Graham Collier's radical new analysis of the place of the composer in jazz is nothing less than a complete reassessment of the direction in which the music is developing and a powerful argument for fresh thinking. He takes a detailed look at the music of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans. His views about jazz composition - jazz happens in real time, once - and about contemporary composers are clearly and strongly expressed, controversial and provocative. This book will appeal to lay readers, especially those who enjoy an argument, as well as professional musicians and teachers. Musical examples in the book are linked to the author's website. 'I find "The Jazz Composer" to be an insightful, intelligent, creative and artful view to the understanding of jazz composition. It is written and developed for all interested listeners, the novice as well as the performer, and shows the way to the deepest artistic level' - Justin DiCioccio, jazz educator. 'Composers - take heed! ...If you're confident in your compositional devices - take the challenge to have your foundations soundly rattled If you're searching for a methodology to follow or guide you, it could well lie here...Not for the squeamish . ..prepare to be provoked' - Mike Gibbs, jazz composer. 'Collier ...makes music that speaks directly ...strongly personal but in no way self-dramatising ...It's reassuring to learn that when he turns to prose, the same qualities are in place' - Brian Morton, jazz critic.

Jazz Journey: A Guide for Listening explores jazz music from its 19th Century forerunners through today. The text takes readers on an historical audio and video tour of select jazz performances of the last hundred years. All of the major styles of jazz-including the predecessors of jazz, Ragtime and Blues-are covered, including New Orleans style, Chicago style, Stride piano, Swing, Bebop, Cool, Hard Bop, modal, Free jazz, freer jazz, and Fusion. Major performers include Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, among others. For easy access to the music described in the text, the revised first edition features an online, active learning component with links to audio and video recordings, as well as listening guides. Jazz Journey is an ideal reading and listening experience for jazz appreciation courses for non-majors. It can also be used in jazz history classes for music and jazz studies majors.

In histories of music, producers tend to fall by the wayside--generally unknown and seldom acknowledged. But without them and their contributions to the art form, we'd have little on record of some of the most important music ever created. Discover the stories behind some of jazz's best-selling and most influential albums in this collection of oral histories gathered by music scholar and writer Michael Jarrett. Drawing together interviews with over fifty producers, musicians, engineers, and label executives, Jarrett shines a light on the world of making jazz records by letting his subjects tell their own stories and share their experiences in creating the American jazz canon. Packed with fascinating stories and fresh perspectives on over 200 albums and artists, including legends such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, as well as contemporary artists such as Diana Krall and Norah Jones, Pressed for All Time tells the unknown stories of the men and women who helped to shape the quintessential American sound.

Drummer, record producer, bandleader, jazz researcher, and cigar-chomping raconteur Barry Martyn is a New Orleans original who happens to have been born in England. Implausible though this may seem, it makes perfect sense to members of the New Orleans traditional jazz community, who view themselves as an extended family based on merit as much as nativity. For more than forty years, Martyn has been a fixture in the Crescent City's jazz scene, laying down the beat for generations of celebrated musicians and avidly promoting the city's unique musical heritage around the world. In Walking with Legends -- based on over forty hours of interviews with Martyn by fellow British jazz enthusiast and author Mick Burns -- Martyn reflects upon his life in jazz and offers a window into a musical world that few have understood, let alone witnessed from the inside.

At the age of nineteen, jazz fanatic Martyn found his way to the Crescent City and began working as a professional drummer in clubs and studios. The first white man in the United States to join a black musician's union, he eventually started his own record label and recorded hundreds of jam sessions that today are regarded as classics in Europe. In 1972, he formed the Legends of Jazz, an old-style New Orleans jazz band that toured the world and took New Orleans jazz into the American showbiz mainstream.

Martyn's life story provides unique intimate glimpses of a vanished generation of New Orleans musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Kid Sheik Cola, Harold Dejan, Joe Watkins, Albert Nicholas, Kid Thomas, Andrew Blakeney, and many others. Throughout his chronicle, Martyn highlights the continual clash of cultures that arose from an avid British pupil learning lessons of life and music from elderly African American strangers who take him under their wing both out of curiosity and self-interest. Together, they find a way to connect through music, even if the road gets a little bumpy at times.

A standard-bearer for New Orleans's jazz drumming tradition, Martyn remains one of the city's busiest musicians and most avid promoters of New Orleans music. In Walking with Legends, he honors the legacies of the African American musicians who taught and inspired him and affirms the importance of the human relationships that make the music possible.

The colourful story of the 80-year-old saxophone player and singer affectionately know as The King of The Swingers. Paddy Cole has taken his style of Jazz, Dixieland and Swing band music all over the world - and back home too. Paddy Cole is the grand old man of Irish Showbiz who still is young at heart and has built a new radio career with his show on Dublin's Sunshine Radio every Sunday. His story is as heart-warming as it is hilarious!