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Philip Rau

About Me

My Jazz Story

I grew up in a household that listened to classical music, so when I became enthralled with jazz after watching the Ken Burns Jazz series, my parents replicated an age-old generational conflict–hollering at me to turn down those noisy bebop albums I was playing in my room while they tried to enjoy their Mozart. My first album was Ellington at Newport, I think I listened to that hundreds of times. Since then, my appreciation for the genre has only grown deeper and wider as I explore everything from the cheesy electroswing of Caravan Palace to the heavy jazz fusion Kneebody. I love it so much, I've incorporated it into the work that I did in school, even creating a data visualization based on the Penguin Guide to Jazz's top 1000 albums.