From the Minds of Jazz Musicians

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians
Author: David Schroeder
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2017-11-22
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1315282550

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians: Conversations with the Creative and Inspired celebrates contemporary jazz artists who have toiled, struggled and succeeded in finding their creative space. The volume was developed through transcribing and editing selected interviews with 35 jazz artists, conducted by the author between 2009 and 2012 in New York City, with a historical essay on each artist to provide context. The interviews feature musicians from a broad range of musical styles and experiences, ranging from Gerald Wilson, born in 1918, to Chris Potter, born in 1971. Topics range from biographical life histories to artists’ descriptions of mentor relationships, revealing the important life lessons they learned along the way. With the goal to discover the person behind the persona, the author elicits conversations that speak volumes on the creative process, mining the individualistic perspectives of seminal artists who witnessed history in the making. The interviews present the artists’ candid and direct opinions on music and how they have succeeded in pursuing their unique and creative lives.

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians, Volume II

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians, Volume II
Author: David Schroeder
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2023-10-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000966046

From the Minds of Jazz Musicians, Volume II is a follow-up to Volume I’s celebration of contemporary jazz artists who have toiled, struggled and succeeded in finding their creative space. Volume II was developed through transcribing and editing selected interviews with 29 jazz artists, conducted by the author since 2011, along with a historical essay on each artist. The interviews feature musicians from a broad range of musical styles and experiences, with their beginnings ranging from the 50s to the early 80s. Topics range from biographical life histories to descriptions of mentor relationships, revealing the important life lessons they learned along the way. With the goal to discover the person behind the persona, the author elicits conversations that speak of the creative process, mining the individualistic perspectives of seminal artists who witnessed history in the making. By comparing and contrasting each artist’s perspective to discover similarities in their career paths. these volumes are an important research tool for students and academics, offering direct information from leading figures in the jazz world.

American Musicians

American Musicians
Author: Whitney Balliett
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1986
Genre: Music
ISBN:

A collection of essays originally appearing principally in the New Yorker.

Notes and Tones

Notes and Tones
Author: Arthur Taylor
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2009-08-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0786751118

Notes and Tones is one of the most controversial, honest, and insightful books ever written about jazz. As a black musician himself, Arthur Taylor was able to ask his subjects hard questions about the role of black artists in a white society. Free to speak their minds, these musicians offer startling insights into their music, their lives, and the creative process itself. This expanded edition is supplemented with previously unpublished interviews with Dexter Gordon and Thelonious Monk, a new introduction by the author, and new photographs.Notes and Tones consists of twenty-nine no-holds-barred conversations which drummer Arthur Taylor held with the most influential jazz musicians of the ’60s and ’70s—including:

MUSIC AND THE MIND

MUSIC AND THE MIND
Author: Anthony Storr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1501122096

Why does music have such a powerful effect on our minds and bodies? It is the most mysterious and most tangible of all forms of art. Yet, Anthony Storr believes, music today is a deeply significant experience for a greater number of people than ever before. In this book, he explores why this should be so. Drawing on a wide variety of opinions, Storr argues that the patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving both structure and coherence to our feelings and emotions. It is because music possesses this capacity to restore our sense of personal wholeness in a culture which requires us to separate rational thought from feelings that many people find it so life-enhancing that it justifies existence.

Jazz in Search of Itself

Jazz in Search of Itself
Author: Larry Kart
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0300128193

In this engaging and astute anthology of jazz criticism, Larry Kart casts a wide net. Discussing nearly seventy major jazz figures and many of the music’s key stylistic developments, Kart sees jazz as a unique perpetual narrative—one in which musicians, their audiences, and the evolving music itself are intimately intertwined. Because jazz arose from the collision of specific peoples under particular conditions, says Kart, its development has been unusually immediate, visible, and intense. Kart has reacted to and judged the music in a similarly active, attentive, and personal manner. His involvement and attention to detail are visible in these pieces: essays that analyze the supposed return to tradition that the music of Wynton Marsalis has come to exemplify; searching accounts of the careers of Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, and Lennie Tristano; and writing that explores jazz’s relationship to American popular song and examines the jazz musician’s role as actual and would-be social rebel.

The Jazz of Physics

The Jazz of Physics
Author: Stephon Alexander
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2016-04-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0465098509

A spectacular musical and scientific journey from the Bronx to the cosmic horizon that reveals the astonishing links between jazz, science, Einstein, and Coltrane More than fifty years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander follows suit, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe. Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics-a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim — The Jazz of Physics reveals that the ancient poetic idea of the "Music of the Spheres," taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics. The Jazz of Physics will fascinate and inspire anyone interested in the mysteries of our universe, music, and life itself.

Before John Was a Jazz Giant

Before John Was a Jazz Giant
Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 125082270X

Before John Was a Jazz Giant is a 2009 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.

The Jazz Ear

The Jazz Ear
Author: Ben Ratliff
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2008-11-11
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1429956208

An intimate exploration into the musical genius of fifteen living jazz legends, from the longtime New York Times jazz critic Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece "Kind of Blue." Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts. In The Jazz Ear, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. In the process, he skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz—from horn blare to drum riff—is created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music. Playful and keenly insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.

So What

So What
Author: John Szwed
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2004-01-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0684859831

Based on interviews with family and friends, this account of the jazz great's life reveals the influence of Miles Davis' life on his work as well as the musician's persistent desire to re-invent himself.