Living the Jazz Life: Conversations With Forty Musicians About Their Careers in Jazz - Couverture rigide

Stokes, W. Royal

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0195081080 ISBN 13 : 9780195081084

Editeur : Oxford University Press Inc, 2000

Synopsis

W. Royal Stokes' The Jazz Scene (OUP-USA 1991) was highly praised as an oral history of jazz, which, said famous jazz writer Stanley Dance, "put together a kind of mosaic that effectively illustrated the whole subject in a novel and informative way." His new collection, Jazz Profiles, follows the same successful model, but deals with jazz oral history in some significantly different ways. Stokes' interviews strongly focus on how the different musicians got involved with jazz when young and how their careers developed from an early age. This presents a wonderful range of perspectives on what makes jazz musicians. In the book, too, a number of prominent women musicians discuss their jazz careers and describe the obstacles they had to overcome and the problems of being a woman in the jazz world. They include three prominent jazz singers: DeeDee Bridgwater, Shirley Howe, and Diane Kral. Women instrumentalists - especially those performing on such "suspect" jazz instruments as harp (Dorothy Ashley) and violin (Regina Carter) - have had an even more difficult career path. The interviews in the book break down into a series of jazz-related subjects - jazz families, early jazz pioneers, saxophonists and pianists and string players, singers, jazz composers, jazz musicians beyond the US, blues players, and comics - the last being discussions with Steve Adler and Bill Cosby about their intense involvement with jazz. In their accounts of their careers, these musicians provide great insight not only into their own careers but into the nature of jazz itself and how it has attracted and sustained its players. The subjects cover the entire history of jazz - from its early days, in the 1920s and before, to the present, for Stokes is particularly good at eliciting stories from promising young musicians who are just building their careers now. But the book presents a broad perspective of jazz in all its aspects and of the talented people who have made it successful.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

No music is as individual as jazz. And no writer is as deft at bringing out what is individual in each artist as W. Royal Stokes. As a reviewer, feature writer, public radio host, and author of three books on the subject, Stokes has spent three decades covering the jazz scene. Now he draws on that rich store of knowledge and friendship to introduce us to the jazz life. Sokes illuminates the lives of the artists and the sheer pleasure of the sounds they create. In some forty interviews with saxophonists, pianists, singers, composers, and string, brass, and rhythm players, he paints a vivid portrait of their lives and influences, including the role of their families and childhood environments. The musicians discuss how they became interested in jazz as youngsters and how they became part of the jazz scene. Nat Adderley recalls how he and brother Cannonball grew up across from a Tabernacle Baptist Church and how as boys on Sunday they would listen to the music from the church tambourines and trombones and a blind man playing the piano. Stokes ranges across the globe, both physically and culturally, in his interviews, introducing us to vaudeville stars, blues musicians, and a dozen women instrumentalists - such as acclaimed violinist Regina Carter - out of the many who now shine on a scene where they were once limited to vocals alone. From legendary veterans Jackie McLean and Loui Bellson to such rising stars as Diana Krall, Cyrus Chestnut, and Ingrid Jensen, Stokes gathers together the brightest lights in the jazz firmament, capturing not only the life of the musician, but how the musician gives life to jazz.

Biographie de l'auteur

A follower of the jazz scene since his teens in the 1940s, W. Royal Stokes has written about music for such publications as Down Beat, Jazz Times, and the Washington Post, and hosted the public radio shows I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say... and Since Minton's. Today he is the editor of the quarterly Jazz Notes, and is the author of The Jazz Scene and Swing Era New York. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press Inc
• Date d'édition: 2000
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0195081080
• ISBN 13: 9780195081084
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 288
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie