One of the great jazz masters, Lester Young fundamentally changed the way the saxophone was played, setting the standard for all modern players. Renowned British critic Gelly followed Young through his life in a rapidly changing world, showing how the music of this exceptionally sensitive man was shaped by his experiences.
For this new edition, Edward Berger has brought the unparalleled Carter saga into the new millennium, adding insider accounts of tours, major concerts, recordings, and other special events. The accompanying annotated discography, one of the most comprehensive ever devoted to the work of a single musician, has been thoroughly revised and updated.
Consortium welcomes Outlines from Absolute Press, an impressive and mature series chronicling the lives of some of the most exceptional and influential gay and lesbian artists of our time.
Unlike other great bandleaders, Ellington personally created nearly all the music played by his orchestra. Using family papers, sheet music, and original recordings, Hasse provides a complete portrait of Ellington's great achievements. 119 photos. Tie-in with the October 1993 Duke Ellington Photographic Exhibition at the Museum of New York.
Billie Holiday (1915-1959), the legendary jazz singer whose vocal stylings were deeply affecting, continues to enthrall. This biography conveys her hard-luck youth, career triumphs, and then decline and early death. At age 14, despite growing up with an absentee musician father, little schooling, a rape at 10, and jail time for prostitution, this extraordinary girl moved to New York City to find work as a dancer or singer. She soon became the toast of Harlem and went on to tour and record with the biggest names in jazz. Holiday's career took off in the 1930s, during the Depression, and the biography evokes the era and atmosphere of the jazz club scene. The state of race relations in the country is discussed as Holiday tours with white bandleaders such as Artie Shaw and even as she sings about lynching in the controversial "Strange Fruit." The narrative further chronicles Holiday's relationships, descent into drug addiction, the subsequent diminishment of her talent, and tragic early death. Readers today will then want to seek out Holiday's recordings to more fully appreciate her interpretations of the songs of that classic era.
In her short lifetime, Ruby Elzy rose to greatness on stage and screen. Whileshe was preparing for her debut in the title role of Verdi's "Aida," tragedystruck. This is her story.
Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of many famous women blues singers as the articulation of a black, working-class feminist consciousness at odds with mainstream American culture.
Hers is the candid, high-spirited story of a scrappy redhead colored girl from West Virginia and Chicago who combined her unerring eye for talent and chich with a uniquely American brashness and an eminently European sophistication to become the toast of two continents.
Rahssan Roland Kirk was one of the most unique and colorful creators in music. Such imagination. Such a creative individual. He was awesome, at the top of my list. Quincy Jones
Bud Powell created the foundation of the modern piano style. His incomparable talent as a composer is often overlooked. This volume offers 20 piano arrangements, startling in their originality and expressiveness.
Saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920-1955) was one of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians of any era. The implications of Parker's contributions to jazz were so compelling that jazz artists on all instruments were moved to reevaluate every aspect of their art with regard to melody, rhythm, and harmony. As one of the architects of modern jazz (often called "bebop"), Parker had a profound effect on American music that continues to this day. This book opens by considering current research on Parker's biography, laying out some of the contradictory accounts of his life, and setting the chronology straight where possible. It then progresses to four chapters that focus on Parker's music, tracing his artistic evolution and major achievements as a jazz improviser. Much like a guided tour through an artist's retrospective, the book introduces readers to a sampling of Charlie Parker's most illustrative works. The musical discussions and transcribed musical examples are keyed to compact disc timings for easy location - a feature unique to this book.
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