(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 colourful, personal story of an early jazz legend First published in 1971 and now lovingly reissued this autobiography is a valuable, entertaining, and sometimes risque firsthand account of early New Orleans jazz by one of the pioneers of the string bass. In transcribed interviews, Foster describes the milieu in which early jazz developed. With great attention to detail and an outspoken narrative style he puts the record straight, correcting many jazz critics and historians in the process. Colorful anecdotes bring to life legends of early jazz such as Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden, and King Oliver. A generous collection of rare photographs complement this dramatic and fascinating story.

Something to Live For investigates and analyses the entire oeuvre of Billy Strayhorn, who, for over 30 years, was the musical collaborator of Duke Ellington. Nearlly seventy music examples, drawn directly from his original autograph scores, provide insight into the development of Strayhorn's own musical language and style. The author has found hitherto unknown works that permit a closer examination of the composer's development. The author addresses the question of the perceived interchangeability of Strayhorn's and Ellington's styles and argues for each having a unique style. With this work, Strayhorn is detached from Ellington's shadow and readers are given pointers to the most salient features to distinguish their works.

An Unsung Cat explores the life and music of jazz saxophonist, Warne Marsh. Safford Chamberlain follows the artist from his start in youth bands like the Hollywood Canteen Kids and The Teen-Agers through his studies under Lennie Tristano, his brilliant playing of the 1950s, his disappearance from public view in the 1960s, his re-emergence in the 1970s, and his belated recognition in the 1980s as one of the finest tenor players of the post-World War II era. Through interviews with the Marsh family and friends, Chamberlain offers an inside view of Marsh's private life, including his struggles with drug abuse. Detailed analysis of outstanding performances complements the personal story, while an extensively researched discography and photographs reveal the public and private face of this unique performer. In addition to the book, Scarecrow is pleased to offer a companion compact disc, released by Storyville Records. The tracks on the CD provide a representative sampling of Marsh's best work, while providing a historical overview of his development, from the beginning track, "Apple Honey," which is a private, low-fidelity tape from an NBC radio broadcast in 1945 of the Hoagy Carmichael Show, to the final track, "Sweet and Lovely," captured months before his death in 1987.

Now in paperback! Showcases professional work in the arena of jazz theory. Among the contributors are scholars of jazz theory as well as musicians, including four of the founding members of the jazz section of the Society for Music Theory. The articles offer a close analysis of a wide variety of jazz styles and span the years from the 1920s to the 1960s. Feature articles include analyses of the music of Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, an overview of jazz theory that examines its history and purpose, a discussion of linear intervallic patterns in the jazz repertory, and a review of scientific analyses of jazz microrhythms. Of great interest to jazz theorists, performers, educators and critics.

Between the world wars, Paris welcomed not only a number of glamorous American expatriates, including Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also a dynamic musical style emerging in the United States: jazz. Roaring through cabarets, music halls, and dance clubs, the upbeat, syncopated rhythms of jazz soon added to the allure of Paris as a center of international nightlife and cutting-edge modern culture. In Making Jazz French, Jeffrey H. Jackson examines not only how and why jazz became so widely performed in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s but also why it was so controversial.Drawing on memoirs, press accounts, and cultural criticism, Jackson uses the history of jazz in Paris to illuminate the challenges confounding French national identity during the interwar years. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of France's most cherished notions of "civilization." At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson reveals some of the ways a musical form created in the United States became an international phenomenon and acquired new meanings unique to the places where it was heard and performed.

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.

.,."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

Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella Fitzgerald is considered a classic in jazz literature. Drawing on original documents, interviews, and new information, Nicholson draws a complete picture of Fitzgerald's professional and personal life. Along with Billie Holiday, she virtually defined the female voice in jazz, and countless others followed in her wake and acknowledged her enormous influence. Beginning as a singer with the Chick Webb band, Fitzgerald scored her first hits with jazzy novelties, and proved her mettle when Webb suddenly died and she found herself the band's de facto leader. When the big band era ended after World War II, she remade herself as a popular balladeer, recording a famous series of Songbooks that helped establish the classic American song repertory. Through the ups-and-downs of her romantic life, Fitzgerald proved a strong survivor, weathering changes in musical taste and stules to become an American icon who transcended genre. Fitzgerald rarely gave interviews on personal subjects, and discussed her life in only the most general terms. Even her birth date was widely misreported until Nicholson unearthed her original birth certificate. Through painstaking research and personal interviews, Stuart Nicholson offers the first full picture of this singer's life and times. Also includes two 8-page inserts.

