Jazz Jazz Jazz

10 World Greatest Jazz Festivals

2012-07-25T03:26:00.000+03:00

Montréal Jazz Festival

The Montreal Jazz Festival began in 1980; it's since grown to be the most important event of the sort (2004 Guinness World Record). Throughout ten days, traffic is closed for some part of Montréal downtown, because the two-thirds part of the all performances actually are free outside shows and are prevailed several stages at identical time. The Festival is held historically the last week of June and therefore the initial of July, the free outside shows starts around noon and that they last until midnight. The concerts are held in an exceedingly wide range of venues, from comparatively tiny jazz clubs to the big concert halls of the P.D.A. (Place des Arts) and after all the ten free outside stages.

Since the primary Festival de Jazz de Montreal, the event has options Jazz legends like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Sara Vaughan, and many other legends. Also the Jazz legends from Montreal itself like Oscar Peterson, Leonard Cohen and Oliver Jones have conjointly been featured. The list is spectacular and every year nice acts take part.

Montréal Jazz Festival

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

New Orleans is a very special festival you can attend; all, from the peoples to the atmosphere, the food, the clothes,..anything. Jazz was born in New Orleans and nowadays the festival is called the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage. Start in 1970 when Newport jazz Festival's behind the scene jazz impresario, George Wein, was employed to style and turn out a singular Festival for brand new Orleans. Wein’s concept of the Louisiana Heritage honest an oversized daytime honest together with a night concert series, convince be standard and it still work nowadays. Quint Davis and Allison Miner, 2 young New Orleans music enthusiasts, were brought aboard to figure on the event.

Today with twelve stages which each of them offering various genres/subgenres as; jazz, R&B, funk, gospel, African, Cajun, Blues, Rock, Latin and Caribbean music, it is rest assured that this festival it's indeed a distinctive Festival. If you attend the concert, bring back one among their limited-edition silkscreen posters, currently recognized joined of the foremost standard poster series within the world, it created its debut in 1972. The event has showcased most of the nice artists of latest Orleans and Louisiana and a large mixture of internationally renowned guests.

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

Le Festival de Jazz de Montreux

Claude Nobs, a jazz enthusiast, started the very first of the Festival in 1967, on Lake Geneva’s shoreline, in Switzerland. It’s currently the foremost famous of all, it's featured Jazz greats and also different well established musician of different genres than jazz like; Eric Clapton and Prince.

Originally a pure Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival unfolded within the Nineteen Seventies. throughout the 1971 Festival a fireplace broke at the Casino throughout a Frank Zappa concert. It impressed Deep Purple to jot down their famous song about it. About more than two hundred thousand music and particularly jazz lovers attend the Montreux Jazz Festival which held in June and it last a pair of weeks.

Ella Fitzgerald live at 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival

Newport Jazz Festival

The Newport Jazz is that the grand daddy of North yank Jazz festivals. In 1954, a famous Impresario of jazz named Mr.George Wein, presented the primary Newport Jazz Festival. it absolutely was the primary annual jazz Festival in America, 11,000 folks showed up to the Newport Casino to listen to Bille vacation and different legendary performers. In 1955 Miles Davis created one among the foremost famous performances together with his solo on “Round midnight”, to be followed consequent year, in 1956 by the Duke Ellington band and their lengthy performance of “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blues. Since, it's hosted to a number of the best acts in Jazz. Since them different historic performances are performed at the Festival.

Although the Newport Jazz Festival wasn't held per annum since then which it modified venues and town, it’s back in Newport, Rhode Island, a town that is famed for its spectacular coastal scenery and jaw dropping design. The Festival takes place three days in August.

Newport Jazz Festival

Duke Ellington, Jimmy Rushing, Louis Armstrong, Billy Strahorn with Photomodels at 1962 Newport Jazz Festival

Monterey Jazz Festival

Located 112 miles (180Km) from San Francisco, CA and held three days in September, this festival is the longest days of any other jazz festival like it in North America, welcomes you to an incredible location… Monterey CA. Since its starting in 1958, the three day event has perpetually been prevailed the bottom of central California's Monterey Fairgrounds. The seven Grounds Stages (3 outside and four indoor), scattered over the 20-acre oak studded Monterey County Fairgrounds, can options seventy eight events prevailed Friday Night, Saturday and Sunday. The outside stages embody the Arena/Jimmy Lyons Stage, the Garden Stage and therefore the Courtyard Stage. Indoor stages embody the Night Club/Bill Berry Stage, Dizzy's Den, the Jazz Theater and therefore the occasional House Gallery.

Beside performances of many Jazz legends, the Monterey Jazz Festival is over a music event has it conjointly features; an array of instructional program, panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions. there's conjointly place for searching and West Coast cuisine.

Monterey Jazz Festival

Jazz in Marciac

Marciac is found 488 miles (777Km) from of Paris, within the south of France and solely eighty miles (128 Km) West of Toulouse. This event takes place at the top of July and therefore the starting of August. This Festival founded in 1978 by jean Louis Guilhaumon, welcomes over two hundred,000 guests a year and it’s one among the key Jazz festivals in Europe. throughout the two week, the medieval center of city hosts this fantastic free event below a large tent, capable of entertaining between five,000 and 6,000 people. The wide range of restaurants and bar options jazz musicians performing for his or her guests. Trumpet player Wynton Marsalis has been the ambassador or icon at giant of this very festival since 1991. In this town, at the place du Chevalier d’Antras, a statue has been erected for honouring him.

