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Jazz (TV Series)
''Jazz'' is a 2001 television documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001 and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of jazz, emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history. Swing musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures.Mark GilbertAmazon.co.ukreview Several episodes discussed the later contributions of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to bebop, and of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane to free and cool jazz. Of this 10-part documentary surveying jazz in the years from 1917 to 2001, all but the last episode are devoted to music pre-1961. The series was produced by Florentine Films in cooperation with the BBC and in association with WETA-TV, Washington. Overview The documentary concerned the history of jazz music in the United States, from its origins at the turn of the 20th centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Ward
Geoffrey Champion Ward (born 1940) is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards. Biography Youth Ward was born in Newark, Ohio, and is a graduate of Oberlin College (1962), where he majored in art. He had initially planned to be a painter. His father was F. Champion Ward, educator and a vice-president of the Ford Foundation. Ward spent some of his boyhood years in India. Ward's great-grandfather was Ferdinand Ward, a 19th-century swindler whose ponzi scheme led to a financial crash which bankrupted many investors, including Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas Nast. Ward wrote a book about the story of his great-grandfather, ''A Disposition to be Rich,'' in 2012. Career Early career Ward was the founding editor of ''Audience Magazine'' (1970–1973) and the editor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz Saxophone, saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, Virtuoso, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid Passing chord, passing chords, new variants of Altered chord, altered chords, and Chord substitution, chord substitutions. Parker was primarily a player of the alto saxophone. Parker was an icon for the hipster (1940s subculture), hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer. Early life Charles Parker Jr. was born in Kansas City, Kansas, to Charles Parker Sr. and Adelaide "Addie" Bailey, who was of mixed Choctaw and African-A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Early
Gerald Lyn Early (born April 21, 1952) is an American essayist and American culture critic. He is currently the Merle Kling Professor of Modern letters, of English, African studies, African-American studies, American culture studies, and Director, Center for Joint Projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He also served as a consultant on Ken Burns' documentary films ''Baseball'', ''Jazz'', '' Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson'', '' The War'', and ''Muhammad Ali''. He is a regular commentator on NPR's '' Fresh Air''. His essays have appeared in numerous editions of ''The Best American Essays'' series. He writes on topics as diverse as American literature, the Korean War, African-American culture, Afro-American autobiography, non-fiction prose, baseball, jazz, prizefighting, Motown, Miles Davis, Muhammad Ali and Sammy Davis Jr. In 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Background ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Crouch
Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020) was an American cultural critic, poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, and syndicated columnist. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel ''Don't the Moon Look Lonesome?'' Amongst numerous awards and honors, Crouch was the recipient of a " MacArthur Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1993. Biography Stanley Lawrence Crouch was born in Los Angeles, the son of James and Emma Bea (Ford) Crouch. He was raised by his mother. In Ken Burns' 2005 television documentary '' Unforgivable Blackness'', Crouch said that his father was a "criminal" and that he once met the boxer Jack Johnson. As a child he was a voracious reader, having read the complete works of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many of the other classics of American literature by the time he finished high school. His mother told him of the experiences of her youth in east ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins (born 1948) is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for ''The Village Voice'' from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986, Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a jazz repertory with musicians such as Tony Bennett. For five years, Giddins was the executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Selected works Books *''Riding on a Blue Note'' (1981) *''A Moment's Notice: Portraits of American Jazz Musicians'' (with Carol Friedman) (1983) *''Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation'' (1985) *''Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker'' (1987, rev. 2013) *''Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong'' (1988, rev. 2001) *''Faces in the Crowd: Musicians, Writers, Actors, and Filmmakers'' (1992) *''Visions of Jazz: The First Century'' (1998) *''Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years, 1903-1940'' (2001) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio '' Blood on the Fields'' was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year. Early years Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, and grew up in the suburb of Kenner. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher.Stated on ''Finding Your Roots'', PBS, March 25, 2012 He was named after jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. All three are jazz musicians. While sitting at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WETA-TV
WETA-TV (channel 26) is the primary PBS member television station in Washington, D.C. Owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, it is a sister station to NPR member WETA (90.9 FM). The two outlets share studios in nearby Arlington, Virginia; WETA-TV's transmitter is located in the Tenleytown neighborhood in Northwest Washington. Among the programs produced by WETA-TV that are distributed nationally by PBS are the ''PBS NewsHour'', '' Washington Week'', and several cultural and documentary programs, such as the Ken Burns documentaries and '' A Capitol Fourth''. History In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated 242 channels for non-commercial use across the United States; channel 26 was allocated for use in Washington, D.C. In 1953, the Greater Washington Educational Television Association (GWETA) was formed to file for a channel 26 construction permit, joining the D.C. Board of Education. The Board of Education woul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cool Jazz
Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music inspired by bebop and big band that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and a lighter tone than that used in the fast and complex bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music. Broadly, the genre refers to a number of post-war jazz styles employing a more subdued approach than that of contemporaneous jazz idioms. As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill suggest, "the tonal sonorities of these conservative players could be compared to pastel colors, while the solos of izzyGillespie and his followers could be compared to fiery red colors." The term ''cool'' started being applied to this music around 1953, when Capitol Records released the album ''Classics in Jazz: Cool and Quiet''. Mark C. Gridley, writing in the ''All Music Guide to Jazz'', identifies four overlapping sub-categories of cool jazz: # "Soft variants of bebop," in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Jazz
Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, Musical tone, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting, and became preoccupied with creating something new. The term "free jazz" was drawn from the 1960 Ornette Coleman recording ''Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation''. Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music". The ambiguity of free jazz presents problems of definition. Although it is usually played by small groups or individuals, free jazz big band, big bands have existed. Although musicians and critics claim it is innovative and forward-looking, it draws on early styles of jazz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century music. Born and raised in North Carolina, after graduating from high school Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, where he studied music. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of Modal jazz, modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, as exemplified on his most acclaimed album ''A Love Supreme'' (1965) and others. Decades after his death, Coltrane remains influential, and he has received numerous posthumous awards, including a Pulitzer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation''. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms. Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing. Thom Jurek of AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud." Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman taught himself to play the saxophone when he was a teenager. He began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups, and eventually fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