Austral Jazz: The Localization of a Global Music Form in Sydney proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding local jazz communities as they develop outside the United States, demonstrating such processes in action by applying the framework to a significant period of the history of jazz in Sydney, Australia after 1973. This volume introduces the notion of 'Austral Jazz,' coined in order to reset the focus on supranational conceptions of jazz expressions in the southwestern Pacific. It makes the case for Austral Jazz chronologically across six chapters that discuss, interpret and critique major events and seminal recordings, tracing the development of the Austral shift from a pre-Austral period prior to 1973. Austral Jazz presents a fresh approach to understanding the development of jazz communities, and while its focus is on the Sydney scene after 1973, the 'Austral' theory can be applied to creative communities globally. A creative shift took place in Sydney in the early 1970s, which led to the flourishing of a new kind of jazz-based expression, one that reflected Australia's increasingly globalized and multicultural outlook. This study is timely, and it builds on the work of local jazz researchers. Historiographical understandings of global developments in jazz can be understood within a framework of four overarching narratives: The 'birth and belonging' narrative; the 'spread and adaptation' narrative; the 'pluralization by localization' narrative; and the 'self-fashioning of the already local' narrative.

Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington and His World offers a fresh look at this legendary composer. The first biography of the composer written by a fellow musician and African-American, the book traces Ellington's life and career in terms of the social, cultural, political, and economic realities of his times. Beginning with his birth in Washington, DC, through his first bands and work at the legendary Cotton Club, to his final great extended compositions, this book gives a thorough introduction to Ellington's music and how it was made. It also illuminates his personal life because, for Ellington, music was his life and his life was a constant inspiration for music. When A. H. Lawrence was a young trombone player in the '40s, he met Ellington and befriended the elder musician. From that point forward, he closely followed Ellington's career. Because of his deep love for Ellington's music, he began interviewing many of the stars of Ellington's early bands, hoping to capture from them, before they passed away, their memories and insights. Drawing on these interviews with legendary musicians-including many who worked with Ellington from his earliest days, such as drummer Sonny Greer, who played with Ellington's first bands in the '20s and who continued in his bands through the early '50s-the book offers a rounded and human portrait of the great composer and musician. Ellington's son Mercer was particularly forthcoming, offering new information about his childhood and experiences working with his father. The insights into the family that he shared have not previously been published. The result is a thorough biography that offers unique insights into Ellington: the man and his music. This fresh and balanced portrayal will undoubtedly add to our understanding of one of America's greatest artists and bring renewed attention to his distinguished body of work.

The study of jazz comes of age with this anthology. One of the first books to consider jazz outside of established critical modes, Jazz Among the Discourses brings together scholars from an array of disciplines to question and revise conventional methods of writing and thinking about jazz. Challenging "official jazz histories," the contributors to this volume view jazz through the lenses of comparative literature; African American studies; music, film, and communication theory; English literature; American studies; history; and philosophy. With uncommon rigor and imagination, their essays probe the influence of various discourses-journalism, scholarship, politics, oral history, and entertainment-on writing about jazz. Employing modes of criticism and theory that have transformed study in the humanities, they address questions seldom if ever raised in jazz writing: What are the implications of building jazz history around the medium of the phonograph record? Why did jazz writers first make the claim that jazz is an art? How is an African American aesthetic articulated through the music? What are the consequences of the interaction between the critic and the jazz artist? How does the improvising artist navigate between chaos and discipline? Along with its companion volume, Representing Jazz, this versatile anthology marks the arrival of jazz studies as a mature, intellectually independent discipline. Its rethinking of conventional jazz discourse will further strengthen the position of jazz studies within the academy.Contributors. John Corbett, Steven B. Elworth, Krin Gabbard, Bernard Gendron, William Howland Kenney, Eric Lott, Nathaniel Mackey, Burton Peretti, Ronald M. Radano, Jed Rasula, Lorenzo Thomas, Robert Walser

(Book). The creator of the unforgettable "Girl from Ipanema" tenor sax tone, this son of Ukranian immigrants took his unique sound through five decades of swing, cool, bossa and beyond. From Getz's teenage gigs with Dorsey, Goodman and Stan Kenton, fame with Woody Herman, years as a masterful bandleader, and struggles with drugs and the law, this biography tells the bittersweet story of one of our most beloved jazz musicians. This is the first book to focus on Getz's musical legacy, exploring the lightness of touch, lyricism and warm glow that marked his sound. It also gives insight into his skills as a consummate improviser, capable of playing with a musical, tonal and emotional range matched by few other musicians. "We'd all sound like that if we could." John Coltrane on Stan Getz

