and the lives of working musicians of the time will appreciate this exploration of LaFaro’s life and music as well as the feeling they’ve been invited into the family circle as an intimate.
Download or read book The History of Jazz written by Ted Gioia and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997-11-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz is the most colorful and varied art form in the world and it was born in one of the most colorful and varied cities, New Orleans. From the seed first planted by slave dances held in Congo Square and nurtured by early ensembles led by Buddy Belden and Joe "King" Oliver, jazz began its long winding odyssey across America and around the world, giving flower to a thousand different forms--swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz-rock fusion--and a thousand great musicians. Now, in The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia tells the story of this music as it has never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history--Jelly Roll Morton ("the world's greatest hot tune writer"), Louis Armstrong (whose O-keh recordings of the mid-1920s still stand as the most significant body of work that jazz has produced), Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker's surgical precision of attack, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality, Pat Metheny's visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion, the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis, and the post-modernists of the Knitting Factory. Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. Gioia also evokes the many worlds of jazz, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the bawdy houses of New Orleans, the rent parties of Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the Cotton Club, the Savoy, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made. And as he traces the spread of this protean form, Gioia provides much insight into the social context in which the music was born. He shows for instance how the development of technology helped promote the growth of jazz--how ragtime blossomed hand-in-hand with the spread of parlor and player pianos, and how jazz rode the growing popularity of the record industry in the 1920s. We also discover how bebop grew out of the racial unrest of the 1940s and '50s, when black players, no longer content with being "entertainers," wanted to be recognized as practitioners of a serious musical form. Jazz is a chameleon art, delighting us with the ease and rapidity with which it changes colors. Now, in Ted Gioia's The History of Jazz, we have at last a book that captures all these colors on one glorious palate. Knowledgeable, vibrant, and comprehensive, it is among the small group of books that can truly be called classics of jazz literature.
Download or read book Visions of Jazz written by Gary Giddins and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rhythm a ning written by Gary Giddins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1986 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays consider the work of Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson, Tony Bennett, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Joe Turner, Art Pepper, Sonny Stitt, Woody Herman, Wynton Marsalis, and Frank Sinatra
Download or read book Visions of Jazz written by Gary Giddins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-22 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit that have endeared his prose to Village Voice readers for decades, Giddins also widens the scope of jazz to include such crucial American musicians as Irving Berlin, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra, all primarily pop performers who are often dismissed by fans and critics as mere derivatives of the true jazz idiom. And he devotes an entire quarter of this landmark volume to young, still-active jazz artists, boldly expanding the horizons of jazz--and charting and exploring the music's influences as no other book has done.
Download or read book New History of Jazz written by Alyn Shipton and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2004-03-30 with total page 965 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major update of the acclaimed and award-winning jazz history, Alyn Shipton challenges many of the assumptions that surround the birth and growth of jazz music. Shipton also re-evaluates the transition from swing to be-bop, asking just how political this supposed modern jazz revolution actually was. He makes the case for jazz as a truly international music from its earliest days, charting significant developments outside the USA from the 1920s onwards. All the great names in jazz history are here, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis and from Sidney Bechet to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. But unlike those historians who call a halt with the death of Coltrane in 1967, Shipton continues the story with the major trends in jazz over the last 40 years: free jazz, jazz rock, world music influences, and the re-emergence of the popular jazz singer. This new edition brings the book completely up-to-date, including such names as John Medeski, Diana Krall, Django Bates, and Matthias Ruegg. There are also impor¬tant new sections on Latin Jazz and the repertory movement.
Download or read book Rhythmic Illusions written by Gavin Harrison and published by Alfred Music Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Created for drumset players who find themselves in a creative rut, this book and audio package easily breaks down the mystery behind subdivisions, rhythmic modulation, rhythmic scales and beat displacement. The author makes the transition from mathematics to musicality with an easy and systematic approach.
Download or read book Collected Works written by Whitney Balliett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-04-15 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz critic for The New Yorker since 1957 and the author of some fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. "All first-rate criticism," he once wrote in a review, "first defines what we are confronting." He could as easily have been describing his own work. For nearly half a century, Balliett has been telling us, in his widely acclaimed pitch-perfect prose, what we are confronting when we listen to America's greatest—and perhaps only original—musical form. Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001 is a monumental achievement, capturing the full range and register of the jazz scene, from the very first Newport Jazz Festival to recent performances (in clubs and on CDs) by a rising generation of musicians. Here are definitive portraits of such major figures as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt, Martha Raye, Buddy Rich, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Bessie Smith, and Earl Hines—a list that barely scratches the surface. Generations of readers have learned to listen to the music with Balliett's graceful guidance. For five decades he has captured those moments during which jazz history is made. Though Balliett's knowledge is an encyclopedic treasure, he has always written as if he were listening for the first time. Since its beginnings in New Orleans at the turn of the century, jazz has been restlessly and relentlessly evolving. This is an art form based on improvising, experimenting, shapeshifting—a constant work in progress of sounds and tonal shades, from swing and Dixieland, through boogie-woogie, bebop, and hard bop, to the "new thing," free jazz, abstract jazz, and atonal jazz. Yet, in all its forms, the music is forever sustained by what Balliett calls a "secret emotional center," an "aural elixir" that "reveals itself when an improvised phrase or an entire solo or even a complete number catches you by surprise." Balliett's celebrated essays invariably capture the so-called "sound of surprise"—and then share this sound with general readers, music students, jazz lovers, and popular American culture buffs everywhere. As The Los Angeles Times Book Review has observed, "Few people can write as well about anything as Balliett writes about jazz."
Download or read book Straight Ahead written by Marty Khan and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jazz written by Gary Giddins and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the story of jazz as it has never been told before, this volume is a comprehensive, eloquent, scrupulously researched page-turner.
Download or read book Jazz Spoken Here written by Wayne Enstice and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Folk Visions and Voices written by Art Rosenbaum and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sampling virtually all of the old-time styles within the musical traditions still extant in north Georgia, Folk Visions and Voices is a collection of eighty-two songs and instrumentals, enhanced by photographs, illustrations, biographical sketches of performers, and examples of their narratives, sermons, tales, and reminiscences.
Download or read book Satchmo Blows Up the World written by Penny VON ESCHEN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism. Penny Von Eschen escorts us across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Both in concert and after hours, through political statements and romantic liaisons, these musicians broke through the government's official narrative and gave their audiences an unprecedented vision of the black American experience. In the process, new collaborations developed between Americans and the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East--collaborations that fostered greater racial pride and solidarity. Though intended as a color-blind promotion of democracy, this unique Cold War strategy unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture. Through the tales of these tours, Von Eschen captures the fascinating interplay between the efforts of the State Department and the progressive agendas of the artists themselves, as all struggled to redefine a more inclusive and integrated American nation on the world stage.
Download or read book Rent Party Jazz written by William Miller and published by Lee & Low Books. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In New Orleans in the 1930s, young Sonny Comeaux has to work before school to help his mother make ends meet. When Mama loses her job, Sonny is worried. Rent day is coming soon, and if they miss paying by just one day, the landlord will put them out on the street and sell off their belongings. Sonny wanders sadly through Jackson Square after school one day. His attention is caught by Smilin' Jack, a popular jazz musician. Sonny returns day after day, and soon finds himself explaining his problem to Smilin' Jack. What Smilin' Jack offers Sonny then--how to raise money for the rent while having the world's best party--changes both their lives forever.
