Synopsis

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.

Description

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. How was it that it took off all over the United States early in the 20th century, despite the accepted wisdom that everything began in New Orleans? 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 important new sections on Latin Jazz, and the repertory movement.

Praise for the book!

‘The most outstanding single-volume history of Jazz around’ – Don Rose, Jazz Institute of Chicago

"When it comes to jazz, comparatively few attempts have been made to write a general history that fulfills these requirements...The most ambitious of them, Alyn Shipton's A New History of Jazz...reissued in an expanded and extensively revised edition. At over 800 closely packed pages, this is the most detailed historical survey of jazz yet to be published.
(Alyn Shipton) has done more than any previous commentator to cut through the thick underbrush of unsubstantiated opinion and provide a clearly written, factually trustworthy account of jazz's complex and controversial history."
Commentary Magazine Online, April 2007

Author: Andrew Clark

Description

Riffs and Choruses is a comprehensive new anthology of writing about jazz with edited selections on jazz origins, history, culture, style, myth, race, and related areas of language, literature, and film. The collection provides a more extensive range and topic focus than any other anthology in the area and is the ideal complement to jazz histories for students of music, jazz, and American and popular culture. A carefully prepared anthology and a suitable source book for students, this volume's quality and range of selections will also appeal to jazz buffs and the general reader.

Table Of Contents

Contents include:
Jean-Paul Sartre, I Discovered Jazz in America
Charles Mingus, I Don't See Nothin' Over There but Critics
Art Pepper and Louise Pepper, Heroin
Amiri Baraka, Where's the Music Going and Why
Leonard Feather, The Jazzman as Critic: The Blindfold Test
Langston Hughes, Bop
Billie Holliday, Traveling Light
Dizzy Gillespie, Beboppers … the Cult
Gunther Schuller, Origins and Beginnings of Jazz
Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition
Gary Giddins, Jazz Neoclassicism
Lawrence Levine, Jazz and American Culture
Geoff Dyer, Lester Young
Zora Neale Hurston, Story in Harlem Slang
Robert Gold, Jazz Talk
Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Jazz
Krin Gabbard, The Jazz Biopic
Jack Kerouac, Jazz of Beat Generation
Michael Harper, 'Bird Lives'
Nat Hentoff, Archie Shepp

About the Author
David Borgo is a saxophonist/composer/improviser, ethnomusicologist, and an Assistant Professor of Music in the Critical Studies and Experimental Practices Program at UCSD. He won first prize at the 1994 International John Coltrane Festival, has toured through Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, and has released four CDs as a leader and many more as a collaborator. His scholarly work appears in Black Music Research Journal, Journal of Consciousness Studies, and the edited volume Playing Changes: New Jazz Studies.

Product Description
 

Improvising music involves a leap into the uncharted, but its success relies on abilities honed through experience and on an unwavering commitment to the moment and context of performance. Improvisers synchronize their intentions and actions, all the while maintaining a keen sensitivity to and connection with the evolving group dynamic. At times, performance can evoke a swarmlike quality in which the individual parts are moving in very different ways, yet the musical whole evolves with a collective purpose.
 

Sync or Swarm provides a fascinating study of musical improvisation, using theories from cultural and cognitive studies and the emerging science of chaos and complexity. David Borgo explores his topic with a systems approach, as individual chapters expand outward in scope: from the perspective of a solo improviser (English saxophonist Evan Parker); to that of a group interacting in performance and over time (the Sam Rivers trio); to the network dynamics that bind together performers, listeners, educators, and promoters into a musical community. Each chapter is paired with a different aspect of the emerging sciences, including perspectives from the study of embodied cognition, nonlinear dynamics, self-organizing systems, social networks, and situated and distributed learning.

Sync or Swarm looks through the lens of contemporary science to illuminate the process and practice of improvising music and explores the ability of improvisation to offer a visceral engagement with these emerging scientific notions, ultimately offering us new ways of engaging with and shaping the discourse that surrounds music in general.

The book comes with a 74-minute CD featuring performances by Evan Parker, the Sam Rivers Trio, George Lewis, and the author's own improvising collective, Surrealestate.

Product Description
Pianist George Shearing is that rare thing, a European jazz musician who became a household name in the US, as a result of the 'Shearing sound' - the recordings of his historic late 1940s quintet. Together with his unique 'locked hands' approach to playing the piano, Shearing's quintet with guitar and vibraphone in close harmony to his own playing revolutionised small group jazz, and ensured that after seven years as Melody Maker's top British pianist, he achieved even greater success in America. His compositions have been recorded by everyone from Sarah Vaughan to Miles Davis, and his best known pieces include Lullaby of Birdland, She and Conception. His story is all the more remarkable because Shearing was born blind. His candid reminiscences include a behind the scenes experience of New York's 52nd Street in its heyday, as well as memories of a vast roll-call of professional colleagues that includes all the great names in jazz.

Review

This is a delightful book by one of the finest jazz pianists in the world. Born blind in Britain, in a poor neighborhood in London, who would have guessed that Mr. Shearing would end up becoming one of the true jazz greats? It's a remarkable story, made all the more enjoyable by his boundless sense of humor. The book is full of stories of practical jokes and delightful reminiscences of the other fine musicians Mr. Shearing has had the pleasure of playing with. There is not a huge amount of in-depth history or musical theory in here, this is a fun, light read, but Mr. Shearing's character shines through as does his relentless optimism about life. In a delightful touch, my copy of the book includes a braille sticker on the third page, which has Mr. Shearing's name on it. If you close your eyes and run your fingers over the sticker, and then try to imagine playing the piano, it makes Mr. Shearing's life and achievements all the more remarkable.

 Authors Oscar Peterson
Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson is, in the words of Quincy Jones, "one of the greatest musicians on the planet."

Richard Palmer
Richard Palmer writes regularly for Jazz Journal International and is series editor for Eastnote, Hull University Press's new imprint of jazz studies. He is the author of a number of books on jazz.

Description

 Oscar Peterson's career as a jazz pianist has spanned over five decades. During that time, he has recorded nearly 90 albums, won seven Grammys, and earned lifetime achievement awards from the Black Theatre Workshop, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. He has played with, and come to know, many of the genre's greatest contributors, including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Peterson chronicles his storied career in A Jazz Odyssey: The Life of Oscar Peterson.

Synopsis

Organized chronologically, A Jazz Odyssey takes readers through the development of jazz over the course of the late 20th century as seen by one of the jazz world's most celebrated figures. Peterson guides readers through the turbulent 1940s, when he was playing with the Johnny Holmes Orchestra in Montreal, and first met Norman Granz - the jazz producer who would launch his career. With Granz, he joined Jazz at the Philharmonic, playing at Carnegie Hall and touring all over North America. A Jazz Odyssey also brings readers to the birth of the Oscar Peterson Trio - where Peterson would hone his trademark arrangement of piano, guitar, and bass and work with the likes of Ray Brown, Barney Kessel, and Herb Ellis. Peterson describes the endless practice sessions and tireless work ethic that earned the group the reputation of the hardest working trio in the business. He also describes meeting his idol Art Tatum during the 1950s and touring with him in Jazz at the Philharmonic.

A Jazz Odyssey is a revealing, fascinating look inside the career and life of a jazz world luminary.

Synopsis

This biography tells the story of Bud Powell, one of the most significant pianists of modern jazz in the the style that became bop. He was influential in the 1940s and '50s, but suffered ill health and died aged only 42. Powell's story was subsequently made into the film "Round Midnight".

Review

"The book assumes the reader is familiar with the general history of bebop and figures such as Miles Davis, Diz, Monk, Mingus, Clifford Brown, etc. It was originally published in 1993, so this is a reprint. The book can be read in a couple of days. The research done for the book is good in terms of people who were interviewed. Bud was a genius but a very troubled on. This books explains, sometimes to the point of being painful to read, the details of Bud's mental troubles. It leaves one feeling sad but full of wonder at Bud's extraordinary musical powers and the recorded legacy he leaves for current and future generations. These two books are probably the sum total of all that will ever be known about Bud Powell. Combined with his recordings, especially from the period 1947 to 1953, it is hopefully enough to satisfy the generations as yet unborn who will certainly revere Bud as a great master." -- Robert D. Glover Jr.

"The Glass Enclosure offers a brief biographical sketch of Bud Powell as it traces the artistic triumphs of his early career that turned to tragedy as mental illness, alcoholism, and mistreatment by his handlers all diminished his musical gifts. I Think that the most useful part of the book is the discography. This is presented first as a critical analysis and then as a detailed chronology of Powell's recordings. Together, these two chapters provide a brief but comprehensive survey of Powell's career and are useful to anyone building a collection of his important recordings. The book also pulls together a number of photos of both Powell and the musicians who influenced him..." --S. A. Edwards-Silva

Synopsis: Buck Clayton, the American professional jazz player, in conjunction with Nancy Miller Elliott has produced an autobiography looking at his life and career. His visits to China and Europe are covered in detail as are his memories of Billie Holiday and Count Basie. Clayton's autobiography also gives a revealing picture of twentieth century American social history.

DVD's

Legends Of Jazz (With Ramsey Lewis)

Extraordinary performances from the highly acclaimed jazz TV series!
This dynamic CD/DVD collection features riveting performances by some of the biggest stars of the hit jazz series presented on one of the most dazzling audio/visual recordings of the decade. LEGENDS OF JAZZ marks the first time in over 40 years that jazz has been the focus of a network television show bringing to life America’s most masterful art form.

The collection consists of DVD's and an audio CD, both featuring 13 unique performances from the highly acclaimed LEGENDS OF JAZZ television series hosted by Ramsey Lewis. All performances from HD masters are presented in 16 x 9 widescreen featuring Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Special DVD features include Customize Your Own Playlist, Photo Gallery, Artist Biographies, Web Links and more.

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The ultimate gift for the ultimate jazz fan!

New from musician, author, journalist Ben Sidran, Talking Jazz includes an eighty page booklet with essays from writers, critics and musicians, classic photos from Lee Tanner, and 24 compact discs featuring conversations with 60 jazz greats, recorded during a five year period for Sidran’s award winning NPR program "Sidran On Record".

Ben Sidran is also the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed 2003 memoir A Life in the Music.

Talking Jazz Book

Now only $899.00  (You can pay with credit card in 3 easy installment payments!)