Category: Books
As I began writing this review, I was about half-way through Phil Freeman’s Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century. I had been picking it up and putting it down for a week or so, which is no fault of the author, rather I blame my computer-mediated attention deficit disorder. The thing is, Ugly Beauty is perfect for this approach to reading. The stor…
An Interview with Markus Müller about the bookFMP: The Living Music, reviewed here.
In 2017, my wife and I visited Munich’s Haus der Kunst, an imposing concrete building set on the edge of the English Garden, and next to the Eisbachwelle, the mission to see the FMP exhibition. We did not have much time on the vacation, so we skipped documenta 14 i Kassel, even though it only happen every five…
Beacon, NY is an old town, certainly by American standards. It was named after beacon fires that burned at the top of the nearby mountain to alert the Continental Army about British troop movement during the Revolutionary War. The town exudes history, from the beautiful Victorian buildings, to the ruins of an early 20th century casino and …
My first realization that the 1970s was an unusual time for jazz came when I discovered Pablo Records. I had just started listening to and collecting jazz recordings, and at the time CDs were expensive and records were really really really cheap, so I picked up a lot of them. One was Dizzy’s Big Fourwith Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Joe Pass, …
Convergences, Divergences & Affinities: The second wave of Free Improvisation in England, 1973–1979 is Trevor Barre’s second book exploring the improvisational music scene in England. This time he moves the timeline from the formative years of the first generation (1965 – 1972) deep into the 1970s, covering the years between 1973 and 1…
Now in its second edition, Trevor Barre’sBeyond Jazz, Plink, Plonk & Scratch, the Golden Age of Free Music in London 1966–1972 is anicely composed survey of the unique approach to free improvisation that came to be in London starting in the mid-1960s. Striking the right balance between entertaining and academically rigorous, the book…
What a nice concept – this book, edited by publisher Renate Da Rin and co-edited by bassist William Parker, explores how gender and experiences have shaped the creative work of women who have made their careers in music.I was only three interviews in when I was struck by both the simplicity of the books construct and how, because of its appr…
