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Building a Jazz Audience: The Sisyphus Redux
by Kurt Ellenberger
Since my controversial article on jazz education and audience development, many have asked “Well, if education isn't the answer, what's the solution? How do we develop and maintain a strong jazz audience?" Audience development is a complicated issue, and it's not limited to jazz. Every artist and arts organization is trying to answer the ...
Ghosts In The Machine, Part 5: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 5: Jazz in Academia Jazz musicians have always been acutely aware of the “byproduct" of becoming proficient in jazz. Jazz training, even if rudimentary, provides the ability to master or at least become fluent in other styles in a ...
Ghosts In The Machine, Part 4: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 4: Jazz in the Trenches In my previous articles, I detailed the enormous influence that jazz musicians have had on popular music since the 1960s. This may, early on, have been a matter of survival; as the popularity of ...
Ghosts In The Machine, Part 3: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 3: The GhostsIn a recent essay in Commentary, Terry Teachout, arts and culture critic for the Wall Street Journal, makes an argument for the date on which the jazz era officially ended and the rock/pop era began--May 9, ...
Ghosts In The Machine, Part 2: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part II: The Machinery Jazz musicians have played an important role in the development of popular music from the 1960s until today (we should also remember that jazz actually was popular music from the 1920s-1940s). For those who know the ...
Ghosts In The Machine, Part 1: Jazz Musicians And Popular Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part I: The MachinesJazz and classical musicians have long had a troubled relationship with pop music. (By “pop music," I mean all styles outside of classical and jazz--country, rock, hip-hop, rap, etc.--any style that enjoys a double-digit market share is ...
Jack Hues and His Muse: The First Thing I Need is Music
by Kurt Ellenberger
In the world of rock and pop music, the most successful musicians and groups tend to emerge in their early 20s with a burst of creativity that few can sustain past a handful of recordings. Unlike in classical music and jazz, where musicians and composers continually develop and evolve well into old age, rock musicians generally ...
The Touch of Your Lips, Part 3: The Essential Touch in Jazz Piano
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 It would be nice and tidy if the development of tone color as a primary in jazz piano matched its development in the other instruments, but that is not the case. From early on in jazz's history, composers and bandleaders like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab ...
The Touch of Your Lips, Part 2: Touch and Tone Color in Jazz Piano
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As mentioned in Part 1, tone color took on a prominent role in classical music in the 19C. The Romantic composers like Wagner, Strauss, Berlioz, Chopin and many others were, I think it is fair to say, somewhat obsessed with it. The composers before them were ...
The Touch of Your Lips: The Colors of Jazz Piano
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The idea that pianists are able to create different tone colors and different timbres, was once a topic of heated debate, but is now no longer questioned. For some performers, the sound can be a musical identifier on par with a fingerprint, which is a strong ...
