Celebrating Community
Here’s a motto to listen by: it’s harder to write a song than a sonata. There’s a general perception both among outside listeners and musicians inside institutional structures that the sonata is one of the supreme formal achievements of classical music. And this is true, proven by how vital and enduring the form has been since composers like Haydn were […]
Last month’s Winter Jazziest 2022, such as it was, was disappointing for all the wrong reasons. This had nothing to do with jazz and everything to do with America writ large, and the destructive nihilism of self-proclaimed conservatives and the political class overall. There are too many people with everything they need in life who can’t even conceive of enduring […]
The idea of the “star,” a celebrated and famous performer, isn’t new in and of itself. It goes back at least to the career of pianist Franz Liszt, who in the mid-19th century caused such public sensations during his European tours that he begat a new word, “Lisztomania.” And before Lady Gaga and even Barbra Streisand, there was the first, […]
What if jazz is the original fusion music? What if it was always fusion music, from the very beginning, long before the Tony Williams Lifetime and Electric Miles and Weather Report? That is all the truth, so obvious that it was overlooked before Williams and Miles brought the startling, creative rock of the late ‘60s into jazz. But jazz never […]
Late style, the idea that an artist’s work changes markedly as they see the end of life on the horizon, is mainly reserved for discussions of literary figures, or else musicians, like Beethoven, that literary figures hear of enough to dig, if not understand. Another way to put it is that it is a middle-to-highbrow topic that you can read […]
There’s lots to love when it comes to Blue Note records, not the least of which is that the combination of the consistently fine music they recorded and released and the distinctive and influential graphic design of the record albums were some of the most important elements of creating what “cool” meant in American culture, before it was coopted and […]
Jazz is always on the move, and that’s why it is the music closest to my heart. I care about living in society, the world around me, the people around me, I’m interested in what they do and think and how they work together. Put that together with the rhythmic bril-liance, the incredible musical skill, the beauty of hearing ideas […]
Pretty much since the start, there’s been a debate over just what jazz is. The etymology of the term is itself unclear. Jazz was first called “jas” and “jass,” and those look to be connected to the mid-19th century slang “jasm,” (yes, you know what that is) transmuted in a 1916 article in the Daily Californian to “jaz-m.” Close by […]
The good news is, it looks like summertime, which is not just a box on the calendar but a whole experience here in New York. It can seem like a struggle, the heat and humidity and waiting for the subway in a stuffy station. But after last summer’s unease, dread, anger, frustration, outraged energy—because Black Lives Matter and if you […]
Those who lived through the ’70s may recognize the title of this column as the signature line from the harrowing torture scene in the movie Marathon Man. Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) drills into Babe’s (Dustin Hoffman) teeth, without anesthetic, while asking, “Is it safe?” Beyond the sheer pain, what makes the scene that much more excruciating is that Babe […]