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Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach: Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings
by Richard J Salvucci
This is the stuff of legend, one for the ages. It all started here; the greatest jazz concert of all time. How many times has the Massey Hall Concert (Toronto, 1953) been described that way? For the average All About Jazz reader, Massey Hall happened before he or she was born. Besides, there were other famous jazz concerts such as The Carnival of Swing (Randall's Island, NY, 1938), Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (that remained unreleased until 1958), Gene ...
read moreDizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker: Live Revisited
by Chris May
The first six tracks on this album, which were recorded at New York City's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, are amongst the most exciting in the jazz compendium. Not only because of their intrinsic artistic merit but also because they mark one of the first, if not the first, occasion the vanguard of the bop revolution emerged from the basements of 52nd Street, equipped with a fully formed manifestation of the new music, on to a stage bigger than ...
read moreCharlie Parker: At Birdland 1950 Revisited
by Chris May
When it comes to live recordings of Charlie Parker, Jazz At Massey Hall, from a concert in Toronto in May 1953, has been widely considered the slam-dunk number one ever since Charles Mingus released it on his Debut label in 1956. Forensicists might favour the 7-CD The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings Of Charlie Parker (Mosaic, 1990), but for most people, Massey Hall takes pole position. There have, however, been challengers for the top spot. Prominent among them ...
read moreVarious Artists: The Birth of Bop
by Richard J Salvucci
Someone famously called jazz the sound of surprise, but all too often, what is on offer is the dull hum of routine. Or something like that. This historic reissue is, however, anything but routine. This is not the first time that Teddy Reig's Savoy sides have been reissued (was he also the mysterious Buck Ram listed as producing one track?), but Craft Recordings took a lot of trouble to produce this very fine selection. If a listener were, ...
read moreBebop, Beats, and the Drive of Beat Literature
by Arthur R George
"Mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, Smelling vaguely of mint jelly and last night's bongo drummer... fling their arrow legs / To the heavens / Losing their doubts in the beat" of jny: San Francisco nights, announced poet Bob Kaufman's “Bagel Shop Jazz." (Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, New Directions Publishing, 1965; Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, City Lights, 2019) “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,.. floating across the tops of ...
read moreCharlie Parker: Remastered Highlights From His Peak Years
by Chris May
Charlie Parker's recorded legacy has been repackaged, reissued, reshuffled and refried so often that newbies and connoisseurs alike are spoilt for choice. Parker's oeuvre has not been meaningfully remixed, however, due to the technical constraints attached to late 1930s through early 1950s recordings--but much of it has been remastered, sometimes with excellent results. Not one of the remastered collections released since digitization, however, delivers the splendiferous sonics of four Celebrating Bird At 100 discs released by the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label ...
read moreGuido Michelone: Il Jazz e le idee
by Emmanuel Di Tommaso
Il Jazz e le idee Guido Michelone 297 pagine ISBN: 978-88-6231-714-6 Arcana Edizioni 2020 In che modo la musica jazz si relaziona al mondo? Com'è interrelata alle altre musiche ed espressioni artistiche? Che relazioni ha con le idee intese come fenomeni umani? E, più specificamente, che cos'è esattamente un'idea? Ad un primo sguardo, queste potrebbero sembrare domande filosofiche nel senso più astratto del termine. In realtà, ne Il Jazz e le idee, Guido ...
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