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Articles by Larry Koenigsberg

333
Book Review

The Freedom Principle: Jazz after 1958

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by John Litweiler Da Capo Press (New York, 1990)

Despite an original publication date of almost 15 years ago, Litweiler's exposition of the history, methods, intentions, and personalities associated with free jazz from its inception remains a useful introduction to this music. Free jazz remains anathema to many musicians and listeners, and is rarely heard on the radio, but it has persisted, reflecting the survival of an impulse towards emotional expression, spiritual purity, and aesthetic freedom in the ...

566
Book Review

Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell

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Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell Francis Paudras 355 Pages ISBN: # 0-306-80816-1 Da Capo Press 1998 We should all have a friend like Francis Paudras, who nursed the great pianist Bud Powell back to health after rescuing him from an abusive caretaker. This story, presented in loose fashion some years ago in the movie “Round Midnight," is the subject of Paudras' book, published in translation here for the ...

188
Book Review

Too Marvelous For Words

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by James Lester Oxford University Press (New York, 1994)"

Too Marvelous For Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum" by James Lester; published by Oxford University Press (New York, 1994). The man behind those extraordinary pianistic flourishes was a somewhat shadowy figure, but James Lester has brought him into the light with a wealth of research and reminiscences. The many small stories which make up this telling of this life, which was largely successful on its own ...

167
Book Review

MONK

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by Laurent de Wilde Marlowe & Company (New York, 1997)

This is a biography with the flavor of a novel. Lacking any of the scholarly apparatus customary in a historical work -- no index, footnotes, bibliography, discography, or acknowledgments -- it nevertheless imposes a knowing and occasionally stylish sensibility on its treatment of the seminal jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk (1917 - 1982). To a large degree, though, it is less a biography than a meditation on ...

378
Book Review

Notes And Tones: Musician To Musician Interviews

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by Art Taylor Da Capo Press (1993)

This slightly expanded edition of Taylor's 1982 publication of these striking interviews with jazz musicians known to both millions or only to their colleagues and fans, provides unusual insight into the techniques, attitudes, preoccupations and personal histories of some extraordinary personalities. Taylor, a percussionist held in the highest esteem by his peers since the early '50's, was in many respects an ideal interviewer: a master drummer who had made music with ...

200
Book Review

Dexter Gordon: A Musical Biography

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by Stan Britt Da Capo Press (New York, 1989)

Although there's plenty of fascinating material in this show-biz biography of the great master of bebop tenor saxophone, it's so permeated with gush and hyperbole that it requires some tolerance to sift through it for Gordon's story. The details are there, though, from his upbringing in Los Angeles as the son of a physician who died when Gordon was 12, his mingling with other young or established musicians in ...

161
Book Review

The Face of Black Music

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by Valerie Wilmer Da Capo Press (New York, 1976)

Wilmer is both a photographer and a journalist, the author of a sympathetic study of free jazz, “As Serious As Your Life." In “The Face of Black Music" the emphasis is less on jazz than on the range of African-American musics from the blues and the church through jazz, with only classical music (composers, operatic singers, instrumentalists) omitted.Wilmer's obvious affection for her subjects was reciprocated by opportunities ...

465
Book Review

Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings

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Peter Pettinger Yale University Press New Haven 1998

This is an exhaustive trawl through the work of Bill Evans, with characterizations of virtually every recorded track, whether created for posterity or bootlegged from a concert or broadcast. Evans’ work schedule gets a similar treatment, although the author implies that there are quite a few more performance dates than the many which he does characterize or at least mention. There are also many quotations from Evans, who ...

147
Book Review

Jazz Style in Kansas City

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Jazz Style in Kansas City Ross Russell Da Capo Press 1997

As Russell describes it, the Kansas City jazz scene was founded on the combination of isolation from the jazz mainstream in Chicago and New York, and a vital night life that was depression-proof and unaffected by Prohibition, protected by the corrupt political machine of Mayor Tom Pendergast. Thus a local jazz culture was free to develop in its many nightclubs, dance halls and ...

104
Book Review

Music: Black, White & Blue

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Music: Black, White & Blue by Ortiz Walton William Morrow, 1972

Music: Black, White & Blue is both a musicological and sociological treatment of African-American music. Walton, himself a musician, begins with the African roots of both the musical practices and social uses of jazz: a participatory music with “the cries, falsettos, slurs and other African expressive modes." He continues with descriptions of the content and social settings of various types of slave music, showing how ...


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