Revisit favorite arrangements, discover new ones, and inspire your jazz ensemble with sound and adventurous music to play. This new book recommends and analyzes sixty-seven quality jazz arrangements recommended by eighteen of the foremost jazz experts in the field today, including directors and professors from high schools and colleges across the country, including the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Bloomington High School, Fiorello La Guardia Performing Arts High School, Juilliard School, Berklee College of Music, and Harvard University. Listed alphabetically, each analysis includes information on instrumentation, ranges, playability, and requirements for rendering the score. This book includes eight indexes of musical features to help instructors select repertoire and teaching topics, five indexes for quick navigation and reference, three appendices on survey data results, a glossary, a bibliography, a list of jazz ensemble music publishers, and a general index.

"Jean-Pierre was himself a musician, but his choice of instrument was a camera, which he never put away." - Michel Legrand "I am so happy to see Leloir's work published, because behind each image is a story - one that needs to be told and appreciated. Leloir was not just a photographer; instead he was a preserver of history. As a result, this book holds hundreds of stories that shine a light onto the lives of those who live in these pages. Leloir had a unique ability to preserve an entire atmosphere and its surrounding emotions. between the four corners of a picture, but beyond his talent as a photographers, he presented himself not as paparazzi, but a friend. He and my other brother Herman Leonard were two of a kind; they had the same passion for photography and an endless supply of vision." - Quincy Jones This book gives ample proof of Jean-Pierre Leloir's amazing ability to immortalise performers and to capture candid moments at the airport, backstage, and in the dressing rooms of the most legendary Paris jazz and concert venues: "I loved the people I photographed, so I made myself as available, yet as discreet as possible", he used to say. "I never wanted to be a paparazzi. I wanted them to forget my presence so I could catch those little unexpected moments." The selection of photographs showcased here has been carefully selected from Leloir's immense catalogue. Many of the images have never been previously published before, and can be easily catalogued as 'atypical' shots, as the musicians were captured primarily in spontaneous situations, away from the fanfare of the stage. Text in English with an introduction in English, French and Spanish.

The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as 'possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.' A native of Lee's Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews, and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still draws inspiration and strength.

Like most ground-breaking art forms, contemporary creative music is rarely understood or accepted in its own time, and for those reasons, can largely go unheard. Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde aims to give today's brightest music innovators due recognition and respect, celebrating their work and creativity. Through personal interviews, artists such as Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Dave Holland, Bill Frisell, David Murray, and John Zorn to name just a few offer clear, frank discussions about music, creativity, work, society, culture, current events, and more. Author Lloyd Peterson has hand picked these artists specifically for their ability to express themselves through their own creative voices and transcend their art form through the strength of their own ingenious spirit. Their music eschews categorization, genre, or style, and the book necessarily takes a broader view of jazz, tapping into the inventive aspect that is difficult to describe or teach, and is rarely discussed. By allowing the innovators an opportunity to speak for themselves, readers are afforded a clearer sense of their attitudes and approaches, their ways of working, and their views of contemporary music and society.

Comprehensive chronological survey and analysis of every recording on which Louis Armstrong played during the period 1923 to 1928. Armstrong's immense impact on the evolution of jazz is found primarily in these early recordings, and Brooks's close examination of this period is important, as much of this influence becomes obscured by later recordings. Glossary, bibliography, and title index.

"Both as a person and as a musician, he was number one in my book." -Benny Carter Bassist George Duvivier (1920-1985) was one of the most universally respected musicians in jazz. His impeccable musicianship graced the big bands in the 1940s and led to musical associations with virtually every important jazz and popular artist. His prolific recording career spanned all styles of music, from Eubie Blake to Eric Dolphy, Billie Holiday to Barry Manilow. Duvivier was a most astute and articulate observer of the musical scene. A large part of this book is devoted to his own reflections on growing up in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, the evolution of the bass, life in the commercial studios, and his memories of close associates-Coleman Hawkins, Jimmie Lunceford, Bud Powell, Lena Horne, and many others. In addition, twenty of Duvivier's colleagues, including Louie Bellson, Ron Carter, Milt Hinton, Ed Shaughnessy, Arthur Taylor, and Joe Wilder, have contributed, covering a variety of musical and social issues, as well as providing a loving portrait of an extraordinary artist. Duvivier's musical style is discussed by David Chevan, who has included transcriptions of several solos. An extensive discography/solography traces Duvivier's incredibly diverse recording career. With dozens of previously unpublished photos.