The first study of the performance practice, repertoire and context of the modern 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Whereas the British 'brass band' originated in the nineteenth century and rapidly developed into a nationwide working-class movement, the perceived modern 'brass ensemble' has a less clear foundation and identity. This book is the first to focus exclusively on the performance, practice, repertoire and context of the 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Following World War II, the brass quintet and other orchestral groupings emerged in the United States and Europe, with musical customs established by professional players playing orchestral instruments. These groups initially played a combination of the music of Gabrieli and his contemporaries as well as newly commissioned works. By the late twentieth century, however, repertory spanned works by Elliott Carter, Maxwell Davies and Lutoslawski, together with music that integrated jazz, commercial elements, and landmark transcriptions. At the book's heart is the story of the London-based, internationally acclaimed, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. But this is not a story of one ensemble, as the 'brass ensemble' can be defined in several forms. The Modern Brass Ensemble in Twentieth-Century Britain offers a comprehensive account by an author and performer who was involved in many of the key developments of the modern 'brass ensemble'.

(Book). The Jazz Guitar Handbook is a step-by-step guide to jazz guitar playing. It takes you from the basics through to advanced harmony and soloing concepts, and teaches you the music theory a jazz guitarist needs to know. Along the way it covers a wide range of styles, including jazzy blues, swing, bebop, modal, jazz-funk, Gypsy, and more. The handbook features over 120 exercises in notation and tab and includes a 96-track CD of examples, play-alongs, and backing tracks. It also presents the history of the jazz guitar and its great players. Easy to use and useful for players at various levels, this volume is a must-have reference for players looking to expand their jazz skillset.

The contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a method for negotiating violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism. Outlining the relation of improvisatory practices to local and global power structures, they show how in sites as varied as South Africa, Canada, Egypt, the United States, and the Canary Islands, improvisation provides the means for its participants to address the past and imagine the future. In addition to essays, the volume features a poem by saxophonist Matana Roberts, an interview with pianist Vijay Iyer about his work with U.S. veterans of color, and drawings by artist Randy DuBurke that chart Nina Simone's politicization. Throughout, the contributors illustrate how improvisation functions as a model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action that can foster the creation of alternate modes of being and knowing in the world. Contributors. Randy DuBurke, Rana El Kadi, Kevin Fellezs, Daniel Fischlin, Kate Galloway, Reem Abdul Hadi, Vijay Iyer, Mark Lomanno, Moshe Morad, Eric Porter, Sara Ramshaw, Matana Roberts, Darci Sprengel, Paul Stapleton, Odeh Turjman, Stephanie Vos

Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington and His World offers a fresh look at this legendary composer. A.H. Lawrence gives us the first biography of the composer written by a fellow musician and African American. This fascinating book traces Ellington's life, from his early years in Washington, D.C. to his death in New York in 1974, and career, from the brothel to the cathedral, in terms of the social, cultural, political and economic realities of his times.

This study examines how early writers of jazz criticism and literature as well as "jazz" performers and composers associated the music directly with questions about identity and with historical developments like industrialization. Going beyond the study of melody, harmony and rhythm, this book's interdisciplinary approach takes seriously the cultural beliefs about jazz that inspired interracial contact, moralistic panic, bohemian slumming, visions of American democracy, and much more. Detailed textual analysis of fiction, nonfiction, film and musical performance illustrates the complexity of these cultural beliefs in the 1920s and also shows their survival to the present day.

An engaging biography of a living musical legend, Oscar Peterson. A man Duke Ellington once called the " maharajah of the piano." Gene Lees carefully builds up the portrait of Peterson, his childhood and what it meant to be be black and talented in Montreal in the 1940s, hist three marriages and six children, his musical partners (Ray Brown, Herb Ellis and Ed Thigpen), his musical friends and colleagues (Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum and Lester Young, amongst others) and the critical controversy and mythology that have long surrounded Peterson. This updated version has a new chapter that covers Peterson's appointment as Chancellor of York University; his receipt of ten honorary doctorates and the Order of Canada; his stroke and partial recovery; the origins and fallout of his cancelled North American tour and much more.