View from stage at Jazz in Marciac

Copenhagen Jazz Festival

This fantastic event hosted within the Danish capital began in 1979. Sonny Rollins who played the primary year mention; "Jazz representsany kind of music. Everything is and is expressed through jazz and thru the medium improvisation, this is often the very best variety of having the ability to form music. Jazz is just like the days. nowadays it absolutely was cloudy, currently it's sunny. that is jazz. You never understand, what's happening,"

Ever since 250,000 folks come back every year to the current special Festival, it's held at the start of July per annum. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is one among the Europe's biggest and most revered music events. The Festival presents jazz in distinctive surroundings its trademark. a number of their original venues embody an recent, East-German trawler, the historic Royal Danish Theatre, the country Tivoli Gardens and an recent printing plant, to call simply some.

It options the work of Danish Jazzmen together with international acts. Over 1,000 concerts are featured per annum. Many great legendary and new rising stars of (jazz) musicians have played at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival.

View from backstage at Copenhagen Jazz Festival

Paris Jazz Festival

The Paris Jazz Festival is an annual summer event prevailed the grounds of the Parc Floral. The concerts occur each Saturday and Sunday throughout June and July. they're free, however there's a really cheap fee to enter the Park, the gigs begin around 3pm.

Even if the Festival is at an early stage in its career, it will options quality acts. Since the concerts run practically all summer, you must look it up if you're in Paris throughout that point. Paris Jazz Festival

Ahmad jamal and Yusef Lateef at a promo flyer for 2012 Paris Jazz Festival

Vancouver International Jazz Festival

The Vancouver International Jazz Festival began in 1986, within the wake of Expo eighty six. because of the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, it absolutely was solid from the beginning having a star studded lineup together with Jazz greats. Since then the Festival has become the highest event within the North West.

The 10 day event offers four hundred gigs held in major venues; The Orpheum, Ironworks, Vogue Theatre, SFU Woodward’s, the Venue, the Performance Works and therefore the Center, of those over a hundred thirty are free concerts and that they are held in open public spaces, like parks and public plazas, and also in selected indoor venues like concert hall. Over 460,000 folks comes every year to the Vancouver Jazz Festival

Vancouver International Jazz Festival

Nice Jazz Festival

The first was in 1948, Nice Jazz Festival was started a decade earlier before the festival of Monterey. Nice Festival has been held non-stop ever since. The French Riviera’s five days event is that the initial international Jazz Festival value that name and it’s in all probability the flashiest and therefore the most prestigious. It embarked on with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars has the headliners. Since then the most important names in jazz have all played here.

Nice Jazz Festival

The Nice Jazz Festivalwas held till 2011, within the Roman ruins of the Jardins de Cimiez. Since, then the celebrated event has been moved to the middle of city. There are a pair of venues at the Jardin Albert I, each are connected by walkways, admission includes each venues.

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Bitter Jazz History in Russia

2012-07-09T23:28:00.003+03:00

The first Russian jazz concert was staged in Moscow in 1922 by Valentin Parnakh’s Jazz Band. Soon this band was given an opportunity to perform onstage during a musical show directed by Vsevolod Meierhold. Benny Peyton’s New Orleans vogue jazz band and also the initial US touring jazz, like the band of Sam Wooding’s The Chocolate Kiddies, they toured and played some concerts around Moscow and Leningrad (the renamed St Petersburg) in 1926.

Valentin Parnakh’s Jazz Band

These bands impressed the formation of native bands in Russia and also the Ukraine, notably the primary Concert Jazz Band of Leningrad pianist Leopold Teplisky, who had gained official support to go to the us to listen to jazz and collect scores.

After a amount of official disapproval swing bands emerged within the cities, typically taking part in at restaurants. The fox trot caught on within the late Twenties, as did the Charleston or tango. Factories provided free fox trot lessons for his or her staff. A Leningrad-based jazz orchestra led by classically trained Yakov Skoromovsky appeared in Soviet films, and a number of other bands recorded for the state record company.

Leonid Utesov

In 1939, a politician guide to the organization of song and dance and jazz orchestras was printed. In Moscow, jazz bands played between shows at movie theaters. the highest Soviet jazz musicians of the Thirties were Leonid Utesov and Alexander Tsafsman. whereas Utesov custom-made foreign influences to national tastes and designs, Tsafsman adopted those influences to form a cosmopolitan, Westernized music (Starr 1990, 132). In 1937, several of Tsafsman’s band were transferred to the newly-formed State Jazz Orchestra of the USSR .

Eddie Rosner

During World War II, Soviet jazz benefited from the alliance with the US. several jazz scores were sent to the USSR from the US and also the swing musician Eddie Rosner, a German-born refugee from Poland, created the Belarus state jazz orchestra the foremost admired within the country. However, during the era of Cold war, performing or publishing jazz music was prohibited. The Moscow authorities In 1949, confiscated musical instruments like saxophones and lots of musicians were arrested and sent to the gulags.

