The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music
Author: Ben Ratliff
Hardcover: 256 pages
Company: Times Books (2008-11-11) (2008-11-11)
ISBN: 0805081461
List Price: $25.00
Amazon Price: $15.46
Used Price: $19.69
Jazz: A History of America's Music
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible for
The Civil War and Baseball.
Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessential American music?jazz. Born in the black community of turn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning by musicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at their best.
Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art and influenced every singer, every instrumentalist who came after him; Duke Ellington, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turned a whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly two thousand pieces for it, and captured more of American life than any other composer. Bix Beiderbecke, the doomed cornet prodigy who showed white musicians that they too could make an important contribution to the music; Benny Goodman, the immigrants' son who learned the clarinet to help feed his family, but who grew up to teach a whole country how to dance; Billie Holiday, whose distinctive style routinely transformed mediocre music into great art; Charlie Parker, who helped lead a musical revolution, only to destroy himself at thirty-four; and Miles Davis, whose search for fresh ways to sound made him the most influential jazz musician of his generation, and then led him to abandon jazz altogether. Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Artie Shaw, and Ella Fitzgerald are all here; so are Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and a host of others.
But Jazz is more than mere biography. The history of the music echoes the history of twentieth-century America. Jazz provided the background for the giddy era that F. Scott Fitzgerald called the Jazz Age. The irresistible pulse of big-band swing lifted the spirits and boosted American morale during the Great Depression and World War II. The virtuosic, demanding style called bebop mirrored the stepped-up pace and dislocation that came with peace. During the Cold War era, jazz served as a propaganda weapon?and forged links with the burgeoning counterculture. The story of jazz encompasses the story of American courtship and show business; the epic growth of great cities?New Orleans and Chicago, Kansas City and New York?and the struggle for civil rights and simple justice that continues into the new millennium.
Visually stunning, with more than five hundred photographs, some never before published, this book, like the music it chronicles, is an exploration?and a celebration?of the American experiment.
From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
Paperback: 512 pages
Company: Knopf (2002-10-08) (2002-10-08)
ISBN: 0679765395
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $21.00
Used Price: $12.00
Modern Jazz Voicings: Arranging for Small and Medium Ensembles
The definitive text used for the time-honored Chord Scales course at Berklee College of Music, this book concentrates on scoring for every possible ensemble combination and teaches performers and arrangers how to add color, character and sophistication to chord voicings. Topics covered include: selecting appropriate harmonic tensions, understanding jazz harmony, overcoming harmonic ambiguity, experimenting with unusual combinations and non-traditional alignments, and many more. The accompanying CD includes performance examples of several different arranging techniques."A no-nonsense, meat and potatoes source of basic and not-so-basic information about everything relating to jazz writing - covers several courses worth of information."- Kenny WernerPianist, Composer and Author of Effortless Mastery
Author: Ted Pease, Ken Pullig
Paperback: 136 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2001-05-01)
ISBN: 0634014439
List Price: $24.95
Amazon Price: $14.87
Used Price: $15.62
Jazz Composition: Theory and Practice
When you think of jazz composers, who comes to mind? Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Bob Brookmeyer. This book is about what they (and many others) do. Jazz composition has evolved into a disciplined art that often evidences great emotional depth and breadth of sophistication. Berklee College of Music legend Ted Pease demystifies the processes involved in writing jazz tunes and in composing episodic and extended jazz works. Jazz Composition: Theory and Practice is a by-product of Pease's 25 years of teaching jazz composition. The accompanying CD helps demonstrate melody, harmony and rhythmic elements of jazz and also includes a variety of music-writing exercises focused on learning these same elements to help you begin producing your own effective jazz compositions.
Author: Ted Pease
Paperback: 238 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2003-08-01)
ISBN: 0876390017
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $24.89
Used Price: $25.00
Jazz: America's Classical Music
Author: Grover Sales
Paperback: 256 pages
Company: Da Capo Press (1992-08-21)
ISBN: 0306804913
List Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $3.73
Used Price: $0.75
The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (Blacks in the New World)
Explains how jazz was shaped by urbanization, the 'great migration' of southern blacks northward, and the 'jazz image' - dress code, jargon, and use of drugs. This book places jazz in its rich social context.
Author: Burton W. Peretti
Paperback: 304 pages
Company: University of Illinois Press (1994-08-01)
ISBN: 0252064216
List Price: $20.00
Amazon Price: $15.92
Used Price: $16.00
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition
The essential guide to recorded jazz, now in its ninth edition
Firmly established as the world?s leading guide to jazz, this celebrated reference book is a mine of fascinating information and insightful?often wittily trenchant?criticism. For this completely revised edition, Richard Cook and Brian Morton have reassessed each artist?s entry and updated the text to incorporate thousands of additional CDs and artists. The result is an endlessly browsable companion for jazz aficionados and novices alike.
Author: Richard Cook, Brian Morton
Paperback: 1600 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics) (2008-12-02)
ISBN: 0141034017
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $19.40
Used Price: $19.40
Jazzology: The Encyclopedia of Jazz Theory for All Musicians
A one-of-a-kind book encompassing a wide scope of jazz topics, for beginners and pros of any instrument. A three-pronged approach was envisioned with the creation of this comprehensive resource: as an encyclopedia for ready reference, as a thorough methodology for the student, and as a workbook for the classroom, complete with ample exercises and conceptual discussion. Includes the basics of intervals, jazz harmony, scales and modes, ii-V-I cadences. For harmony, it covers: harmonic analysis, piano voicings and voice leading; modulations and modal interchange, and reharmonization. For performance, it takes players through: jazz piano comping, jazz tune forms, arranging techniques, improvisation, traditional jazz fundamentals, practice techniques, and much more! Customer reviews on amazon.com for Jazzology average a glowing 5 stars! Here is a typical reader comment: "The book's approach is so intuitive, it almost leads you by the hand into the world of jazz. Certainly jazz is freedom of expression, but you have to know what you're doing and this book is the tool for that ... (it) should be standard in every high school with a jazz program and every college lab band."
Author: Robert Rawlins, Nor Eddine Bahha
Paperback: 266 pages
Company: Hal Leonard (2005-07-01)
ISBN: 0634086782
List Price: $17.95
Amazon Price: $13.19
Used Price: $14.21
The Jazz Piano Book
Endorsed by Kenny Barron, Jamey Aebersold, Richie Beirach, and more, this book presents all the information a student of jazz piano needs in an easy-to-understand, yet thorough, manner. For intermediate to advanced pianists, written by one of the acknowledged masters of jazz piano playing.
Author: Mark Levine
Spiral-bound: 307 pages
Company: Sher Music (2005-06-01)
ISBN: 0961470151
List Price: $32.00
Amazon Price: $22.27
Used Price: $21.78
Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble
Create arrangements with texture and style with this complete guide to arranging for large horn sections! Now, for the first time, learn the same jazz ensemble arranging techniques taught by renowned Berklee College of Music faculty, and studied by the best and brightest arrangers working today. While the book focuses on classic big band and jazz styles, the core information about horn harmony and arranging can be used for any style, from hip-hop to ska. Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble includes all the information you need when creating horn charts, fueling and inspiring you with the charts of esteemed Berklee professors Jeff Friedman, Ted Pease, Scott Free, Greg Hopkins and Bill Scism. The play-along CD includes more than 60 demo tracks and arrangements written in the style of masters such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, and performed by Berklee faculty. Covers: writing and voicing techniques; soli, background and shout choruses; special effects; creating your own style; and more.
Author: Dick Lowell, Ken Pullig
Paperback: 208 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2003-02-01)
ISBN: 0634036564
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $24.73
An intimate exploration into the musical genius of fifteen living jazz legends, from the longtime New York Times jazz critic
Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece ?Kind of Blue.? Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.
In The Jazz Ear, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. In the process, he skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz?from horn blare to drum riff?is created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music.
Playful and keenly insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.
