Articles by Greg Thomas
Jon Hendricks: Vocal Ease
by Greg Thomas
This article was first published at All About Jazz on April 18, 2008. Scat and vocalese master Jon Hendricks and his wife Judith have maintained a residence at Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City for a quarter century. Their high-rise apartment overlooks the Hudson River going north. From the living room window you see the Battery Park City promenade directly below and the New Jersey shoreline across the river. The view is so expansive that the petite size ...
Continue ReadingMontreal Jazz Festival: Montreal, Canada, June 28-July 7, 2012
by Greg Thomas
Festival International de Jazz de MontréalMontréal, CanadaJune 28-July 7, 2012From the time of the airplane's descent to the airport in Montréal, I knew something was different and perhaps special about this place. Instead of a square or rectangular grid style of suburban housing plots, from my window I saw circular formations of housing, many with swimming pools in the back yards.That's a cool design for a neighborhood, I thought. Similar ideas would come to mind ...
Continue ReadingBAM or JAZZ: Part Two!
by Greg Thomas
Jazz, an art form given birth in the United States by descendents of the formerly enslaved, has a complicated relationship with race. Although race, as a popular idea, has no basis in biology, many people mentally adhere to the idea of dividing groups of people based on “race" as opposed to understanding how groups of people evolve (or regress) via culture, so very real social dynamics and results exist based on the belief in race. A key ...
Continue ReadingBAM or JAZZ: Why It Matters
by Greg Thomas
Since the last Race and Jazz column, the first of a multi-part discussion with John Gennari--the top scholar on the history of jazz criticism--a firestorm of controversy has arisen surrounding Nicholas Payton's declaration that, to him, the word jazz is dead. He also feels that the word jazz is tantamount to or worse than the “n" word--nigger--and that the best and most descriptive umbrella term is Black American Music: BAM.We'll continue sharing our conversation with Professor Gennari soon, ...
Continue ReadingRace and Jazz Criticism
by Greg Thomas
When I began this Race and Jazz series several months ago, I knew the topics I wanted to touch upon, and the general culture vs. race point-of-view I intended to pursue. With those chord changes (topics) and that melodic perspective (pro-culture, anti-race) in mind and at play, I figured I'd proceed with the rest by ear. As it turned out, the most recent column featured an interview with premier jazz critic and book author Gary Giddins, in which he discussed ...
Continue ReadingGary Giddins on Ignored Black Jazz Writers
by Greg Thomas
In the first essay for the Race and Jazz column, I gave a first-person account of how my love and appreciation of certain “white" saxophonists served to safeguard me from the temptation of racism back in college during the early-to-mid-'80s. My second essay privileged culture over race, and told the story of how attorney and constitutional law professor Charles L. Black's love of Louis Armstrong's genius from the early '30s gave him a way out of the morass of Southern ...
Continue ReadingRace, Culture and a White Boy from Texas
by Greg Thomas
The date: October 12, 1931. A sixteen year-old white male from Austin High School in Texas, who in later years would help shape the future of the United States, bought a ticket to see “Louis Armstrong, King of the Trumpet, and His Orchestra" at the old Driskill Hotel. He knew nothing about jazz or this “King," he recalled many years later, but did predict that a lot of girls would be at the dance. So, of course, he figured he ...
Continue ReadingJoseph Polisi: Juilliard Jazz Hits Ten
by Greg Thomas
He's been president of the Juilliard School, the most prestigious performing arts institution in America, since 1984. Also an accomplished bassoonist, Dr. Joseph Polisi has performed as both soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, as well as at The Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Avery Fisher Hall. Dr. Polisi grew up surrounded by the arts: his father was a distinguished bassoonist with the New York Philharmonic; his mother ...
Continue ReadingJazz vs Racism
by Greg Thomas
Jazz saved me from becoming a racist. Back in the early to mid-1980s, while attending Hamilton College in central New York, I learned details about the transatlantic slave trade that sickened and angered me. I read about the history of the abolitionist movement in the 1800s, and the civil rights movements of last century, as well as the apartheid-like Jim Crow system that arose in between those movements. “Jim Crow," particularly in the U.S. South, maintained the ...
Continue ReadingHubert Laws: Flute Virtuoso and NEA Jazz Master
by Greg Thomas
After James Moody and Frank Wess established the flute as a solo jazz instrument in the 1950s, and Herbie Mann popularized it in the 1960s, the musician that has become most identified with virtuosic flute performance in jazz is Hubert Laws, who became a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Masters Fellowship in the class of 2011, the penultimate group of honorees before the program closes after the 2012 ceremony. I've been enamored ...
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