The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big band jazz during the Great Depression. That a prosperous African American audience dominated by those involved with the coal industry was there for jazz tours would seem equally improbable. "Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942" shows that, contrary to expectations, black Mountaineers flocked to dances by the hundreds, in many instances traveling considerable distances to hear bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, and Chick Webb, among numerous others. Indeed, as one musician who toured the state would recall, "All the bands were goin' to West Virginia."

The comparative prosperity of the coal miners, thanks to New Deal industrial policies, was what attracted the bands to the state. This study discusses that prosperity as well as the larger political environment that provided black Mountaineers with a degree of autonomy not experienced further south. Author Christopher Wilkinson demonstrates the importance of radio and the black press both in introducing this music and in keeping black West Virginians up to date with its latest developments. The book explores connections between local entrepreneurs who staged the dances and the national management of the bands that played those engagements. In analyzing black audiences' aesthetic preferences, the author reveals that many black West Virginians preferred dancing to a variety of music, not just jazz. Finally, the book shows bands now associated almost exclusively with jazz were more than willing to satisfy those audience preferences with arrangements in other styles of dance music.

(Book). Jazz on Film reviews, analyzes, and rates virtually every appearance of a jazz musician or singer on film. After presenting a detailed essay on the history of jazz on film and television, Yanow reviews and rates 1,300 movies, documentaries, shorts, videos, and DVDs. This book lets readers know how to view the jazz legends and the greats of today, and what DVDs and videos are worth acquiring. Each film is a given a 1 to 10 rating and a concise description of its contents and value. Jazz on Film covers the entire jazz field, from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wynton Marsalis, and Diana Krall.

The Unsung Songwriters is dedicated to a period in the history of American music that author Warren Vache calls the "Golden Age of Songwriting," and to the men and women who made it great. Contrary to the widely held opinion that most of our hit and standard songs were composed by a handful of top writers Berlin, Gershwin, Kern, Porter, and Rodgers the fact is that the vast majority of them were written by relatively unknown composers. In this definitive reference work to the "unsung songwriters," you will find Al Neiberg, the author of "It's the Talk of the Town," Maceo Pinkard, the mind behind "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Sugar," Harry Woods for "Try a Little Tenderness," J. Fred Coots for "You Go to My Head," and many more.

What do Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Cassandra Wilson, and Ani DiFranco have in common? In Highway 61 Revisited, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro says the answer is jazz--not just the musical style, but jazz's distinctive ambiance and attitudes.
As legendary bebop rebel Charlie Parker once put it, "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Unwinding that Zen-like statement, Santoro traces how jazz's existential art has infused outstanding musicians in nearly every wing of American popular music--blues, folk, gospel, psychedelic rock, country, bluegrass, soul, funk, hiphop--with its parallel process of self-discovery and artistic creation through musical improvisation. Taking less-traveled paths through the last century of American pop, Highway 61 Revisited maps unexpected musical and cultural links between such apparently disparate figures as Louis Armstrong, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Herbie Hancock; Miles Davis, Lenny Bruce, The Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. Focusing on jazz's power to connect, Santoro shows how the jazz milieu created a fertile space "where whites and blacks could meet in America on something like equal grounds," and indeed where art and entertainment, politics and poetry, mainstream culture and its subversive offshoots were drawn together in a heady mix whose influence has proved both far-reaching and seemingly inexhaustible.
Combining interviews and original research, and marked throughout by Santoro's wide ranging grasp of cultural history, Highway 61 Revisited offers readers a new look at--and a new way of listening to--the many ways jazz has colored the entire range of American popular music in all its dazzling profusion.

How the claim to jazz knowledge forges community and forms an understanding of canon Ken Prouty argues that knowledge of jazz, or more to the point, claims to knowledge of jazz, are the prime movers in forming jazz's identity, its canon, and its community. Every jazz artist, critic, or fan understands jazz differently, based on each individual's unique experiences and insights. Through playing, listening, reading, and talking about jazz, both as a form of musical expression and as a marker of identity, each aficionado develops a personalized relationship to the larger jazz world. Through the increasingly important role of media, listeners also engage in the formation of different communities that not only transcend traditional boundaries of geography, but increasingly exist only in the virtual world. The relationships of "jazz people" within and between these communities is at the center of Knowing Jazz. Some groups, such as those in academia, reflect a clash of sensibilities between historical traditions. Others, particularly online communities, represent new and exciting avenues for everyday fans, whose involvement in jazz has often been ignored. Other communities seek to define themselves as expressions of national or global sensibility, pointing to the ever-changing nature of jazz's identity as an American art form in an international setting. What all these communities share, however, is an intimate, visceral link to the music and the artists who make it, brought to life through the medium of recording. Informed by an interdisciplinary approach and approaching the topic from a number of perspectives, Knowing Jazz charts a philosophical course in which many disparate perspectives and varied opinions on jazz can find common ground.