Author: Ben Ratliff
Hardcover: 256 pages
Company: Times Books (2008-11-11) (2008-11-11)
ISBN: 0805081461
List Price: $25.00
Amazon Price: $15.46
Used Price: $19.69
Jazz: A History of America's Music
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible forThe Civil War and Baseball.
Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessential American music?jazz. Born in the black community of turn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning by musicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at their best.
Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art and influenced every singer, every instrumentalist who came after him; Duke Ellington, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turned a whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly two thousand pieces for it, and captured more of American life than any other composer. Bix Beiderbecke, the doomed cornet prodigy who showed white musicians that they too could make an important contribution to the music; Benny Goodman, the immigrants' son who learned the clarinet to help feed his family, but who grew up to teach a whole country how to dance; Billie Holiday, whose distinctive style routinely transformed mediocre music into great art; Charlie Parker, who helped lead a musical revolution, only to destroy himself at thirty-four; and Miles Davis, whose search for fresh ways to sound made him the most influential jazz musician of his generation, and then led him to abandon jazz altogether. Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Artie Shaw, and Ella Fitzgerald are all here; so are Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and a host of others.
But Jazz is more than mere biography. The history of the music echoes the history of twentieth-century America. Jazz provided the background for the giddy era that F. Scott Fitzgerald called the Jazz Age. The irresistible pulse of big-band swing lifted the spirits and boosted American morale during the Great Depression and World War II. The virtuosic, demanding style called bebop mirrored the stepped-up pace and dislocation that came with peace. During the Cold War era, jazz served as a propaganda weapon?and forged links with the burgeoning counterculture. The story of jazz encompasses the story of American courtship and show business; the epic growth of great cities?New Orleans and Chicago, Kansas City and New York?and the struggle for civil rights and simple justice that continues into the new millennium.
Visually stunning, with more than five hundred photographs, some never before published, this book, like the music it chronicles, is an exploration?and a celebration?of the American experiment.
From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
Paperback: 512 pages
Company: Knopf (2002-10-08) (2002-10-08)
ISBN: 0679765395
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $21.00
Used Price: $12.00
Modern Jazz Voicings: Arranging for Small and Medium Ensembles
The definitive text used for the time-honored Chord Scales course at Berklee College of Music, this book concentrates on scoring for every possible ensemble combination and teaches performers and arrangers how to add color, character and sophistication to chord voicings. Topics covered include: selecting appropriate harmonic tensions, understanding jazz harmony, overcoming harmonic ambiguity, experimenting with unusual combinations and non-traditional alignments, and many more. The accompanying CD includes performance examples of several different arranging techniques."A no-nonsense, meat and potatoes source of basic and not-so-basic information about everything relating to jazz writing - covers several courses worth of information."- Kenny WernerPianist, Composer and Author of Effortless MasteryAuthor: Ted Pease, Ken Pullig
Paperback: 136 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2001-05-01)
ISBN: 0634014439
List Price: $24.95
Amazon Price: $14.87
Used Price: $15.62
Jazz Composition: Theory and Practice
When you think of jazz composers, who comes to mind? Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Bob Brookmeyer. This book is about what they (and many others) do. Jazz composition has evolved into a disciplined art that often evidences great emotional depth and breadth of sophistication. Berklee College of Music legend Ted Pease demystifies the processes involved in writing jazz tunes and in composing episodic and extended jazz works. Jazz Composition: Theory and Practice is a by-product of Pease's 25 years of teaching jazz composition. The accompanying CD helps demonstrate melody, harmony and rhythmic elements of jazz and also includes a variety of music-writing exercises focused on learning these same elements to help you begin producing your own effective jazz compositions.Author: Ted Pease
Paperback: 238 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2003-08-01)
ISBN: 0876390017
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $24.89
Used Price: $25.00
Jazz: America's Classical Music
Jazz: America?s Classical Music is a delightful introduction and guide to this complex and compelling music and to its rich history. In an engaging and conversational style, renowned jazz teacher Grover Sales tells of the lives and music of the greats?Ellington, Tatum, Hawkins, Coltrane, Parker, Hines, Goodman, Armstrong, and many others?with a mix of important facts, fascinating anecdotes, and brilliant interpretations. Illustrated with astonishing photographs of the artists in performance, Jazz: America?s Classical Music is a classic text, an ideal book for beginners and an inspiring one for serious students of the art of jazz.