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The Rock Explosion

2012-05-18T17:00:00.000+03:00

At the end of the sixties, strengthened by his quintet's experiments, Miles Davis was ripe for bringing himself before rock and its immense audience.

Miles Davis as a Rocker?

A fusion of country music and black rock and roll (derived from boogie), rock was created by white artists in the mid-fifties. Over the next decade, it adopted the effective rhythm sections of rhythm and blues and profited by carrying soul and other types of American music forward. At the same time it received support from new recording and production methods and made use of the electric instruments that had appeared with the urban blues.

Jimi Hendrix onstage, Woodstock 1969

Instrumental performances became increasingly important not only with rock - leading to the appearance of 'guitar heroes' - but also with the transformation of musical forms. In the late sixties, 'rockers' invaded realms hitherto reserved for better-informed kinds of music, such as classical, jazz and certain types of traditional non-European music.

After this point rock could be played for extended periods, and huge sound systems were installed, making enormous outdoor concerts possible.

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A Power Intact

2012-05-17T22:13:00.000+03:00

Did jazz die in the eighties? Maybe it died years earlier, with Ornette Coleman, Gill Evans, Charlie Parker, or even, simply, the minute it left New Orleans. All this is surely debatable. But the only fact that matters is this: the explosion of black American music at the beginning of the century has turned the history of music upside down.

Randy Brecker

The immense musical river that set off from New Orleans has spawned numerous tributaries and today has arrived at its delta. Some of its large streams have got lost. In this decompartmentalized, cosmopolitan and multicoloured space, the standard-bearers of jazz have disappeared. They have left room for a permissiveness and a wild variety of individual styles, all carried by the impulse that was called swing in the thirties, which, in diversifying, has lost none of its power.

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Insect and Pygmies

2012-05-09T16:11:00.000+03:00

With the use of technology, insect sounds and Pygmy choirs have been pirated and injected into recordings. One would be tempted to say that through these high-tech means jazz is rediscovering cultural appropriation - its first function.

Chieli Minucci & Special EFX

Indeed, by the end of the eighties there was more appropriation than ever before, in both acoustic and electric jazz. Jazz musicians have picked up and assimilated everything that has presented itself. This is what one might call a real fusion music.

With Computer Software like this (DAW - Digital Audio Workstation), audio can be recorded, edited, manipulated as a normal as an analog/tape recorder usually does or as crazy as somebodies creativity might imagine

The old standards and conventions of classical jazz are now only a part of a much large heritage - classical music, urban and rural traditions, academic music and music of the streets, rock and country, free jazz and various other sounds which is being looked at, borrowed from and generally shaken up.

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The New Sounds Of Jazz

2012-05-05T17:40:00.000+03:00

'Old & Conventional' way to record (jazz) music;
for the sake of simplify, flexibility and lower cost, this old way of recording together in studio, record with analog machine are getting rarer

While the fans attached to their collections of 78s- who rebel the compact disc- remain an extreme case, it is true that the sound of jazz and the nature of the studio work have changed considerably. In the past, recordings were made in one or several takes, from which the best one would be chosen. Today multitrack recorders allow the most satisfying fragments from distinct takes to be edited together. Frequently, especially which electric fusion groups, the instrumentalists are recorded one after the other and apiece is put together without any of the different musicians even meeting in the studio. For all, including acoustic musicians, corrective work is done on the different tracks, for various reasons, even to arrive again at the artistic content of the work.

Today 'studio';
with digital portable multitrack 'recorder' system like this, anybody can make music, record, manipulate and edit easily anywhere with high quality result

These operations have evolved considerably with the appearance of digital technology, which permits the sound to be manipulated by computers. Synthesizers, too, have benefited from this. New electronic devices abound: various keyboards, sequencers, rhythm boxes and electronic wind instruments - not to mention the 'sampler', which permits electronic verification of the characteristics of a sound in order either to reproduce it just as it is or to deform it.

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Jazz For All

2012-05-05T00:22:00.000+03:00

In the past the jazz community could be depicted as one big family divided by domestic conflict, but by the end of the eighties that family seemed to be dissolving. If contemporary jazz musicians still return to the standards as an obligatory exercise in style or as the opportunity to express their devotion to tradition, the repertoire and practises are no longer homogeneous enough to allow an encounter between musicians of different generations.

Pat Metheny

And jazz fans? Feeling rather lost, the lovers of early jazz seen great connection between all this and the colourful legend of New Orleans that brought them to the field in the first place. Then there are other specialists: collectors of West Coast music and those fondly reminiscent of the radical sixties and seventies.
All three share a protest against ECM productions, which they consider sterile and devoid of swing.

