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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 ...
Thana Alexa, Sirintip and Owen Broder: Beaming Live Jazz From Their Living Rooms To Yours
by Michael Ricci
All About Jazz was in a unique position to help promote and broadcast the Live From Our Living Rooms Festival & Fundraiser to our readers from April 1-7, 2020 as we presented select performances over the seven days. Similar to the NEA Jazz Masters concert we broadcasted last April, I felt a personal connection to the ...
From Medieval to Live Evil: We're All Minimalists Now
by Kurt Ellenberger
A Brief History of the Minimalist Aesthetic Minimalism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity." Musically speaking, this translates to a few characteristics common to most pieces: Slow-moving or static harmony;Small number of repetitive and simple rhythmic figures; ...
Cold Fusion: The Search for the Jazz/Rock Unicorn, Part 3
by Kurt Ellenberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Part 3: U.K.'s First Album U.K.PrologueIn the second part of this series, I laid out my criteria for what would constitute a fusion of jazz and rock that remained true to both styles, which, in my definition, means that the resultant music would have to appeal ...
2020 Winter JazzFest Marathons: A Survival Guide
by Ludovico Granvassu
Believe it or not, it is that time of the year again! The holidaze are barely over and a new edition of Winter JazzFest is upon us. Knowing a jazz marathon is the perfect antidote to the holiday shopping and social marathons, producer Brice Rosenbloom and his cohorts have put together a program of gargantuan proportions. ...
Jazz and the Meaning of Life
by Douglas Groothuis
I find jazz meaningful and delightful for a happy riot of reasons: its grand tradition and respect for standards, its uniquely American (but also global) identity, its breaking of color barriers, its persistence through changing musical fashions (jazz will never die), its courageous freedom within beautiful forms, and more. Therefore, I was fascinated to find that ...
Good Vibes, Bad Vibes: Jazz in Film
by Douglas Groothuis
Several films about jazz depict troubled and vice-ridden musicians, such as Charlie Parker, in Bird, and Chet Baker, in Born to be Blue. I walked out of the latter after twenty minutes of excessive obscenity, graphic vice, and general disgust. These films reinforce the idea that jazz is associated with illegal activities, illicit sex, and generally ...
Love Jazz, Hate Jazz
by Michael Ricci
Years ago, when I dabbled in cartooning, I developed a presentation style where the character on the left makes a statement with a speech balloon while the character on the right responds with a thought balloon--always in sharp contrast. I had a lot of fun with it. Here, illustrator Keith Henry Brown and I ...
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