Books
12/01/09 By Brian Gilmore
Last Call at the Tin Palace
As is the case with poetry with connections to jazz (music), the possibilities, as the cliché goes, are endless. Yet, it is true; poetry is “word music” and good poets, and Paul Pines (Pines is also a novelist and a New York based psychotherapist) is one...
12/01/09 By Brian Gilmore
The Jazz Fiction Anthology
Brian Gilmore reviews recent anthology of fiction dedicated to jazz.
12/01/09 By Brian Gilmore
Race, Music, and National Identity: Images of Jazz in American Fiction 1920-1960
Paul McCann is a scholar, and a Literature scholar at that who does not necessarily come to music naturally in his work. But McCann knows literature and American culture, and he attempts very well to bring jazz and fiction together in Race, Music, and National...
12/01/09 By Brian Gilmore
The Life and Music of Benny More: Wildman of Rhythm
Until many read John Radanovich’s biography of Benny More, the late Cuban superstar, they will begin to understand the importance of African strains to jazz music and most of the other music forms that dominate the Americas. It is all here. You will learn...
12/01/09 By Brian Gilmore
Highbrow/Lowbrow: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class
Of all the sections in Highbrow/Lowbrow:Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class , the section that discusses the legendary American composer George Gershwin followed by a very succinct and compelling account of the groundbreaking black musical...
10/15/09 By Brian Gilmore
Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and Blues Influences in African-American Literature and Film
Two anthologies look at the relationship between jazz and the arts
10/15/09 By Brian Gilmore
Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa
Book examines relationship between jazz and the Civil Rights movement in the '60s
10/15/09 By Brian Gilmore
Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson and the Birth of Concert Jazz
Anyone who has studied or read about the compositional output of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington always wondered how Ellington became so prolific in writing long form jazz compositions. Yet, more importantly, some (myself included) wondered why. John Howland’s...
10/15/09 By Brian Gilmore
Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace
Poetry collections about jazz, or in the jazz idiom are abundant and almost always special. (Full disclosure: your author published one in 2001, so I adore these efforts). Poet and English professor Phillip S. Bryant’s Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace is slightly...
10/15/09 By Brian Gilmore
Subway Moon
Subway Moon , saxophonist’s Roy Nathanson’s very engaging collection of poetry, begins in German. You will be taken a back by it at first if you don’t understand the language, but don’t fret; Nathanson’s accessible verse is forthcoming, Or as Jeff Friedman...