John Scofield & Joe Lovano

25 Essential Jazz Recordings of the 1980's and 1990's(all styles)

Howard Alden/Dan Barrett, ABQ Salutes Buck Clayton (Concord Jazz)
Geri Allen, In The Year Of The Dragon (Verve)
Art Blakey, Keystone 3 (Concord Jazz)
Ruby Braff, A Sailboat In The Moonlight (Concord Jazz)
Michael Brecker, Michael Brecker (MCA/Impulse)
James Carter, Jurassic Classics (DIW/Columbia)
Kenny Garrett, Pursuance (Warner Bros.)
Jerry Gonzalez, Rhumba Para Monk (Sunnyside)
George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Fist Prize (Enja)
Roy Hargrove, Of Kindred Souls (Novus)
Joe Henderson, Lush Life (Verve)
Keith Jarrett, Bye Bye Blackbird (ECM)
Joe Lovano, Rush Hour (Blue Note)
Branford Marsalis, Trio Jeepy (Columbia)
Wynton Marsalis, Black Codes From The Underground (Columbia)
Wynton Marsalis, In This House, On This Morning (Columbia)
Jackie McLean, Dynasty (Triloka)
Pat Metheny, Letter From Home (Geffen)
Mingus Big Band, Nostalgia In Times Square (Dreyfus)
David Murray, Hope Scope (Black Saint)
Buell Neidlinger, Blue Chopsticks (K2B2)
James Newton, The African Flower (Blue Note)
Tito Puente, Goza Me Timbal (Concord Picante)
John Scofield, Hand Jive (Blue Note)
Yellowjackets, Four Corners (MCA)

Books
Forces In Motion (Anthony Braxton) by Graham Lock (Da Capo Press, 1988)
Jazz - The 1980s Resurgence by Stuart Nicholson (Da Capo Press, 1990)
Outcats by Frances Davis (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990)
Rhythm-A-Ning by Gary Giddins (Oxford Univ. Press, 1985)
Talking Jazz by Ben Sidran (Da Capo Press, 1995)

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The Reawakening Of Big Bands

2012-05-03T22:16:00.000+03:00

Carla Bley Big Band

Since the forties, big bands were increasingly the domain of white musicians.In the course of the sixties, Don Ellis outdistanced the metric preoccupations of jazz-rock. Carla Bley, with her compositions evoking the worlds of Charles Ives, Eric Satie and Kurt Weill, introduced a dimension of parody.

Don Ellis Big Band

Don Ellis

As for Gil Evans and George Russell, their invariably avant-garde writing led them to the dismantling of the structures of the big band, frequently shrinking the wind section, shifting the weight to the rhythm section, and adopting a freedom inherited from free jazz. Aura (1989) was the first record Miles Davis brought out with a large group since he recorded Quiet Night with Gill Evans in 1962.

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Jazz In Joint Ownership

2012-05-02T18:56:00.000+03:00

The different forms of improvised music - still conveniently collected under the label of jazz - were not, of course, the exclusive property of black musicians at this time. Numerous white musicians also appropriated the heritage of jazz: David Liebman and Richard Beirach, more than anyone else, continued to deepen the heritage of John Coltrane and Bill Evans; Keith Jarrett gave new life to old standards and to the traditional rhythm section in the vein of Bill Evans; Pat Metheny fed his super productions, tinged with pop, Brazilian and country music, with inspirations from Ornette Coleman and Wes Montgomery.

David Liebman

Black producers, from Quincy Jones to Marcus Miller, have had an undeniable impact in the last decade. But another force since the sixties has been the white jazz musicians who have changed the direction of the sound as well, thanks to personalities such as Michael Brecker, David Sanborn and the guitarist Larry Carlton. These name are always mentioned in this context.

Richard Beirach

Studio work has allowed jazz-rock to become open to a variety of other influences. Jazz has profited commercially from such borrowings.

Marcus Miller; as Bass Player...

... and as Producer

The popularity of Latin music represented a dual appeal; it fulfilled a public demand for upbeat music - evocative of sun and health- as well as responding to a youthful audience concerned with making the most of the positive aspects of its racial diversity.

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From The Church To The Street

2012-05-01T17:10:00.000+03:00

African-American jazz has always sought to maintain its footing in the sociological reality from which it was born.

Quincy Jones

Ray Charles and Quincy Jones

Such was the significance of Quincy Jones' Back on the Block, which came out in 1990. Taking stock of this century as it nears its end, Jones - Count Basie's former arranger and Michael Jackson's producer at that time - assembled a few of the great names of Black American music, from Ray Charles to Miles Davis, along with Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie.

Ella Fitzgerald

Geri Allen

Soul music and rap welcomed jazz, as if to remind it they grew up together in black churches and on the street. From the delicate neo-classical touch of the pianist Geri Allen to the fanfares of Lester Bowie (the Art Ensemble of Chicago's trumpet player), along with the saxophonists Kenny Garrett (like Geri Allen, trained in Detroit with the trumpet players Marcus Belgrave) or Gary Thomas (discovered while with Jack DeJohnette and Miles Davis) - the same concern with roots, the same attention to the latest developments of funk, and openness of spirit that reflected the lifestyle and choices of the sixties loft generation.

Lester Bowie

Marcus Belgrave

What do the following have it common: Wynton Marsalis in his three-pieces suit, the rap group 2 Live Crew with its obscenities, and the jazz that came forth in the sixties, mixing the acquisitions of free jazz with the certainties of bop?

Kenny Garrett

2 Live Crew

All belong to that same community - they were different reactions to the mounting economic difficulties, the marginalization of the most disenfranchised and the increase in the minority population in the eighties.

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The Coming Of Neo-Bop

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Historic Reissues Take Over The Recording Market

Now a well-recognized and thoroughly accepted form of music, jazz occupies a solid on music lovers' shelves, side by side with the classics.

After 1983 - which was, significantly, the year the compact disc was introduced - record companies suddenly had the opportunity to reissue and anthologize the recorded heritage of jazz at a lower cost than ever before. Even with so much focus on looking back, however, in the eighties there were still some new developments, largely restricted to neo-bop and commercial productions.

The Coming Of Neo-Bop

With the brothers Branford and Wynton Marsalis as its stars, neo-bop was the field developed by an elite group of young musicians trained in the school of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Heirs to hard bop, on which they put a new turn after listening to the music of the Miles Davis quintet of the sixties, these young musicians were regularly accused of being nothing but copies of earlier models.

Branford Marsalis

Their astoundingly advanced technique and flawless performances deprived them, said some critics, of that element of risk that made their predecessors interesting.

These not-very-subtle observations ignored the importance of the traditional element in black American music. On top of that, one must remember that despite its lightning-fast evolution in just a few decades, jazz has always counted more followers than innovators.

Wynton Marsalis

The adoration for the 'small masters' who personalized Charlie Parker's message during the fifties is not so far removed from the admiration that the New York neo-boppers aroused thirty year later.

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The State Of Jazz At The End Of The 70s; Jazz Bursts Into Pieces

2012-04-29T13:50:00.000+03:00

In the seventies, jazz entered a neo classical phase. From Archie Shepp to Martial Solal, the rereading of yesterday's repertoire became common practise. At the same time, with Lee Konitz, Dexter Gordon or Art Pepper, a young public rediscovered the figures of free jazz. Increasingly numerous references to classical music drew from a wide range of sources.

The radiant figures of Gil Evans (above, 1987, just before his death) leaves one hoping that jazz has a future other than the commercial.

Generally speaking, in the United States as in the rest of the world, young musicians claimed an encyclopedic culture in which classical, rock and world music went side by side. From jazz, musicians retained an impressive ability to absorb and appropriate outside elements.

Jazz Bursts into pieces

Born at the start of the century, jazz must now take stock. are its newest incarnations indications of an art running out of breath or the sign of an expanding tradition? Those who ask this question ignore the fact that, around the world, different types of music outside the mainstream have been inspired by jazz: they constitute fanfare for the century that is nearing its end.

Yves Saint Laurent Perfume Advertisement

In some circles, the thirties are hot and jazz is fashionable. Its look is evoked in fashion design and black-and-white advertising photographs.
Its imagery pervades the movies, as the film industry exploits the stereotype of the jazz genius.
its impact is felt in rock and roll. In other words, the image and the legend of jazz still have power, even while today's improvised music tends to detach itself from it.

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A Certain Need For Space & ECM Aesthetics

2012-04-28T13:06:00.000+03:00

Jazz- rock continued to satisfy the youthful public well into the eighties, despite the fact that admirers, the press and even the musicians wearied of it. At the end of seventies, John McLaughlin and several others returned to the virtues of the acoustic guitar.

John McLaughlin on acoustic guitar

Instrumental stereotypes and the somewhat vain virtuosity of jazz-rock guitar players were specifically called into question. The reaction came from the musicians themselves. An airier tone, a more limpid melody, a lighter orchestral context - these qualities were sought after as musicians listened to their elders: Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall and Bill Evans. But they wanted to mix their own culture - pop songs and country music- in with this. Guitar players John Abercrombie and Pat Metheny found the space their aspirations required at the record label ECM.

Wes Montgomery

ECM Aesthetics

'Editions of Contemporary Music' : the identity crisis of jazz at the time was captured in the very name of this label, which did not even dare to name the music it presented. German Manfred Eicher, a former bassist, established ECM in 1969. He was first noticed for seeking to capture a sound reminiscent of the acoustics of a concert hall rather than that of smoky club. The technical enhancements ECM employed - precision of the stereo sound and reconstitution of the echo, and the crystal-clear renderings of instruments such as the piano, the vibraphone, and the electric and acoustic guitars - displeased old discophiles but responded to what young public concerned with a certain ease in listening (even at the expense of authenticity) was waiting for.


John Abercrombie

Pat Metheny

Later generations, disappointed by the crumbling of revolutionary ideologies and the exhaustion of the avant-garde, have focused on defending the environment and reviving the classics. ECM and the innumerable labels that fell in step with it suggested a new 'ecology' of recording and concert giving. The return to the acoustic piano was magnified by the solo formula, until that point still fairly exceptional in modern jazz. Solos by Keith Jarret or Paul Bley and duets by Chick Corea with Herbie Hancock or Gary Burton publicized a chamber music. The jazz musicians now became a concert artist, and jazz concert benefited by being listened to as seriously as recitals of classical music.

Paul Bley

Gary Burton

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Fusion In The Studio

2012-04-27T17:00:00.000+03:00

Little by little, the taste for musical crossbreeding gained acceptance. The term 'fusion' was given preference over that of jazz-rock, which was considered too restrictive.

