Duke Ellington

Jazz in the 1920’s Every since World War I ended, jazz has become more and more popular. The last couple of years are sometimes referred as a “Jazz Age”. Today, we have an extraordinary specialist on jazz with us. Who can explain jazz better than Louis Armstrong? The one whose band is helping to popularize jazz and is being really influential for other jazz musicians? Ina: Welcome to Peoples Magazine Mr. Armstrong. It’s great to have you here. Armstrong: It’s a pleasure to be here. Ina: So to…

This report summarizes a concert performed at the Lincoln Center in New York in March 2016 by a Dixieland band “The Gotham Jazzmen”. This report will highlight the origin of the genre and the band, the characteristic features of Dixieland, The contribution of “Gothan Jazzzmen” to the genre, and an overview of the concert. When it comes to the origin of jazz, people tends to have some mixed opinion about its birth place although most research agreed on New Orleans being the motherland. It…

Saxophonist Odean Pope delighted the audience with fabulous arrangements of acknowledged tunes with his expansive Saxophone Choir. The sparkling harmonic sequences led to soulful approaches and the balance between the improvised and the arranged was awesome. They kicked in with “To the Roach”, a piece dedicated to the drummer Max Roach, and proceeded with bubbling sax improvisations on “Coltrane Time”, Pope’s ballad “Cis” and an Afro-Latin piece packed with baritone fills whose title I couldn’t…

Marc Copland is a tremendous jazz pianist with a special ability to create stunning atmospheres with unrugged textures. Having collaborated in the recent years with the virtuous bassist Gary Peacock (Now This and Tangents) and the late guitarist John Abercrombie (39 Steps and Up and Coming), Copland never turned his back to his personal projects, which usually overflow with melodic sensibility and strong rhythmic discernment. The compositions included in Better By Far, his newest work, were…

Throughout the 1920s to the 1930s, New York’s Harlem Renaissance brought a new wave of progress and radical black movement. This historical Jazz Age was essentially an emergence of new life within Harlem and the gay community. One aspect of the Harlem Renaissance that was crucial to its upbringing of progressive “New Negroes” is the black lesbian subculture that began to arise. This subculture intertwined with Afro-American jazz and the blues, working as both outlets for sexual and emotional…

On Friday, July 10th, the local instrumental jazz group Yuma Jazz Company played at Lutes Casino for a couple of hours. The instrumentation was fairly standard for a jazz group, with trumpet, saxophone, guitar, double bass, and drums (I believe those were electric). The guitar and bass, along with the drums, served as a sort of basso continuo, generally backing the horns, but occasionally taking up the melody for themselves, resulting in a texture that was thinly polyphonic. Also noticeable was…

It was a breezy Sunday in Santa Monica, Hollywood. Lawrence Exeter and his wife were buying clothes for their soon to be son at Goosie Gander Baby Shoppe. “I don’t understand why our son needs to dress like this,” exclaimed Mrs. Exeter as she held up a navy blue button up shirt. “I told you already he needs to follow in my footsteps, the key to success is about how you dress!” replied Lawrence, a very successful businessman. Lawrence grabbed the shirt out of his wife's hands and walked up…

In a music hall of Vienna, the pianist Friedrich Gulda performed Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with his superb skills and receive lasting applause. After the concert, Gulda rushed to a nightclub and start to play the jazz, behaved like another person. Surprisingly, he played Beethoven’s masterpieces and intoxicated jazz music equally well. It made people wonder, how would that be by mixing jazz and classical music? In the article “Jazz, America’s Classical Music”, Dr. Billy Taylor introduces…

American Jazz sensation, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois, on May 26th 1926. The nine time Grammy winner is considered to be one of the top musicians of his era. He forever changed the style of jazz and history of music. Throughout his years in music, he has proven to be a universal musical genius that was able to stretch his style of sound for miles. Davis grew up in a middle class home with his parents, Miles Davis Jr. and Cleota Henry. His father was a successful oral…

Sharon Zukin’s “Why Harlem is Not a Ghetto” explores upon the reinvention and Manhattanization of Harlem. Zukin goes in depth about how Harlem went “from a dark ghetto into a middle-class, racially integrated, cosmopolitan community” (93). She examines the factors that pushed for gentrification, the influence it had on the neighborhood’s metamorphosis, and the effects of the displacement of traditional residents and businesses through new commercial activity. Through her detailed analysis of the…