Features Lester Young, early black recording, Earl Hines, jazz and bop harmony.

Technology and the Stylistic Evolution of the Jazz Bass traces the stylistic evolution of jazz from the bass player's perspective. Historical works to date have tended to pursue a 'top down' reading, one that emphasizes the influence of the treble instruments on the melodic and harmonic trajectory of jazz. This book augments that reading by examining the music's development from the bottom up. It re-contextualizes the bass and its role in the evolution of jazz (and by extension popular music in general) by situating it alongside emerging music technologies. The bass and its technological mediation are shown to have driven changes in jazz language and musical style, and even transformed creative hierarchies in ways that have been largely overlooked. The book's narrative is also informed by investigations into more commercial musical styles such as blues and rock, in order to assess how, and the degree to which, technological advances first deployed in these areas gradually became incorporated into general jazz praxis. Technology and the Jazz Bass reconciles technology more thoroughly into jazz historiography by detailing and evaluating those that are intrinsic to the instrument (including its eventual electrification) and those extrinsic to it (most notably evolving recording and digital technologies). The author illustrates how the implementation of these technologies has transformed the role of the bass in jazz, and with that, jazz music as an art form.

.,."that rare thing, a piece of careful scholarship that is also superby entertaining...Starr, who is president of Oberlin College and has been associated with the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, is also a professional jazz musician, and his knowledgeable affection for the music shines through the text." - Andrea Lee, New York Times Book Review

The development of jazz and swing in the African-American community in Los Angeles in the years before the second World War received a boost from the arrival of a significant numbers of musicians from Chicago and the southwestern states. In Swingin' on Central: African-American Jazz in Los Angeles, a new study of that vibrant jazz community, music historian and jazz journalist Peter Vacher traveled between Los Angeles and London over several years in order to track down key figures and interview them for this oral history of one of the most swinging jazz scenes in the United States. Vacher recreates the energy and vibrancy of the Central Avenue scene through first-hand accounts from such West Coast notables as trumpeters Andy Blakeney , George Orendorff, and McLure "Red Mack" Morris; pianists Betty Hall Jones, Chester Lane, and Gideon Honore, saxophonists Chuck Thomas, Jack McVea, and Caughey Roberts Jr; drummers Jesse Sailes, Red Minor Robinson, and Nathaniel "Monk" McFay; and others. Throughout, readers learn the story behind the formative years of these musicians, most of whom have never been interviewed until now. While not exactly headliners-nor heavily recorded-this community of jazz musicians was among the most talented in pre-war America. Arriving in Los Angeles at a time when black Americans faced restrictions on where they could live and work, jazz artists of color commonly found themselves limited to the Central Avenue area. This scene, supplemented by road travel, constituted their daily bread as players-with none of them making it to New York. Through their own words, Vacher tells their story in Los Angeles, offering along the way a close look at the role the black musicians union played in their lives while also taking on jazz historiography's comparative neglect of these West Coast players. Music historians with a particular interest in pre-bop jazz in California will find much new material here as Vacher paints a world of luxurious white nightclubs with black bands, ghetto clubs and after-hours joints, a world within a world that resulted from the migration of black musicians to the West Coast.

