Jazz Messenger Art Blakey

The second generations of Jazz musicians were some like Joe “King” Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll Morton. These people formed a small band and started to reshape the way the original Jazz music was played. They have made it into a different style with more complications and twists and turns. And so it became known as “Hot Jazz”. King Oliver found a young artist by the name of Louis Armstrong. He soon grew to become the greatest Jazz musician anyone has known. He is still a big star in the world today. By the 20th Century, African-American musical styles became the dominant force.

Thesis: Although Jazz music was first introduced over 80 years ago, the genre still influences artists and the new music they make to this day.

This review is about the Studio Big Band and their performance in the Casa Loma Room at the University of Redlands on Thursday, February 23rd at eight in the evening, under the direction of Prof. David Scott. The concert was made up of the following tunes: “High Maintenance” by Gordon Goodwin, “Four” by Miles Davis (arr. Dave Bardhun), “Nica’s Dream” by Horace Silver (arr. Frank Mantooth), “Witchcraft” by Cy Coleman (arr. Sammy Nestico), “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter (arr. Mat Harris), “Category 4” by Jeff Jarvis, and “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane (arr. Mark Taylor). The music on this program was very relevant for the eras we are covering or will be covering soon in the class, and to this end, the piece I will be focusing on

When J.J. Johnson was 11 years old, his mother, Nina, sent him to piano lessons, and he briefly played the baritone saxophone at school.  At the age of 14, J.J. Johnson’s classmates wanted to be in a band and needed a trombone player, so he took the opportunity and never looked back. Johnson and his friends were really enjoying the concept melody solos from the tenor saxophonist, Lester Young, and he was also drawn to the Trombone work of Dickie Wells. Therefore, around 1941 and 1942, J.J Johnson joined two bands called Clarence Love’s Regional Touring Band and Snookum Russell’s Band. Johnson then received a suggestion to join the band of Saxophonist Benny Carter for an extended tour, so the spring of 1945, Johnson worked with Carter’s band as a trombonist and a staff manager.

Duke Ellington's pre-eminence in jazz is not only because of the very high aesthetic standard of his output and not simply due to his remarkable abilities as a pianist, composer and bandleader, but also to the fact that he has extended the boundaries of jazz more than any other musician, without abandoning the true essence of the music. Perhaps no other American musician left such a massive and challenging legacy in composition and performance.

From its inception, Jazz has applied both innovative approaches in different degrees and boundless configuration. And has continually amplified, progress, and modify music through various distinctive episodes of growth. So, an all-encompassing denotation of jazz is likely vain. Additionally, jazz as a music whose prime attribute was “improvisation,” for example, revealed to be too regulated and chiefly false. Meanwhile composition, adaptation, and ensembles have also been imperative constituent of Jazz (for most of its backstory). Furthermore, “syncopation” and “swing,” often viewed as important and distinctive to jazz, are certainly lacking the genuineness of it, whether of the 1920s (or of later decades). However, the prolonged perception that swing could not transpire without syncopation was utterly refuted when trumpeter Louis Armstrong often produced vast swing while playing repeated, and unsyncopated quarter notes (Armstrong, L., Fitzgerald, E., & Middleton, V. (1988). Satchmo. Gong.)

John Coltrane Jazz, taking its roots in African American folk music, has evolved, metamorphosed, and transposed itself over the last century to become a truly American art form. More than any other type of music, it places special emphasis on innovative individual interpretation. Instead of relying on a written score, the musician improvises. For each specific period or style through which jazz has gone through over the past seventy years, there is almost always a single person who can be credited with the evolution of that sound. From Thelonius Monk, and his bebop, to Miles Davis' cool jazz, from Dizzy Gillespie's big band to John Coltrane's free jazz; America's music has been developed, and refined countless times

John F. Szwed resides in Connecticut, and he is currently a professor of anthropology, African-American studies, music, and American studies at Yale University. He has written seven books on music and African-American culture and numerous articles and reviews on similar subjects. Szwed has received honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship.

     Before even hitting a year as a soloist, Miles Davis put out his first album as a soloist named Birth of the Cool. This was definitely something to be marked down on the timeline of Jazz. The album was accurately named, being responsible for the stardom of Cool Jazz, a movement that the very new to the Jazz movement, Miles Davis, invented within his first year of success. The Cool Jazz, which featured Gil Evans, first appeared in the latter days of 1949.

Duke Ellington managed his band for almost 50 years making prodigious music and using amazing instruments. He toured all over Europe, he managed to compose an orchestra without a baton, how amazing is that. In his whole music career, he composed about 2000 pieces and won 12 Grammy

One night in 1937, a teenage musician named Charlie Parker joined a jam session onstage at Kansas City's Reno Club. It was a special because a big-time drummer, Jo Jones, was there. He was the drummer for Count

Before watching “The Jazz Singer”, I had no idea of its cultural or historical significance. I learned that it was the first motion picture to have synchronized dialogue and words. It set the precedent for cinematography, live voice recordings, and real-time dialogue. The film was based on a short story written only a few years prior. The story was called “The Day of Atonement” and was authored by Samson Raphaelson. The short story was then adapted into an onstage musical in 1925 before finally becoming a full length feature film in 1927.

Miles Davis was one of the greatest and most important figures in jazz history. Miles Dewey Davis III was a musician, composer, arranger, producer and bandleader all in one. Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz after World War 2. He was one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century along with Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong. His versatility landed him at the forefront of bebop, cool jazz, modal, hard bop and fusion (Kirker, 2005:1). His sound went on to influence many other newer forms of music today such as pop, soul, R&B, funk and rap. As one of the last trumpet players, Davis employed a lyrical, melodic style that was known for its minimalism as well

The mystery of Jazz and its powerful impact on the music community can be explained largely by the context of it’s creation. Jazz was born in the United States, and because of this, many have referred to Jazz as “America’s music.” Like America, Jazz has a balance between structure and spontaneity. It capitalizes on the fluidity of the musicians, having several different instruments with independent spirits, coming together as one to form a great piece of music. Unlike other styles of music, Jazz has a certain way about it that makes it stand-alone in the world of genres. It improvises, moves, and transforms itself in a moment’s notice based on the musician’s intuition. Just as America harbors democracy, so too does a jazz ensemble, showing both the responsibility to a larger group, yet still allowing room for individual freedom. It all comes down to how well others can respect the overall framework and structure of the jingle.

Utilized almost exclusively for dancing, the music of the big bands borrowed heavily from the techniques introduced by Henderson. Among the most popular bands were those led by Goodman, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, the Dorsey brothers, and Artie Shaw. As a counterpart of the highly arranged orchestrations of these New York-based bands, a Kansas City swing style developed under the influence of Count Basie and Bennie Moten that emphasized a blues