Home » Search Center » Results: What is Jazz?
Results for "What is Jazz?"
A Look Back At Robert Glasper's Enoch's "Inaugural" Meditation
by K. Shackelford
One of the most powerful jazz documentation of a Presidential Inauguration was a YouTube presentation of Robert Glasper's “Enoch's Meditation," a piece from his 2005 album entitled Canvas. Glasper, a Blue Note artist and Grammy Award winning jazz piano star, has received critical acclaim for his trio style that weaves together a tapestry of diverse musical ...
The Power of Jazz
by John Wesley Reed Jr.
"Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together...Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity." Spoken by Quincy Jones at the First International Jazz Day in 2012 at the United Nations. The soul of Jazz is expressed in the life of its ...
Ye Olde Criticism of Jazz
by Scott Krane
SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express--verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner--the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based ...
Improvising Art: From Jam Bands to Jazz
by Jacob Hobson
The author Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow." The art of improvisation does just that: it makes the soul grow. The soul of the improvising performer is constantly stretched and twisted in search of that unnamed spiritual experience in which lasting ...
Using The Jazz Trope For Assimilation
by Scott Krane
I read an interesting thing in the Harvard Gazette today. Hansung Ryu a cellist from Seoul who played a summer concert at Harvard said “If Harvard were an Aaron Copland song, it would be 'Hoe-Down'— difficult to play but very colorful and exciting." Ryu played selections from “Rodeo" at Harvard's Sanders Theater on August, 3. The ...
The Story Of Jazz Saxophone
by AAJ Staff
For some, the saxophone is the sound of jazz. The unique fusion of brass and woodwind that is the sax found an electrifying vibrato in the hands of jazzmen that truly changed the world. The pale “pure" tone of the instrument, as first used in classical compositions, vanished in a musical blast of slurs ( Coleman ...
The Story of Jazz Trumpet
by AAJ Staff
The trumpet was the lead instrument in early jazz: it is the loudest solo instrument, the natural leader of a group of individuals, if you will. So, early trumpet pioneer Buddy Bolden (there is a photograph of him with a jazz band in 1894!) is most likely the first known jazzman simply because he was a ...
The Story of Jazz Guitar
by AAJ Staff
While in its early days, jazz guitar was considered a rhythm instrument alongside the banjo of Dixieland. In 1940, Charlie Christian and his Gibson ES-150 changed that and elevated guitar to lead instrument status alongside the saxophone and trumpet--instruments that could acoustically cut through the sound of a piano-bass-drums rhythm section. Here, we encapsulate some of ...
True Essence of Jazz
by Rewsnat
The core of jazz is improvisation. This is also what sets apart jazz music from many other forms of music. A friend of mine, who is a keen composer, once asked me, “Don't you jazz musicians get bored playing the same standards all the time over and over again," and I replied, “Well, the ...
JazzNights: Evenings of Great Music in Princeton
by Maitland Jones, Jr.
In the late 1950's Mary Wisnovsky was a student at Barnard College and singing at the Vanguard and other clubs in the village on weekends. Maitland Jones was a student at Yale, somewhat further from the action, but spending as much time as possible in New York listening to Monk at the Five Spot and Mingus ...