The Brecker Brothers, Randy amd Michael Brecker

The Brecker Brothers caused a furore. Strengthened by their experience with John Abercrombie and Billy Cobham in the group Dreams, they were able to adapt to any context what they inherited from Coltrane, juggling ternary and binary phrasing with complete ease. Randy, the trumpet player, and Michael, on sax, became unavoidable reference points for future instrumentalists, as much for their contribution to studio work as for their improvisations.

David Sanborn

The alto player David Sanborn, equally sought after by the studios, practised a fusion just as joyful, bearing at the same time both the mark of his closeness with Stevie Wonder and the imprint of Gil Evans' band, in which he spent some time.

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Weather Report

2012-04-26T17:00:00.000+03:00

Again, it was former members of Miles Davis' groups who constituted the core of the most enduring group of this type: Weather Report.


Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, leaders and main members of Weather Report

Weather Report, first band formation; L-R: Alphonse Mouzon, Joe Zawinul, Miroslav Vitous, Wayne Shorter, Airto Moreira (although Airto Moreira actually was replacing Don Alias)

In late 1970 Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul (piano) and Miroslav Vitous (bass) invited Alphonse Mouzon (drums) and Airto Moreira (exotic percussion instrument) to create climates of a most meteorological diversity. Their repertoire was often put together like classical programme music - it told a story in the same way symphonic poems compose by European musicians of the 19th century did.

Weather Report, 1977; L-R: Joe Zawinul, Manolo Badrena, Wayne Shorter, Alex Acuna, Jaco Pastorius

Weather Report's music was then directed toward an ever-more-diverse fusion of influences, in which the binary scanning of rock and Latin music became more and more important. In 1974 Vitous made way for the electric bass player Alphonso Johnson, while Joe Zawinul began to explore the power of synthesizers. But the group did not receive the blessing of the public until the 1976 arrival of Jaco Pastorius, who, until his death in 1987, was the most original virtuoso of the electric bass.

Jaco Pastorious

The records Black Market (1976) and Heavy Weather (1977) are counted among the finest successes of the genre. On this last album, the title 'Bridland', which paid homage to the tradition of the big-band entertaintment of the thirties, was overwhelming success.

Weather Report, 1978 Band Formation; (L-R): Jaco Pastorius, Peter Erskine, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter

Nevertheless, despite the loyalty of a vast audience and the excellent rhythm tandem of Pastorius and the drummer Peter Erskine, disagreements between Shorter and Zawinul provoked Weaher Report's breakup in 1985, a decade and half after its creation.

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The Jazz-Rock Of Miles Davis' Children

2012-04-25T17:00:00.000+03:00

Innumerable musicians who were temporarily of Davis' band attempted to prolong that musical experience and hold on to the public won through that contact. Transposing the energy of rock into their bands, they put their savoir faire as jazz musicians to the service of jazz-rock.

John McLaughlin

Mahavishnu Orchestra

John McLaughlin, for example, met with great success with his Mahavishnu Orchestra, starting in 1971. He allied a virtuosic writing and incantations inherited from John Coltrane to a concern with technical performance that excited the rock audience. Mystical, like Coltrane, and fascinated with India, he blended the metric and modal sophisticated of Indian music with the rhythmic and harmonic effectiveness of rhythm and blues.

Jan Hammer

The pianist Jan Hammer was a pioneer in exploring the phrasing possibilities offered by the first electronic keyboards. The violinist Jerry Goodman attracted the public's attention, and the drummer Billy Cobham gave proof of fascinating technique in music with uneven meters.

Jerry Goodman

Through their power, speed of execution and impressive equipment,drummers unleashed great excitement.

Now in the forefront of their bands, leaders such as Tony Williams or Billy Cobham often eclipsed the fame of their entourage.

Billy Cobham

This, however, was not the case with Lenny White (drums) and Stanley Clarke (the first great electric bass soloist), who played with Chick Corea's group, Return to Forever. As for Corea himself, who had shared in Miles Davis' first electronics experiments, his keyboard virtuosity and brilliant writing were seductive. Swinging toward the Spanish with the addition of the guitarist Al Di Meola, the strong Latin feeling in his repertoire delighted the public.


Lenny White & Stanley Clarke, Return To Forever (1975)


Al Di Meola & Chick Corea, Return To Forever (1975)

Return To Forever (L-R) Lenny White, Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke

Also emerging from Miles Davis' universe, Herbie Hancock created a group that was more profoundly anchored in the popular African-American tradition. Leaning on the deep-sounding 'drop' of the drummer Harvey Mason, Hancock's music became funkier than Davis'. More accessible to the general public, it was enormously successful, particularly with the album that takes its title from the name of the group: Head Hunters.

Herbie Hancock & Paul Jackson, Headhunters

Like Chick Corea, who was now swinging between acoustic and electronic music, Hancock alternated successful inroads into 'electrofunk' with returns to formulas close to the spirit of the Miles Davis quintet of the sixties.

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Miles Plugs In His Trumpet

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By now fed up with the elitism of free jazz and with rock (which, he said, diverted and weakened rhythm and blues), Miles Davis turned his full attention to popular black music, and particularly to the funk of Sly and the Family Stone. Sly Stone practised a violent and direct aesthetic inherited from James Brown.

