Articles by Karl Ackermann

Book Review

The Majesty of Chicago Jazz: Twenty-Five Visionaries Who Define the City's Sound

by Karl Ackermann
October 2, 2026

The Majesty of Chicago Jazz: Twenty-Five Visionaries Who Define the City's Sound Howard Reich 288 Pages ISBN: #978-0-226-84644-6 University of Chicago Press 2026 Jazz may have been born in New Orleans, but it came of age in Chicago. In The Majesty of Chicago Jazz: Twenty-Five Visionaries Who Define the City's Sound (The University of Chicago Press, 2026), Howard Reich demonstrates why Chicago became one of jazz's great creative laboratories through twenty-five portraits that ...

Building a Jazz Library

A Jazz Reading List

by Karl Ackermann
December 10, 2025

From 2015 through 2020, a personal research project included my reading dozens of jazz books and related media. They included mainstays such as the massive reference The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (Penguin Books, 2006), Ben Ratliff's excellent interview collection The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music (Times Books, 2008), the off-shore perspectives of Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Duke University Press, 2005) and Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press, 2001) and the underrecognized ...

Backstories

Fate Marable’s Mississippi River Conservatory

by Karl Ackermann
November 24, 2025

In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map of events and the chronology of jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories dives deeper into people and ...

Backstories

The Black Entrepreneurs of Early Jazz

by Karl Ackermann
September 30, 2025

Preamble: In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map of events and the chronology of jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories dives deeper into people ...

Backstories

The Brief Reign of King Oliver

by Karl Ackermann
June 12, 2025

Backstories

The Legacy of Lillian Hardin Armstrong

by Karl Ackermann
April 10, 2025

In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map and as jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories dives deeper into people and places along the genre's ...

Backstories

The Father of Early Jazz: James Reese Europe

by Karl Ackermann
March 3, 2025

In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map and as jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories dives deeper into people and places along the genre's ...

Backstories

Jazz: An Origin Story

by Karl Ackermann
January 9, 2025

In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the book is incomplete by necessity; there is no well-marked path, and the history is sometimes nebulous. However, as a map and as jazz music, it leads to unfamiliar places. The series Backstories will dive deeper into people and places along the ...

Album Review

Berke Can Özcan & Jonah Parzen-Johnson: It Was Always Time

Read "It Was Always Time" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 15, 2024

In 2023, baritone saxophonist and electronics artist Jonah Parzen-Johnson performed at a benefit concert in Istanbul following a devastating earthquake that took tens of thousands of lives in Turkey and Syria. Parzen-Johnson had worked with diverse colleagues ranging from John Zorn to Pearl Jam, but each of his recordings had been a solo project. Minutes before taking to the stage in Istanbul, he met Turkish drummer Berke Can Özcan, and the two performed that evening as a duo. Inspired by ...

Album Review

I Compani: Party @ Tivolux

Read "Party @ Tivolux" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 21, 2024

From Fellini to Verde to Garbo, with detours into the world of food and sounds of the subway, I Compani is one of Europe's most original and versatile ensembles. Despite a decades-long legacy in Western Europe, the ensemble is not well known in the U.S. The Dutch group, under the direction of saxophonist/composer and founder, Bo van de Graaf are masters of ingenious arrangement and vivid expressiveness that all but jumps out from the speakers. On Party @ Tivolux, van ...