A groundbreaking study of the trailblazing music of Chicago's AACM, a leader in the world of jazz and experimental music. Founded on Chicago's South Side in 1965 and still thriving today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is the most influential collective organization in jazz and experimental music. In Sound Experiments, Paul Steinbeck offers an in-depth historical and musical investigation of the collective, analyzing individual performances and formal innovations in captivating detail. He pays particular attention to compositions by Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, the Association's leading figures, as well as Anthony Braxton, George Lewis (and his famous computer-music experiment, Voyager), Wadada Leo Smith, and Henry Threadgill, along with younger AACM members such as Mike Reed, Tomeka Reid, and Nicole Mitchell. Sound Experiments represents a sonic history, spanning six decades, that affords insight not only into the individuals who created this music but also into an astonishing collective aesthetic. This aesthetic was uniquely grounded in nurturing communal ties across generations, as well as a commitment to experimentalism. The AACM's compositions broke down the barriers between jazz and experimental music and made essential contributions to African American expression more broadly. Steinbeck shows how the creators of these extraordinary pieces pioneered novel approaches to instrumentation, notation, conducting, musical form, and technology, creating new soundscapes in contemporary music.

On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'echafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief "golden age" for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But what of jazz in film today? Improvising the Score: Rethinking Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production. In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sanchez and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan Rudolph (Afterglow). The first book of its kind, this study examines jazz artists' work in film from a sociological perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates how jazz artists negotiate their own "creative labor," examining the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking. Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz, film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and culture.

Nikki Iles & Friends Easy to Intermediate is a collection of 22 original compositions and new arrangements for piano written by Nikki Iles and her friends from the world of jazz. Expertly curated and commissioned by Nikki herself, this book contains piano pieces at Initial Grade to Grade 3 level written by some of the best-known figures on the jazz scene. Also including audio downloads of every piece,this book provides a wealth of new and original jazz piano music for those seeking to explore accessible jazz and world music repertoire, build a recital or a programme for ABRSM Performance Grades, or simply play for pleasure. Award-winning jazz pianist and composer, Nikki Iles has worked and performed with a plethora of notable jazz musicians throughout her career. With over 30 CDs, she has been described as the 'heroine of British jazz'. She has received composition commissions from the London Sinfonietta, National Youth Jazz Orchestra (featured at the BBC Proms) and UMO Jazz Orchestra in Helsinki, Finland, among others. Nikki has been awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to music, and has also won the Ivor Composer Award for jazz composition. She is professor of jazz piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School, London and also gives masterclasses around the world. She has worked closely with ABRSM over a number of years, both as a composer and arranger, and in syllabus development.

George Lewis, one of the great traditional jazz clarinetists, was born in 1900 at about the same time that jazz itself first appeared in New Orleans. And by the time he died, on the last day of 1968, New Orleans jazz had pretty much run its course, too. By then a jazz museum stood on Bourbon Street, and a cultural center was under construction where Globe Hall had Stood. Lewis's life thus paralleled that of New Orleans jazz, and in his later years hew as the best known standard bearer of his city's music. He came to the attention of the jazz world at the time of the so-called "New Orleans Revival" of the 1940's, when veteran trumpeter Bunk Johnson was recorded by a number of jazz enthusiasts, notably William Russell. In this new biography, Tom Bethell challenges a favorite myth of the history of jazz: that the music became moribund in New Orleans after the legal red light district, Storyville, was closed in 1917, resulting in most jazz musicians going "up the river." In fact, Bethell shows, many more jazzmen stayed in the city than left, and the musical style continued to develop and grow. Thus the jazz fans who arrived in the city in the early 1940's did not encounter a "revival" of an old style so much as an ongoing tradition, with clarinetists like Lewis having been influenced by Benny Goodman and the Swing Era in addition to Lorenzo Tio and the Creole School. After Bunk Johnson's death in 1949, at a time when many other social changes were beginning to be felt in the city, the New Orleans jazz tradition began to go into a decline. It became increasingly rigid and repetitive, and was often designed to please what one observer called "Dixieland fans yelling for their favorite members." The book is based on lengthy research in New Orleans, including interviews with George Lewis shortly before his death, and unpublished material from the diaries kept by William Russell on his visits to New Orleans between 1942 and 1949. It also includes a statement by Lewis on jazz and the best way to play it and a complete Lewis discography. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.