Sly & The Family Stone

In 1968 Miles met Jimi Hendrix, the hero of rock guitar. Hendrix knew how to funnel the force of blues to the universe of pop. Hearing him, Miles Davis understood that the guitar, on the margin until then, was destined to be in the forefront of the evolution of jazz. Indeed, at that point keyboards, bass and even wind instruments were following in the guitar's footsteps, becoming electrified. The volume increased, and new types of sound appeared. After 1969, when Miles recorded In a Silent Way with John McLaughlin, a young British guitarist, electronics were a standard part of his world.

Miles Davis, electrified

Limiting his written work to a few suggestive measures, hooking his trumpet up to a wa-wa pedal, Miles set off true electronic revels on the records that followed. On them, there was new combination of electric guitar, bass guitar, various keyboards, percussion instruments from the world over, and the binary hammering inherited from Tony Williams.

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The Hippie Era

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In England, the line between jazz and rock was a thin one: both forms verged close to rhythm and blues as well as the blues revival. Various future jazz players and rock stars all received their training in Alexis Korner's or Graham Bond's groups. 'Progressive rock' and avant-garde jazz ran on parallel tracks at the end of the decade, and such groups as Soft Machine left a mark entire generations of musicians and listeners.

Alexis Korner (standing)

In the United States white rock groups such as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago featured rhythm-and-blues sections.

The Rolling Stones, 1969

Many jazz musicians were concerned about the rise of rock. Charles Lloyd, accompanied by Keith Jarrett, for one, was successful in adapting a Coltranian feeling to the melodic ingenuity of the 'folk revival' and Beatles songs - all against the background of a light show. With Cannonball Adderley, in a context oriented more toward the black roots of rhythm and blues, others experimented with the electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes and Leo Fender.

Fender Rhodes Electric Piano

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The Endurance Of Miles Davis

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Throughout the sixties Miles Davis was haunted by the short time (1958-9) Bill Evans and John Coltrane were both in his group. Twice he replaced his pianist, first with Wynton Kelly, then with Herbie Hancock, who combined the refinements of Bill Evans and the more vigorous statement of the funk pianist. On the other hand, it took him several years before he found the replacement for John Coltrane in the person of Wayne Shorter.

(L-R) Wynton Kelly, Gene Ramey (bass)

When he did, a new era opened up for Miles Davis, marked by recordings that today are considered to be masterpieces of modern jazz for small groups. Thus, from one year to the next, E.S.P, Miles Smiles, Nefertiti and Miles In The Sky, among others, raised and then answered a series of musical questions. Davis' quintet was, at that time, a truly experimental group - each entrance into the studio would bring new development.

Herbie Hancock

Wayne Shorter

In this way, the rhythm section exploited the heritage of Bill Evans trio: Herbie Hancock (piano) was suggestive; Ron Carter (bass) no longer stated the tempo systematically but imposed a powerful sense of pulsation; Tony Williams (drums), sophisticated and daring, freed himself from accompanist's role. he took the Elvin Jones' poly rhythm, gave it air, and diversified it by superimposing figures conceived in binary measures. In session after session, the quintet explored a repertoire dependant on Wayne Shorter's innovative ideas. Shorter, a master improviser, showed Davis a way to widen the range of liberties allowed by modal playing even further. On the stage Davis stayed with a more conventional program, but the risks he took in the studio changed the way the public saw the band.

Miles Davis Quintet

Ron Carter

Like the innovations of Charlie Parker twenty years earlier, these measures, ground-breaking at the time, have become the conventions of small-group jazz

Tony Williams

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'A Barroom Piano Player'

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This is how Bill Evans was appraised when free jazz exploded. Later, the critics realized that circumspectly and without being the leader of any particular current, he had led as profound a revolution as John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman. Without ever systematizing the contributions of modal jazz (which he helped found), he drew deep inspiration from it. His work as a composer surely borrowed from his charms of the old standards, of which he was very fond; but he lightened their often limited harmonic frames and broadened the field of melodic possibilities.

Bill Evans

More significantly, due to the quality of his touch, he inaugurated a new approach to the jazz piano, which, until that point, had primarily been used as a percussion instrument. Bill Evans was not a barroom piano player; he was a concert pianist. His trio (piano, double bass, drums), which he used as a chamber orchestra, broke new ground.

Scott LaFaro, Bill Evans, Paul Motian

From 1960 to 1961, Scott LaFaro (bass) and Paul Motian (drums) freed themselves from their role as mere accompanists and became soloist on an equal footing with the piano; the three participated in a triangular conversation. Collective and interactive, improvisation became more than ever a question of mutual listening and finding one's own place while treating the others' with respect. The revolution led by John Coltrane with sound and fury was conducted by Bill Evans' trios with a delicacy that evoked the intimacy of Claude Debussy.

(L-R) Steve Swallow, Walter Perkins, Art Farmer, Jim Hall

Thus, along with such contemporaries as Jim Hall, who shared his concerns, Bill Evans left his mark on generations of musicians: on pianist, of course (Keith Jarret, Paul Bley and Chick Corea), but also on drummers (Jack DeJohnette), bass players (Gary Peacock), and saxophone players, trumpet players and bandleaders.