Author: Grover Sales
Paperback: 256 pages
Company: Da Capo Press (1992-08-21)
ISBN: 0306804913
List Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $3.73
Used Price: $0.75
The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (Blacks in the New World)
Explains how jazz was shaped by urbanization, the 'great migration' of southern blacks northward, and the 'jazz image' - dress code, jargon, and use of drugs. This book places jazz in its rich social context.Author: Burton W. Peretti
Paperback: 304 pages
Company: University of Illinois Press (1994-08-01)
ISBN: 0252064216
List Price: $20.00
Amazon Price: $15.92
Used Price: $16.00
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition
The essential guide to recorded jazz, now in its ninth editionFirmly established as the world?s leading guide to jazz, this celebrated reference book is a mine of fascinating information and insightful?often wittily trenchant?criticism. For this completely revised edition, Richard Cook and Brian Morton have reassessed each artist?s entry and updated the text to incorporate thousands of additional CDs and artists. The result is an endlessly browsable companion for jazz aficionados and novices alike.
Author: Richard Cook, Brian Morton
Paperback: 1600 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics) (2008-12-02)
ISBN: 0141034017
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $19.40
Used Price: $19.40
Jazzology: The Encyclopedia of Jazz Theory for All Musicians
A one-of-a-kind book encompassing a wide scope of jazz topics, for beginners and pros of any instrument. A three-pronged approach was envisioned with the creation of this comprehensive resource: as an encyclopedia for ready reference, as a thorough methodology for the student, and as a workbook for the classroom, complete with ample exercises and conceptual discussion. Includes the basics of intervals, jazz harmony, scales and modes, ii-V-I cadences. For harmony, it covers: harmonic analysis, piano voicings and voice leading; modulations and modal interchange, and reharmonization. For performance, it takes players through: jazz piano comping, jazz tune forms, arranging techniques, improvisation, traditional jazz fundamentals, practice techniques, and much more! Customer reviews on amazon.com for Jazzology average a glowing 5 stars! Here is a typical reader comment: "The book's approach is so intuitive, it almost leads you by the hand into the world of jazz. Certainly jazz is freedom of expression, but you have to know what you're doing and this book is the tool for that ... (it) should be standard in every high school with a jazz program and every college lab band."Author: Robert Rawlins, Nor Eddine Bahha
Paperback: 266 pages
Company: Hal Leonard (2005-07-01)
ISBN: 0634086782
List Price: $17.95
Amazon Price: $13.19
Used Price: $14.21
The Jazz Piano Book
Endorsed by Kenny Barron, Jamey Aebersold, Richie Beirach, and more, this book presents all the information a student of jazz piano needs in an easy-to-understand, yet thorough, manner. For intermediate to advanced pianists, written by one of the acknowledged masters of jazz piano playing.Author: Mark Levine
Spiral-bound: 307 pages
Company: Sher Music (2005-06-01)
ISBN: 0961470151
List Price: $32.00
Amazon Price: $22.27
Used Price: $21.78
Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble
Create arrangements with texture and style with this complete guide to arranging for large horn sections! Now, for the first time, learn the same jazz ensemble arranging techniques taught by renowned Berklee College of Music faculty, and studied by the best and brightest arrangers working today. While the book focuses on classic big band and jazz styles, the core information about horn harmony and arranging can be used for any style, from hip-hop to ska. Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble includes all the information you need when creating horn charts, fueling and inspiring you with the charts of esteemed Berklee professors Jeff Friedman, Ted Pease, Scott Free, Greg Hopkins and Bill Scism. The play-along CD includes more than 60 demo tracks and arrangements written in the style of masters such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, and performed by Berklee faculty. Covers: writing and voicing techniques; soli, background and shout choruses; special effects; creating your own style; and more.Author: Dick Lowell, Ken Pullig
Paperback: 208 pages
Company: Berklee Press (2003-02-01)
ISBN: 0634036564
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $24.73