The harmonica is one of the most important, yet overlooked, instruments in music. This definitive volume celebrates the history of the world's most popular musical device, its impact on various forms of music, folk, country, blues, rock, jazz and classical music. The author traces the development of the harmonica from the ancient Chinese sheng to futuristic harmonica sythesizers. Nearly seventy harmonica masters are profiled including Stevie Wonder, Little Walter, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Reed, Charlie McCoy, Sonny Terry, and John Popper. This updated edition includes an extensive new afterword, an expanded discography of the finest harmonica recordings, and a listing of the best harmonica resources on the internet.

Experimentation in Improvised Jazz: Chasing Ideas challenges the notion that in the twenty-first century, jazz can be restrained by a singular, static definition. The worldwide trend for jazz to be marginalized by the mainstream music industry, as well as conservatoriums and schools of music, runs the risk of stifling the innovative and challenging aspects of its creativity. The authors argue that to remain relevant, jazz needs to be dynamic, proactively experimental, and consciously facilitate new ideas to be made accessible to an audience broader than the innovators themselves. Experimentation in Improvised Jazz explores key elements of experimental jazz music in order to discern ways in which the genre is developing. The book begins with an overview of where, when and how new ideas in free and improvised jazz have been created and added to the canon, developing the genre beyond its initial roots. It moves on to consider how and why musicians create free and improvised jazz; the decisions they make while playing. What are they responding to? What are they depending on? What are they thinking? The authors analyse and synthesise the creation of free jazz by correlating the latest research to the reflections provided by some of the world's greatest jazz innovators for this project. Finally, the book examines how we respond to free and improvised jazz: artistically, critically and personally. Free jazz is, the book argues, an environment that develops through experimentation with new ideas.

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.

The contributors to Negotiated Moments explore how subjectivity is formed and expressed through musical improvisation, tracing the ways the transmission and reception of sound occur within and between bodies in real and virtual time and across memory, history, and space. They place the gendered, sexed, raced, classed, disabled, and technologized body at the center of critical improvisation studies and move beyond the field's tendency toward celebrating improvisation's utopian and democratic ideals by highlighting the improvisation of marginalized subjects. Rejecting a singular theory of improvisational agency, the contributors show how improvisation helps people gain hard-won and highly contingent agency. Essays include analyses of the role of the body and technology in performance, improvisation's ability to disrupt power relations, Pauline Oliveros's ideas about listening, flautist Nicole Mitchell's compositions based on Octavia Butler's science fiction, and an interview with Judith Butler about the relationship between her work and improvisation. The contributors' close attention to improvisation provides a touchstone for examining subjectivities and offers ways to hear the full spectrum of ideas that sound out from and resonate within and across bodies. Contributors. George Blake, David Borgo, Judith Butler, Rebecca Caines, Louise Campbell, Illa Carrillo Rodriguez, Berenice Corti, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Nina Eidsheim, Tomie Hahn, Jaclyn Heyen, Christine Sun Kim, Catherine Lee, Andra McCartney, Tracy McMullen, Kevin McNeilly, Leaf Miller, Jovana Milovic, Francois Mouillot, Pauline Oliveros, Jason Robinson, Neil Rolnick, Simon Rose, Gillian Siddall, Julie Dawn Smith, Jesse Stewart, Clara Tomaz, Sherrie Tucker, Lindsay Vogt, Zachary Wallmark, Ellen Waterman, David Whalen, Pete Williams, Deborah Wong, Mandy-Suzanne Wong

Stride traces the stride piano style from its roots in minstrel shows and ragtime, through the contributions of itinerant entertainers, to its joyful birth in Harlem, where it became known as Harlem Piano. Stride developed over a period spanning World War I to the depression years, though younger players maintain its traditions today. It is a musical style marked by friendly rivalry and shared pleasures. Drawing on the authors' personal interviews and biographies, the book traces stride from generation to generation, from the originators Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, and James P. Johnson, through a succession of pianists like Willie the Lion Smith. Fell and Vinding also examine its influence on Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Joe Sullivan, and Johnny Guarnieri, concluding with third and fourth generations that include Ralph Sutton, Dick Hyman, and Dick Wellstood. The authors describe the exceptional Donald Lambert from personal experience. Throughout, influences are traced and documented by way of CD and LP citations. Stride finishes the tune with appendixes that itemize the compositions of Luckey Roberts, Fats Waller and Willie the Lion Smith.