Keith Jarrett ranks among the most accomplished and influential pianists in jazz history. His The Köln Concert stands among the most important jazz recordings of the past four decades, not only because of the music on the record, but also because of the remarkable reception it has received from musicians and lay-listeners alike. Since the album's 1975 release, it has sold over three million copies: a remarkable achievement for any jazz record, but an unprecedented feat fo...

Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media. Where earlier studies have focused almost entirely on the role and portrayal of jazz in Hollywood film, the present book engages with a plethora of technologies and media from early film and soundies through television to recent developments in digital technologies and online media. Likewise, the authors discuss jazz in the widest sense, ranging from Duke Ellington and ...

An Economist Best Book of the YearAn acclaimed music scholar presents an accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz.**“Mr. Gioia could not have done a better job. Through him, jazz might even find new devotees.” ―**EconomistIn How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premie...

A music journalist offers a lively history of modern jazz through its formative and most vital decades—from Charlie Parker to John Coltrane.In Giant Steps, Kenny Mathieson examines the most important figures in the creation of modern jazz, detailing the emergence and evolution of bebop through the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. Using this as its starting point, Mathieson then delves into the developments...

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-shari...

For jazz historians, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings mark the first revolution in the history of a music riven by upheaval. Yet few traces of this revolution can be found in the historical record of the late 1920s, when the discs were made. Even black newspapers covered Armstrong as just one name among many, and descriptions of his playing, while laudatory, bear little resemblance to those of today. Through a careful analysis of seven seminal recordings in this compact ...

The essential collection of jazz writing by the celebrated poet and author of Blues People—reissued with a new introduction by the author.In the 1960s, LeRoi Jones—who would later be known as Amiri Baraka—was a pioneering jazz critic, articulating in real time the incredible transformations of the form taking place in the clubs and coffee houses of New York City. In Black Music, he sheds light on the brilliant young jazz musicians of the day: John...

Few albums in the canon of popular music have had the influence, resonance, and endurance of John Coltrane's 1965 classic A Love Supreme-a record that proved jazz was a fitting medium for spiritual exploration and for the expression of the sublime.Bringing the same fresh and engaging approach that characterized his critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn tells the story of the genesis, creation, an...

It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying off in every direction, just as America itself seemed about to split at its seams. Following the circumscribed grooves and ambiance of In A Silent Way; coming off a tour with a burning new quintet-called 'The Lost Band'-with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette...

Recorded by his quartet in a single session in 1964, A Love Supreme is widely considered John Coltrane's magnum opus and one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. In Beyond A Love Supreme, Tony Whyton explores both the musical complexities of A Love Supreme and the album's seminal importance in jazz history. Marking Coltrane's transition from the bebop and hard bop of his earlier recordings to the free jazz style perfected throughout the rest of his career, the album also embodies the d...

Jazz has been around for over a hundred years but how much do we know about its history, and how much of what think we know is true? Beginning in the so called Jazz Age of the 1920s jazz history was recounted and interpreted by admiring authors and record collectors both in the United States and elsewhere. However, since the early 1990s some historians have come to doubt the validity of the conventional narrative of the story of jazz and some of its most hallowed traditions.In Jazz...

On January 16, 1938 Benny Goodman brought his swing orchestra to America's venerated home of European classical music, Carnegie Hall. The resulting concert - widely considered one of the most significant events in American music history - helped to usher jazz and swing music into the American cultural mainstream. This reputation has been perpetuated by Columbia Records' 1950 release of the concert on LP. Now, in Benny Goodman's Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, jazz scholar and music...