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How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia
by C. Michael Bailey
“As you develop your listening skills, [answer this question]: Are the musicians playing the notes with precision, almost as if they are reading music from some Platonic ideal score, or are they handling them roughly, torturing them to make them speak the truth?" I see [Billie Holiday] more as a diagnostician of the soul, whose music reaches into those vulnerabilities and emotional risks that many of us avoid or actively repress. Ted Gioia, How To Listen ...
Continue ReadingHow to Listen to Jazz: A Q&A with Ted Gioia
by S.G Provizer
In How to Listen to Jazz, Ted Gioia has tasked himself with writing a book that asks people to drop their musical prejudices and open up their ears. The challenge in writing a book like is to find a middle path between, as Gioia says, “those who pretend that music is objective science and those who insist it is “subjective whimsy..." For my money, he has succeeded; talking about the nuts and bolts of melody, harmony and rhythm in a ...
Continue ReadingTed Gioia: Gli standard del jazz
by Maurizio Zerbo
Gli standard del jazz Ted Gioia EDT/Siena Jazz Leggere un libro di Ted Gioia è sempre un'esperienza appagante, sia per i neofiti che per gli addetti ai lavori. Nonostante non raggiunga i vertici creativi de “L'arte imperfetta," questa ricognizione sugli standard jazzistici lascia il segno. La informa un rigoroso approccio metodologico, che coniuga testo e contesto: la grammatica musicale (forma, tonalità, sviluppo motivico) e l'humus storico-culturale di riferimento. Come era lecito aspettarsi da ...
Continue ReadingTed Gioia Talks "Love Songs: The Hidden History"
by S.G Provizer
Ted Gioia is a prolific writer and a good one. Readers probably know him through his books and articles about jazz, but Mr. Gioia is a polymath and writes on a wide range of subjects. In this interview, he talks about his recently released book, Love Songs: The Hidden History. I'm confident that what he says will inspire many of you to pick up a copy of this fascinating book. All About Jazz: In your introduction, ...
Continue ReadingDelta Blues & the Birth (and Death) of the Cool: Two definitive Ted Gioia Histories
by C. Michael Bailey
Does the music world need one more history of Delta blues music? Does a survey of a spongy concept like “cool" have any relevance in a post-9/11 world? Considering Robert Palmer authored a definitive narrative on depression-era Mississippi Delta music in Deep Blues (Viking, 1981) almost 30 years ago, and that Martin Williams and David Rosenthal, among many others, have already tried, with anemic success, to define other amorphous musical concepts like “Swing" and “Bad," do we really need to ...
Continue ReadingTed Gioia: The History of Jazz
by AAJ Staff
About Ted GioiaTed Gioia was raised in Hawhtorne, California, a working class neighborhood in the South-Central area of Los Anglees county. Jazz was not part of Hawthorne's nightlife--indeed, the city is perhaps best known as hometown to the Beach Boys. But while his friends and classmates listened to surf and soul music, Gioia was practicing the piano and checking out the various jazz books and recordings found in the local public library.While a student at Stanford University in ...
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