NEIL TESSER has broadcast, written about, and helped program jazz in Chicago for almost 30 years. Jazz critic for the Chicago READER since 1973, he is also jazz critic for PLAYBOY magazine, a monthly columnist for Jazziz magazine, and a contributor to Jazz Times magazine. He was the first jazz critic for USA Today, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, and the New York Times Book Review. He has authored more than 300 sets of liner notes, one of which - for the Stan Getz compilation The Girl From Ipanema - The Bossa Nova Years - received a Grammy nomination in 1985.
Tesser spent 16 years as a host-producer of "Jazz Forum" at WBEZ, Chicago's National Public Radio outlet, and co-anchored every national broadcast of the Chicago Jazz Festival from 1981 through 1995; he also was a co-creator and host for the popular arts-magazine program "Artistic License" at the station (1990-1993). Tesser's broadcast credits include arts commentaries for the NPR series "Future Forward" and for the CBS newsradio station WBBM-AM. He has also written several award-swinning scripts for the live-performance NPR series "Jazz From Lincoln Center."
In April 2000 Tesser was elected president of the Chicago chapter of the Recording Academy (the Grammys), having served five terms on the local Board of Governors, and he is a charter member of the Recording Academy's jazz-nominations committee. A founding board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, he currently serves on that organization's Festival Committee, which programs and helps administer the annual Chicago Jazz Festival.
Tesser's first book, the widely acclaimed PLAYBOY Guide to Jazz (Plume) was published in 1998 and has been separately published in England and in Argentina, in a well-received Spanish edition. He also contributed chapters to two new anthologies - Jazz: The First Century (William Morrow, April 2000) and The Oxford Jazz Companion (autumn 2000) - and is currently at work on a new book about the song "Caravan."
About the Playboy Guide to Jazz
