Written by user on September 24, 2014
Photo: Hugo van Gelderen
John Coltrane would have celebrated his 88th birthday on the 23rd. His status as one of the most universally beloved, admired, and imitated jazz artists has held true for more than half a century. In 2012, Jazz at Lincoln Center hosted a John Coltrane festival, and in preparation for that, we asked several artists to discuss the impact of John Coltrane, as well as to list their favorite Trane albums. What resulted was a remarkable …
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Written by user on May 27, 2014
While many discographies exist that document the appearances of great jazz artists on recording sessions, they don’t all necessarily document whether a great artist is actually soloing on a given session. Consequently, if you are searching for examples of the beautiful solo work of, for example, altoist Hilton Jefferson (who was an inspiration to many great lead alto players of the big band era), you may find yourself combing through many recordings struggling to determine which moments feature his solo …
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Written by user on January 8, 2014
Was one of your New Year’s resolutions to read more books?
If so, our curator–the great scholar and radio personality Phil Schaap–has graciously provided us with a recommended set of books for you to check out. This list below provides a starting point, with texts focusing primarily on earlier styles of Jazz. Phil provided even more titles covering later styles of the music, and we’ll list them in future posts.
We’ve added a few extra thoughts to accompany each book, and we …
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Written by user on October 15, 2013
This month, the pianist and composer Thelonious Monk would have celebrated his 96th birthday. While his singular style of piano playing is not necessarily considered BeBop, he is nevertheless sometimes referred to as the “High Priest of Bop,” and his many compositions are canonical in BeBop repertoire (as well as Swing, Hard Bop, and many other styles).
In these videos, pianist Eric Reed pays tribute to Monk in various ways. In this video, he explains Monk’s importance in jazz. In other …
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