Building a Jazz Library

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

There's more to jazz than Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis. That's why we created Building A Jazz Library. With this resource, you can home in on the players and styles essential to the past and future of jazz. Each section in this series features a brief introduction which provides some background and biographical information to shed light on each particular artist or style.

Then we list the discs. You'll find landmark material here, true high-water marks worthy of respect and attention. We recruited a special enthusiast to assemble each section in this series. These people have spent a lot of time with the subject (and probably bought way too many records to back it up). We assure you that the nuggets listed here are carefully considered and on-target. If you're new to Jazz -- or new to an artist or style -- treat Building A Jazz Library as a primer of sorts. It will provide you with enough information to step confidently into the store (or the library) and find something tasty. Or if you're a serious collector, you might just find that a few of these recommendations may fill some gaping holes on your shelf. Building A Jazz Library throws its doors wide open to all different kinds of Jazz fans and interests. Certain sounds may mesh with your particular tastes, and this series aims to bring you and the music together in perfect harmony. So dig in, and enjoy! Essential Buying Tips for Building a Jazz Collection on a Budget.

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY April 10, 2019

Klezmer: Jewish Jazz? Not really, but sometimes...

By Michael Winograd

I've always found it funny that Klezmer music has often been described as “Jewish Jazz." And I've found it even funnier that the great Klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras was referred to as “The Jewish Benny Goodman." Right? Its funny. But more so, its fascinating that for many listeners, Jewish and non Jewish alike, there was a connection between Klezmer and Jazz. I'll be honest, the fundamentals of that connection are somewhat blurry to me. At its core, Klezmer music (Eastern ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY November 9, 2018

John Butcher

By John Eyles

In the Building a Jazz Library article on Evan Parker, it says that seasoned Parker followers would describe him as the finest improvising saxophonist of his generation. Curiously, many of those same people would use exactly that phrase about John Butcher. The simple explanation for this apparent contradiction is that we are talking about two generations; Parker (born 1944) is a member of the “first generation of free improvisation" (along with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, John Stevens, Paul Rutherford, Barry ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY May 17, 2018

Cecil Taylor

By John Eyles

On April 5th 2018, the world lost pianist, composer, poet and iconoclast Cecil Taylor, at age 89. Taylor was the last surviving member of a generation of players who gave birth to the music variously labelled as avant-garde, fire music or free jazz, although some sources jointly credit Taylor and Ornette Coleman as its originators. A native New Yorker, Taylor received piano lessons by the age of five, taught by his mother. A childhood classical-piano prodigy, he studied ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY January 26, 2018

15 Emerging Norwegian Jazz Musicians You Need To Know About

By Luca Vitali

Double your Norwegian jazz pleasure: listen to our companion Norwegian jazz mixtape while reading this article. Far too many people talk about the Norwegian scene as being “interesting because it's so exotic." Those who think so, have in mind its “Nordic Tone," that distinctive mood which evokes snow, mountains and icy fjords. This kind of stereotype, however, does not do justice to the diversity and quality of today's Norwegian jazz. Norway is a young country so ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY September 11, 2017

Evan Parker

By John Eyles

In his biography of Robert Wyatt, Different Every Time (Serpent's Tail, 2015), author Marcus O'Dair describes Evan Parker as “perhaps the finest British free-jazz saxophonist of his generation." The only words in that phrase that seasoned Parker followers might take issue with are “perhaps," “British" and “free-jazz," preferring just to describe him as the finest improvising saxophonist of his generation. Be that as it may, as well as his pre-eminent status, Parker is also notoriously prolific and productive, having appeared ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY August 16, 2017

Forget Old Europe: 15 European Jazz Musicians You Need To Know About

By Enrico Bettinello

Since the first half of the 20th century, the Old Continent has played a pivotal role both in welcoming and supporting jazz artists from the United States. Over the following decades it has expressed generations of passionate musicians with increasingly original languages and ever greater improvisatory skills. In the 21st century there are countless excellent, professionally trained, jazz musicians all over Europe (as everywhere else in the world), ranging from the more mainstream boppers to the most radical ...

BUILDING A JAZZ LIBRARY June 23, 2017

15 Italian Jazz Musicians You Need To Know About

By Enrico Bettinello

It is not unusual for colleagues and promoters from across Europe and the United States to ask me: “Which Italian jazz musicians should I check out?" For decades, Italy has enjoyed an increasingly prominent place in the vast landscape of European Jazz. The names of some of its most famous players, like trumpeters Enrico Rava or Paolo Fresu or pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, just to name few, are well known all around the world. But even younger artists such ...