Home » Search Center » Results: The Jazz Life

Results for "The Jazz Life"

Article: The Jazz Life

One of the Boys in the Band: Discovering my Dad

by George Gozzard
July 21, 2023

George Gozzard was the baby of a pretty large family the jazz trumpeter Harry Roy Gozzard raised. Harry was one of those great working musicians we heard about in the 1930s and through the 1950s who played jazz and dance band gigs interchangeably. These were the days of months long (if not longer) engagements musicians would ...

Article: The Jazz Life

My 'Other' Brother -- Remembering Jack Wilkins: 1944-2023

by Peter Rubie
June 7, 2023

Prologue This piece, in a shorter form, appeared as a post on my Facebook page a few days after my friend Jack Wilkins died on May 5, 2023. On behalf of a group of close friends I also helped write a remembrance piece for WBGO, one or two quotes of which are also included here. I ...

Article: The Jazz Life

Scenes From The Life Of A Young Jazz Musician

by Jack Wilkins
January 1, 2019

Foreword Jack Wilkins is an iconic jazz guitarists of the 1970s who is still playing his ass off today, after a career leading and accompanying a host of groups with musicians such as Stan Getz, Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Jimmy McGriff, Zoot Sims, Sonny Stitt, Eddie Gomez, Jack DeJohnette, Phil Woods, and the Brecker ...

Article: The Jazz Life

I Hear a Rhapsody

by David Caudill
July 13, 2022

We put out a call to visitors to AAJ to tell us their stories about how jazz has impacted, indeed shaped their lives. David Caudill heard the call. David has lived in Cincinnati for three decades and spent a long career writing, both in journalism and for a short while in corporate communications. He ...

Article: The Jazz Life

It's Not Your Fault—Just Evolve

by Christian Howes
June 23, 2022

Christian Howes is arguably one of America's finest jazz violinists, standing alongside past masters such as Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith, and John Blake. Many contemporary jazz violinists embrace a broad range of non-jazz styles as players because of choice or circumstance. They think of themselves as improvising violinists who play jazz. But like Jean-Luc Ponty before ...

Article: The Jazz Life

Fit As A Fiddle: How the Violin Helped Shape Jazz, Part 2

by Peter Rubie
December 30, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 This is Now I hate to confess this, but I've never been that keen on Stephane Grappelli's playing, as masterful and brilliant as he assuredly was. ("He plays with an accent," violinist and Berklee professor Rob Thomas confided to me when I hesitantly mentioned this to him. What Rob ...

Article: The Jazz Life

Fit As A Fiddle: How The Violin Helped Shape Jazz, Part 1

by Peter Rubie
December 23, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 That was then... Considering jazz is an art form that mostly makes it up as it goes along, it's ironically appropriate that printed records--i.e., data--from the days of its birth are decidedly sparse. We know, at least, that during the 18th and 19th Centuries in New Orleans white plantation ...

Article: The Jazz Life

Some Kind Of Normal—The new, East Coast Jazz Festival

by Peter Rubie
March 20, 2021

Todd Barkan is a Jazz Club owner, which is a bit like saying Sonny Rollins is a saxophonist. It doesn't really tell you very much unless you already know about them. But it's a start. After a year of the plague (Covid-19 in case you're in doubt), being a club owner is not unlike being a ...

Article: The Jazz Life

My Early Years With Bill Evans, Part 3

by Chuck Israels
July 27, 2020

Bassist and composer, Chuck Israels was raised in a musical family. Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and The Weavers were visitors to his home and the appearance of Louis Armstrong's All Stars in a concert series produced by his parents in 1948 gave Chuck his first opportunity to meet and hear jazz musicians. Chuck studied the cello ...

Article: The Jazz Life

My Early Years with Bill Evans, Part 2

by Chuck Israels
July 10, 2020

Bassist and composer Chuck Israels was raised in a musical family. He studied the cello and played guitar in junior high school. Later musical training took place at Indian Hill, a summer workshop in the arts directed by his parents, and at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. A year at Massachusetts ...