Home » Search Center » Results: What is Jazz?
Results for "What is Jazz?"
In Praise of Young Jazz Musicians
by S.G Provizer
I hear a lot about this entitled generation of kids. The lazy buggers don't woodshed for 12 hours a day learning Charlie Parker solos like we did. They don't give a hoot about blowing Cherokee in 12 keys. And yet, those lazy buggers seem to be filling the halls of Berklee, North Texas State ...
Listening to Jazz Knowingly and Authentically: The Epistemology and Ontology of Jazz
by Victor L. Schermer
"What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought.'" --David Hume I deliberately used the words “epistemological" and “ontological" in the title in order to attract your attention. If you don't know what they mean, you're going feel put off or curious. If you do know, you're going ...
Jazz Stories: 2016
by Michael Ricci
All About Jazz--a longstanding internet destination for all things jazz--is a community bound by its love of the music. Since March, we've solicited jazz stories from our members asking them to answer any of a handful of questions and we wanted to recognize some of our submissions from 2016. New stories arrive daily and ...
Words and Music: Why Liner Notes Matter
by Jakob Baekgaard
It is said that we live in The Information Age, but perhaps, it would be more correct to say that we live in the Age of Too Much Information. If there is something you are looking for, you can often find it on the Internet, but the question is whether it is quantity rather than quality. ...
Jazz Popularity and You
by Douglas Groothuis
Twenty years ago I read in a William Bennett book that jazz made up only 3% of the music market. I often lamented that when jazz came up in any of the classes I taught. I further wondered if that lamentable percentage included sales by Kenny G. If so, all the worse, since, as Pat Metheny ...
Jazz: The Sacred and the Profane
by Victor L. Schermer
“As above, so below" --Hermes Trismegistus A warning: this article is worth reading only if you believe, as I do, that jazz is not just a form of entertainment, but an art form that has deep significance for our lives and contributes to our search for meaning. I fully appreciate the value of “digging ...
The Virtues of Jazz
by Douglas Groothuis
Any jazz aficionado knows the musical virtues of jazz, whether they are a musician, a jazz writer, or simply a committed jazz listener. In classical Western thought (that is, in the musings of cats like as Aristotle and Plato), a virtue is a kind of excellence in performance that flows from a settled habit. One who ...
Jazz Cosmos: Music and Modern Physics
by Victor L. Schermer
To the memory of Leonard Bernstein, the greatest musical educator of all time, a great conductor and composer who loved jazz and whose televised lectures brought a whole generation of listeners into insightful contact with the music. Maybe you remember how astrophysicist Carl Sagan's vision of “billions and billions of stars" captured the awesome ...
Jazz Music Is Ecstatic Language
by David Arivett
Leonardo DaVinci once said, “Do you know that our souls are composed of music?" Music and religion are intimately linked, and music is one of the most powerful tools to convey religious meaning. As human beings, we have been given the gift of musical language which can help transform us from our humdrum, everyday existence, into ...
How Teachers can Swing in the Classroom
by Douglas Groothuis
I am a jazz aficionado as well as a philosophy professor. Being in front of a classroom teaching is my favorite place on earth, second to a good jazz club with hip friends. In the midst of a philosophy class, I may wax enthusiastic about the transcendent qualities of a John Coltrane saxophone solo or the ...