Dark Magus is a warts-and-all look at the real Miles Davis. As told by his son, this book strips away the public perception of Davis and gets down to the realities of his personality, his relationships, and his many quirks. Dark Magus details this enigmatic superstar's Jekyll and Hyde behavior: his swings between sobriety and prodigious drug use; his tender family moments and his destructive selfishness; his search for marital stability and his obsession with young women; his exalted musical talent and his ever-present personal demons. The author also delves into Davis' relationships with artists such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, as well as his role as a mentor to young musicians, his obsession with sports, the ups and downs of his career, and the family's turmoil over his final will. "This book is a brilliant and engaging revelation of Miles' character through the recollections of his oldest son. It's a book about a legendary musician who was one of my closest friends, and a book that's second to none." - Clark Terry

Someone Out There is Listening tells the story of Eddie Hazell, a jazz guitar player and vocalist with a unique style unmatched in the last half century. Hazell had a combination of good looks, skills, and style. He was a '50s guy - heady, hopeful, and a believer in the system even though it didn't always work for him. As a rising star, Hazell had great bookings across the country and Canada. He was compared to some of the top stars in the music business, columnists and critics gave him solid reviews and high praise for his performances, and disc jockeys played his recordings and were eager for more. People who knew him had no doubt that he would make the big time - it was only a matter of when. Eddie Hazell's story is about the times and the vicissitudes of the music business, and what it took to accomplish one's goals. Eddie strove not only for success, but to persevere during bad times and personal hardships, while still maintaining artistic integrity and enjoyment of life. Eddie Hazell went the full mile; he didn't leave anything out. The celebrated music producer George Martin once said: "The music business is littered with shooting stars that burned out. So pace yourselves; it's not a sprint. It is more like a marathon. Remember you have to keep running." Eddie Hazell's life is a musical marathon - reading about it is like running with him and the many other runners in his field.

Unlike most jazz arranging books, which focus on the rudiments of arranging (transposition, ranges, notation, and so forth), this book deals with the real substance of arranging for small jazz ensembles, in addition to the rudiments. Rinzler devotes a chapter to each of the following arranging elements: intros, endings, accents/breaks/dynamics, time and tempo changes, style changes, form, rhythm section procedure, harmony and orchestration. Over a hundred musical examples demonstrate arranging techniques that apply to 147 jazz standards and modern compositions.

Features Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Count Basie, and John Coltrane.

New Jazz Conceptions: History, Theory, Practice is an edited collection that captures the cutting edge of British jazz studies in the early twenty-first century, highlighting the developing methodologies and growing interdisciplinary nature of the field. In particular, the collection breaks down barriers previously maintained between jazz historians, theorists and practitioners with an emphasis on interrogating binaries of national/local and professional/amateur. Each of these essays questions popular narratives of jazz, casting fresh light on the cultural processes and economic circumstances which create the music. Subjects covered include Duke Ellington's relationship with the BBC, the impact of social media on jazz, a new view of the ban on visiting jazz musicians in interwar Britain, a study of Dave Brubeck as a transitional figure in the pages of Melody Maker and BBC2's Jazz 625, the issue of 'liveness' in Columbia's Ellington at Newport album, a musician and promoter's views of the relationship with audiences, a reflection on Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Eric Hobsbawm as jazz critics, a musician's perspective on the oral and generational tradition of jazz in a British context, and a meditation on Alan Lomax's Mr. Jelly Roll, and what it tells us about cultural memory and historical narratives of jazz.

A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com," a website where "cybervisitors" can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of "S" words that reveal a "spectacular story " With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The "S" Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

Jazz is a music formed from a combination of influences. In its infancy, jazz was a melting pot of military brass bands, work songs and field hollers of the United States slaves during the 19th century, European harmonies and forms, and the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean. Later, the blues and the influence of Spanish and French Creoles with European classical training nudged jazz further along in its development. Jazz has always been a world-music in the sense that music from around the globe has been embraced and incorporated. The Historical Dictionary of Jazz covers the history of Jazz through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,500 cross-referenced entries on significant jazz performers, band leaders, bands, venues, record labels, recordings, and the different styles of jazz. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone seeking a broader understanding of the history of jazz and the connections within the genre.

1) This is the only book that is written as a coursebook for Improv, and directed to the college classroom. 2) Brings various aspects of the jazz learning process together -- practicing scales, chord arpeggios and melodic motives in 12 keys, along with the assimilation of the rhythmic nature of jazz and its related forms of (primarily African American) music -- in one systematic, organized and easy-to-assimilate manner. 3) Chapters are organized with: - a paragraph or two explaining a particular scale/harmonic basis or a common form used in jazz repertoire - suggested exercises, from basic scales to advanced melodic motives taken directly from recordings - a repertoire list that employs the harmonic, melodic or formal aspects being discussed in each chapter - concludes with a transcription of an improvised solo by a jazz master which illustrates how theory is put into practice. 4) Includes supplementary materials such as recordings of the transcribed solos, relevant Aebersold Play-Along recordings, and fake books