Gary Peacock, Keith Jarret, Jack DeJohnette (2012)

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On The Fringes Of The Free

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In its rush to explain history, jazz criticism has often been mistaken in presenting the explosion of free jazz and the supremacy of improvisation over writing as the sole significant developments of the sixties.

Horace Silver

After this decade the history of jazz no longer moved in one direction; many tendencies showed themselves on the fringes of free jazz. Besides Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy, other, influenced by Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman (some recording under the Blue Note and Candid labels), declared themselves outside of any identifiable group. Musical Language advanced, feeding both the autonomy of the improviser and the emancipation of rhythm. The players of 'the new thing', involved in a political struggle, embraced their cultural heritage, but, in contrast, a large number of their contemporaries demanded the freedom to control, master and assimilate what they wanted from the cultural environment at large, from classical music to free jazz.

Sonny Clark Sextet Blue Note LP

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Freedom: The Power Of Improvisation and The Road to Change

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Nat King Cole

Erroll Garner

Real, imaginary or borrowed, personal folklore became one of the major concerns of the improvisers in the sixties around the world. The unbridled expression of free jazz served as an instrument for the cultural recovery of threatened identities. In Western urban societies, the inhabitant of which were deprived of deep roots, improvisation allowed for exploitation of the many musical messages transmitted by the media from the four corners of the world and from every era.

Herbie Nichols

Sonny Rollins

But free jazz, of course, was not the only agent of this kind of evolution. Other roads, arising from different forms of music and different cultural pressures, also opened up in the sixties.

Paul Gonsalves

Martial Solal

The Road to Change

In looking to the past, jazz critics, historians and theoreticians have often neglected those musicians who, coming from swing, formed separate groups on the fringes of the bop evolution (Nat King Cole, Erroll Garner) or groups even more modern than the moderns themselves (Herbie Nichols, Paul Gonsalves). Other have suffered the same neglect for having advanced at their own pace, removed from the free jazz movement (Martial Solal, Sonny Rollins), or for having simply stopped in the clearing they had found in order to explore it in relentless detail (Oscar Peterson, George Shearing).

Oscar Peterson

George Shearing & Quartet

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The Quest For And Rejection Of Memory

2012-04-17T17:00:00.000+03:00

Two kids paradoxical and complementary approaches were at work in what was called,in a failure of nerve, 'European improvised music', rather than jazz. For some, who turned their backs on the essence of jazz, it was a question of tracking down the phenomenon of memory in order to free themselves from it and help them move away from the rigours of the battlefield of improvisation, many European improvisers were deeply concerned with their heritage.

Han Bennink on Pan Drum

Willem Breuker and Han Bennink

If cultural references were the object of devastating derision for the Dutch drummer Han Bennink and the German saxophone player Peter Brotzmann, they called forth tender impulses from Michel Portal when he grabbed the silvery bandonion (a South American accordion) or evoked his Basque origins.

Peter Brotzmann

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European Jazz Develops Differently Than The American Model

2012-04-16T17:00:00.000+03:00

Though an American form, jazz, of course, does have practitioners outside the United States. France, especially, has embraced jazz since its earliest days; it can be said that it all began there with Django Reinhardt in the thirties. Ending France's isolation during World War II, the American troops arrived in 1944, and the first bebop records were not long in following. For more than fifteen years there was no safe haven outside of bebop or New Orleans orthodoxy. Such rare exceptions as Martial Solal or Andre Hodeir only proved the rule.

Django Reinhardt

With the explosion of free jazz, however, everything suddenly became possible. In Europe it became fashionable to reject the criteria of' 'old-fashioned jazz' at the same time that 'bourgeois' art was being decried.

Mike Westbrook

Throughout Europe, those rare big bands that were still active abandoned formal dress for blue jeans and left their platforms to mix with each other in an informal alignment that sometimes moved into a fanfare to the audience.

Willem Breuker

The roles inside the band were also called into question, and some small groups went so far as to do without a rhythm section altogether, others reduced themselves to a duo. If such changes were a response to the economic difficulties free jazz - which was not very marketable - encountered, they were also one way of exploring special affinities on a more intimate dramatic scale. With such musicians as Mike Westbrook and Willem Breuker, these 'stagings' sometimes took on true dramatic form.

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The Loft Generation

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During this time innumerable artists settle in the warehouses and abandoned studios of certain areas of New York City and transformed them into living quarters, spaces for work and centers for distributing their records. In these places, the musicians were able to express themselves and produce their work without having to be concerned about the commercial aspects of the traditional clubs or disturbing their neighbors. Interdependent with the elders of free jazz, they were pre-occupied with the isolation of the free movement and gladly publicized their concern about returning to a rhythmic and melodic legibility. Thus, when they listened to Albert Ayler or David Murray, they made every effort to extract the lyrical dimension of the music.

David Murray

The new excitement - which corresponded to a similar feeling in all the arts - facilitated exchanges between the heirs to free jazz and bop. Nevertheless, Ornette Coleman then opened his 'harmolodic' universe in an entirely different direction. His funk quartet made a direct reference to the harshness of popular black music, inherited from James Brown.

James Brown

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