Jazz Primer

What is jazz? According Wynton Marsalis jazz is music that swings. According to Pat Metheny jazz is not the music of Kenny G. According to Webster's jazz is characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre. Personally, I prefer the definition found in the ...

I can't think of an artist who has had greater influence over jazz the past forty years than Miles Davis. For music, style, language and business, Davis was at the top of the game. One to never step aside and let critics dissuade or impede his aspirations, he constantly retooled his band with the brightest most ...

O.K., so you're trying to build up a nice little jazz recording library for yourself and you want to be able to do it without breaking the bank or facing dirty looks from your spouse for blowing the vacation budget on the latest round of CDs. Well, this writer has been there and done that (including ...

"During the last half-century, New York's preeminence in the jazz world has faced a serious challenge only once. For a brief period following World War II, California captured the imagination of jazz fans around the world. “West Coast jazz" suddenly became a catchword, a fad, a new thing." ~ Ted Gioia , Author of West Coast ...

The AAJ guide to getting started with jazz

Starting a jazz collection is something every well-rounded music listener considers. Unfortunately, most folks have trouble getting started because they don't know where to begin. Do you start chronologically with Louis Armstrong or do you jump right into the new stuff--how about the '50's and '60's? Everyone is ...

Ask for the best 10 or 100 albums of all time and you'll get the usual suspects: Kind of Blue, Saxophone Colossus, Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens, Jazz at Massey Hall, etc. Without a doubt, these albums have earned their acclaim and no collection would be satisfying without them. But what about the great, less well-known, ...

Ask for the best 10 or 100 albums of all time and you'll get the usual suspects: Kind of Blue, Saxophone Colossus , Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens , Jazz at Massey Hall, etc. Without a doubt, these albums have earned their acclaim and no collection would be satisfying without them. But what about the great, ...

Date: 22-Dec-1998 15:40:01 From: Stephen ( djangorhinehart@yahoo.com ) The best way to introduce young people to jazz is by exposing them to it. Just be careful to start with what they will find cool. Not every one likes Live in Seatle so you should probobly start with some new swing or salsa. ...

Date: 17-Apr-1998 12:57:44 From: Chris S ( cslawec9@idt.net ) There probably isn't one, or even one dozen, particular place(s) to start. The beautiful thing about jazz is often one of the most frustrating things about it too--it is just so flexible and stylistically varied. I have a friend who really digs King ...

By Tim Price

When John Coltrane died in 1967, he left behind a huge legacy of recorded music. Making sense of it all is an enormous task. Check out our suggestions for six views of Trane's last ten years. With Blue Train , John Coltrane not only firmly established his own voice on the tenor saxophone, ...

We get many calls from jazz listeners just like yourself asking us for recommendations on what recordings are good. Our catalog represents our top 100 historically important jazz recordings. Our new program lets you pick the recordings that you want and during the next year or so we will send them to you without having to ...

Many people seem to want to know about recordings they should have. This is one attempt to answer this sort of question. I don't think it is at all satisfactory, since there are thousands of recordings that are necessary. This list was generated by some of the subscribers to the Jazz-L mailing list, compiled by Eric ...

What is jazz? Those three words form one of the toughest questions in music. Ask a hundred people and you are likely to get as many different answers.

Few things have given me more pleasure in life than listening to the music we call jazz. Even after hearing several thousand recordings in over 15 years and ...

Jazz? Ask for a definition of this music, and you're bound to start a volatile discussion.

My grandfather will tell you with a quickly drawn breath that jazz is noise, non-structured and irreverent of the conventional wisdom musicians have learned from centuries of practice. His thoughts on jazz conjure images of a plague set upon the ...