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534

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Jazz Masterpieces: 1956-1965

by AAJ Staff
March 2, 2015

There are times when you have to hold back and let certain music speak for itself. This list of jazz masterpieces is exactly that kind of music. By definition, these records are without flaw. (Okay, so humans are inherently flawed, but you'll have to get out a microscope to find anything that falls short here.)

763

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Pat Metheny: Quantum Musician

by Nathan Holaway
March 1, 2015

If Pat Metheny never plays another single note, he would have already lived a “bright size life." Pat Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, MO in 1954 and first picked up his guitar at the age of twelve. By age fifteen, he was already playing with the top jazz musicians in town. In 1974, ...

785

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Classic Bebop

by Chris M. Slawecki
February 28, 2015

Bebop played the same part in the history of jazz that rock & roll played in the history of pop: Seemingly equal parts genius, accident, hard work, and willful rebellion, it was born of its turbulent times and forever changed the course of music. Bebop is the sharp dividing line between swing and modern ...

685

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Jazz With Strings

by Roger Crane
February 28, 2015

Please note the title of this collection. It does not include symphony orchestras playing jazz compositions. Nor does it feature what is known as “third stream" music, which is the combination of jazz and classical elements for what is hoped to be a unified whole. No, just like the title says, this collection includes jazz musicians ...

1,265

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Tomasz Stanko

by Budd Kopman
October 31, 2005

Trumpeter and composer Tomasz Stanko (b. 1942 Rzeszow, Poland) was present at the birth of modern European jazz. He's most closely associated with the man who was at the center of seemingly all art forms in Poland in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Krzysztof Komeda. Although his early work has been described, even by himself, ...

501

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Drum-n-Bass

by AAJ Staff
August 20, 2005

Electronica stands alone among modern music styles as a byproduct of both audience appeal and technological progress. Once techno had caught on and the underground scene was well-established, DJ's began experimenting more creatively with programming the beats themselves. In the clubs and in the studio (mostly in England), drum-and-bass (d-n-b) was born. (Note: you'll hear “jungle" ...

266

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Blues

by Ed Kopp
August 16, 2005

The blues is the progenitor of most popular music in America, but it hasn't always gotten the respect it deserves. The recorded history of the blues proves the point. Prior to World War II, very few white people had ever heard any authentic blues music. Up until the late 1950s, blues labels could only afford to ...

554

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Post-Bop Records of the Modern Era

by AAJ Staff
August 16, 2005

With the arrival of Wynton Marsalis on the scene in 1979 was the beginning of a renaissance on the jazz scene that was to involve a reappraisal of the acoustic jazz tradition that had been left stranded with few exceptions in the late '60s and '70s, when fusion and the avant-garde held sway.From 1980 ...

899

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Gene Harris

by C. Michael Bailey
August 10, 2005

Gene Harris (1933-2000) can safely be termed the most serious populist jazz musician to perform in the last 50 years. He is among the most accessible and amiable of jazz pianists, who focused his superior command of the blues and ballads to produce some of the most enduring and enlightening jazz music ever. For these reasons, ...

679

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Free Improvisation

by John Eyles
August 10, 2005

In Britain, in the mid-60s, free improvisation (often just called “improv") developed out of free jazz, eventually becoming a separate and distinct music. Free jazz gradually removed conventional structure -chords, melodic themes, regular rhythm--but free improvisation took their absence as its starting point. Essentially, free improvisation has no rules; in Derek Bailey's words, it is “playing ...