Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz

by Chris Becker
Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz
Author: Chris Becker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2015-11-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692543603
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Since the arrival of the 21st century, jazz has evolved into a truly cross-generational, multicultural musical art form that is assimilating an unprecedented array of musical styles and techniques. At the same time, the male-dominated paradigm that has defined the historical narrative of jazz is no more. Women are shaking up the music industry while the general public is becoming much more aware of the contributions female musicians have made to jazz. "Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz," a collection of interviews with 37 female musicians, musicians of all ages, nationalities, and races, and representing nearly every style of jazz one can imagine, provides evidence of this profound evolution. The interviewees, including Terri Lyne Carrington, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eliane Elias, Carmen Lundy, Anat Cohen, Diane Schuur, and Sherrie Maricle, speak about their earliest experiences playing music, the years of practice required to become a professional musician, and what jazz means in the new millennium. These interviews will inform and inspire both casual and seasoned fans of this music, as well as young musicians taking their first steps in the journey to master their craft. "At long last, an in-depth recognition of the female contributions to jazz. As Dr. Billy Taylor said about the lack of awareness of female musicians: 'If it isn't written down, it didn't happen.' Now everyone will know that it did happen and continues to happen. What a great gift to the history of women and music." - Judy Chaikin, director of "The Girls in the Band." The interviewees: Mindi Abair - Saxophones Cheryl Bentyne - Voice Jane Ira Bloom - Soprano Saxophone Samantha Boshnack - Trumpet Dee Dee Bridgewater - Voice Terri Lyne Carrington - Drums Sharel Cassity - Saxophones Anat Cohen - Clarinet, Saxophones Jean Cook - Violin Connie Crothers - Piano Eliane Elias - Piano, Voice Ayelet Rose Gottlieb - Voice Lenae Harris- Cello Val Jeanty - Electronics, Percussion Jan Leder - Flute Jennifer Leitham - Double Bass Carmen Lundy - Voice Sherrie Maricle - Drums Jane Monheit - Voice Jacqui Naylor - Voice Aurora Nealand - Saxophones, Clarinet Iris Ornig - Double Bass Alisha Pattillo - Tenor Saxophone Roberta Piket - Piano Cheryl Pyle - Flute Nicole Rampersaud - Trumpet Sofia Rei - Voice Patrizia Scascitelli - Piano Diane Schuur - Voice Ellen Seeling - Trumpet Helen Sung - Piano Jacqui Sutton - Voice Mazz Swift - Violin, Voice Nioka Workman - Cello Pamela York - Piano Brandee Younger - Harp Malika Zarra - Voice

Play the Way You Feel

by Kevin Whitehead
Play the Way You Feel
Author: Kevin Whitehead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-04-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190847581
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Jazz stories have been entwined with cinema since the inception of jazz film genre in the 1920s, giving us origin tales and biopics, spectacles and low-budget quickies, comedies, musicals, and dramas, and stories of improvisers and composers at work. And the jazz film has seen a resurgence in recent years--from biopics like Miles Ahead and HBO's Bessie, to dramas Whiplash and La La Land. In Play the Way You Feel, author and jazz critic Kevin Whitehead offers a comprehensive guide to these films and other media from the perspective of the music itself. Spanning 93 years of film history, the book looks closely at movies, cartoons, and a few TV shows that tell jazz stories, from early talkies to modern times, with an eye to narrative conventions and common story points. Examining the ways historical films have painted a clear picture of the past or overtly distorted history, Play the Way You Feel serves up capsule discussions of sundry topics including Duke Ellington's social life at the Cotton Club, avant-garde musical practices in 1930s vaudeville, and Martin Scorsese's improvisatory method on the set of New York, New York. Throughout the book, Whitehead brings the same analytical bent and concise, witty language listeners know from his jazz segments on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He investigates well-known songs, traces the development of the stock jazz film ending, and offers fresh, often revisionist takes on works by such directors as Howard Hawks, John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Spike Lee, Robert Altman, Woody Allen and Damien Chazelle. In all, Play the Way You Feel is a feast for film-genre fanatics and movie-watching jazz enthusiasts.

Experiencing Jazz

by Richard J. Lawn
Experiencing Jazz
Author: Richard J. Lawn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2024-01-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1003833268
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Experiencing Jazz, Third Edition is an integrated textbook, website, and audio anthology for jazz appreciation and history courses. Through readings, illustrations, timelines, listening guides, and a playlist of tracks and performances, Experiencing Jazz journeys through the history of jazz and places the music within larger cultural and historical contexts. Designed for the jazz novice, this textbook introduces the reader to prominent artists, covers the evolution of styles, and makes stylistic comparisons to current trends and developments. New to the third edition: Richard J. Lawn is joined by new co-author Justin G. Binek Expanded coverage of artists, particularly important vocalists and prominent women in jazz, including Bobby McFerrin, Kurt Elling, The Manhattan Transfer, and Terri Lyne Carrington A dynamic, web-exclusive bonus chapter—Chapter 14.5: The Story Continues—exploring contemporary jazz artists who push the boundaries of jazz by creating new stylistic fusions and who utilize new media to create, collaborate, and share their artistry A re-worked companion website featuring new recordings, a more comprehensive audio anthology, and a major revision of The Elements of Jazz section Condensed musician biographies and updated content reflecting jazz’s global impact Revised listening guides for spotlighted recordings highlighting key moments worthy of closer listening and analysis Comprehensive and immersive, the third edition of Experiencing Jazz provides a foundational understanding of the history of the genre.

