Understanding Jazz: Ways To Listen
ReganBooks/HarperCollins

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Writing about music often seems a futile attempt to describe the ineffable, but this engaging primer on jazz appreciation proves it can shed plenty of light. Music journalist Piazza, author of The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz, writing under the aegis of Jazz at Lincoln Center and with a foreword by its director, Wynton Marsalis, eschews a historical approach in favor of a thematic exploration of the interplay between the mechanics of music-making and their aesthetic effects. He devotes much space to the live improvisatory performances at the heart of jazz, examining the interplay between soloists and accompaniment, the use of chord changes as a harmonic "understructure," the employment of small modular "choruses" like the 12-bar blues format to build up larger musical structures, and the mystery of how jazz ensembles fuse spontaneous individual improvisations into a coherent musical whole. Piazza's lightly intellectual approach adds a dash of music theory and formal aesthetics. But he keeps his explanations limpid and straightforward-his chapter on swing rhythm is something of an expository tour de force, based on the simple but revealing analogy of a child on a playground swing-and leavens them with lyrical meditations on the subjectivity of time and storytelling in jazz. Like all prose, his cannot quite capture the emotional impact of music. Fortunately, the book is accompanied by a CD with illustrative classic recordings, which Piazza analyzes in sometimes second-by-second exegeses. His extensive discography of the recorded jazz canon, taking up over a third of the text, provides a further guide for neophytes wishing to move on from this wonderful introduction. Photos.
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Book Description

“Jazz is primarily to be heard, to be experienced.”
–Tom Piazza, from the Introduction

Much more than just another history of this vital music and those who play it, Understanding Jazz is a multimedia master class and late-night jam session rolled into one–an indispensable guide to a deeper appreciation of jazz.

Jazz is America’s greatest indigenous art form, a musical hybrid whose origins are as mysterious, complex, and surprising as its evolution has proved to be. Written by Grammy award-winning author Tom Piazza and produced by the experts at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Understanding Jazz uses simple explanations and analogies to illuminate the basics of listening to a jazz performance: how to discern form, instrumentation, style, and intent.

Each of the book’s seven sections focuses on a particular aspect of the jazz vernacular, from the way individual instruments or voices come together yet remain distinct, to the spontaneous miracles of skilled improvisation, to the transcendent rhythmic qualities of swing and the enduring influence of the blues.

Specific points in the text are illustrated and reinforced on the accompanying CD in recordings that capture some of jazz’s most gifted musicians: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.

A unique celebration of the influence of jazz on American life, this book and CD are perfect for both jazz enthusiasts and beginning listeners alike, initiating them into the exciting world of this singular style of music.

- Amazon.com