The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender

by James Reddan
The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender
Author: James Reddan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 696
Release: 2022-08-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000591514
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The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender identifies, defines, and interrogates the construct of gender in all forms of jazz, jazz culture, and education, shaping and transforming the conversation in response to changing cultural and societal norms across the globe. Such interrogation requires consideration of gender from multiple viewpoints, from scholars and artists at various points in their careers. This edited collection of 38 essays gathers the diverse perspectives of contributors from four continents, exploring the nuanced (and at times controversial) construct of gender as it relates to jazz music, in the past and present, in four parts: Historical Perspectives Identity and Culture Society and Education Policy and Advocacy Acknowledging the art form’s troubled relationship with gender, contributors seek to define the construct to include all possible definitions—not only female and male—without binary limitations, contextualizing gender and jazz in both place and time. As gender identity becomes an increasingly important consideration in both education and scholarship, The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender provides a broad and inclusive resource of research for the academic community, addressing an urgent need to reconcile the construct of gender in jazz in all its forms.

Big Ears

by Nichole T. Rustin
Big Ears
Author: Nichole T. Rustin
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2008-11-07
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0822389223
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In jazz circles, players and listeners with “big ears” hear and engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by listening, with big ears, for gender in jazz. Essays range from a reflection on the female boogie-woogie pianists who played at Café Society in New York during the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations of how the jazzman is represented in Dorothy Baker’s novel Young Man with a Horn (1938) and Michael Curtiz’s film adaptation (1950). Taken together, the essays enrich the field of jazz studies by showing how gender dynamics have shaped the production, reception, and criticism of jazz culture. Scholars of music, ethnomusicology, American studies, literature, anthropology, and cultural studies approach the question of gender in jazz from multiple perspectives. One contributor scrutinizes the tendency of jazz historiography to treat singing as subordinate to the predominantly male domain of instrumental music, while another reflects on her doubly inappropriate position as a female trumpet player and a white jazz musician and scholar. Other essays explore the composer George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept as a critique of mid-twentieth-century discourses of embodiment, madness, and black masculinity; performances of “female hysteria” by Les Diaboliques, a feminist improvising trio; and the BBC radio broadcasts of Ivy Benson and Her Ladies’ Dance Orchestra during the Second World War. By incorporating gender analysis into jazz studies, Big Ears transforms ideas of who counts as a subject of study and even of what counts as jazz. Contributors: Christina Baade, Jayna Brown, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Monica Hairston, Kristin McGee, Tracy McMullen, Ingrid Monson, Lara Pellegrinelli, Eric Porter, Nichole T. Rustin, Ursel Schlicht, Julie Dawn Smith, Jeffrey Taylor, Sherrie Tucker, João H. Costa Vargas

Swing Shift

by Sherrie Tucker
Swing Shift
Author: Sherrie Tucker
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822328179
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The story, based on extensive individual interviews, of the women’s swing bands that toured extensively during World War II and after -- a kind of “League of their Own” for jazz.

Women in Jazz: The Women, The Legends & Their Fight

by Sammy Stein
Women in Jazz: The Women, The Legends & Their Fight
Author: Sammy Stein
Publisher: 8th House Publishing
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-09-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781926716558
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This book is about women in jazz. It charts their journeys, celebrates their presence, hears their voices, wonders at their prowess and revels in their being. We hear from female agents, arrangers, composers, musicians, PR people, radio hosts, record label managers, singers, writers and more. These are their stories; their views of jazz and how they see the future. The established performers share their years of experience whilst those newer to jazz reflect on observations and changes they have seen. Containing interviews and first-hand accounts, this book is witness to the generosity, profundity and positivity with which women have responded and the energy they have put into their lives in overcoming challenges.

Blue Nippon

by E. Taylor Atkins
Blue Nippon
Author: E. Taylor Atkins
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2001
Genre: Jazz
ISBN: 9780822327219
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Thinking in Jazz

by Paul F. Berliner
Thinking in Jazz
Author: Paul F. Berliner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 904
Release: 2009-10-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0226044521
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A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker. Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators. Berliner explores the alternative ways—aural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associative—in which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliner's skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.