Gary Giddins is the author of 12 books, including Rhythm-a-Ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation (1985), Visions of Jazz: The First Century (1998), Weather Bird (2004), and the three-volume biography Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star, of which two volumes have been published to date. Between 1974 and 2003, he wrote a regular jazz column for The Village Voice, winning six ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for excellence in music criticism. From 2002 to 2008, he wrote JazzTimes‘ Cadenza column.
Gary Giddins on social media
Let us celebrate Stanley Crouch’s benevolent impact on jazz criticism. True, he incited viral gossip with his gusty eviscerations and performative tantrums, but all that … Read More “Gary Giddins Remembers Stanley Crouch”
For sheer emotional resonance, the highlight of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Masters ceremony-concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, in October, … Read More “Cardenza: Jump for Gioia”
Between the JVC Jazz Festival in New York and Umbria Jazz in Perugia, Italy, there was much to treasure and contemplate, including a few surprises … Read More “Cadenza: Summer Nights”
The magnificent Art Tatum album, Piano Starts Here, which combines his first four solo recordings from 1933 with a slightly abridged version of his 1949 … Read More “Cadenza: Player Piano Man”
A few months ago, I interviewed Sonny Rollins on stage at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center (you can hear it at www1.cuny.edu/forums/podcasts/). … Read More “Cadenza: Jazz’s Other Louis”
Bet on it: Just about every Matthew Shipp album will spur someone to write that it is more accessible than its predecessors, an observation that … Read More “Cadenza: Shipp Shape”
In 1978, a large Third Avenue storefront that couldn’t keep tenants for more than a year or two reopened as a restaurant called Blue Hawaii. … Read More “Cadenza: Re-Experiencing Jaki”
Sometimes you have to leave home to find yourself most at home. My recent trip to Brazil, culminating with the sixth annual Festival Tudo é … Read More “Cadenza: Goin’ Down South”
Max Roach, the most ingenious drummer to rise with and define the nature of modern jazz, died on August 16. The news was hardly unexpected: … Read More “Cadenza: A Life of Reinvention”
It would be easier to grouse about the paucity of great-or good or tolerable or watchable-jazz-themed feature films if Hollywood had done any better by … Read More “Cadenza: Projecting Jazz”
When he had the wind in his sails, which was pretty often during a tragically curtailed career (he died at age 33 from complications incurred … Read More “Cadenza: Pilgrim’s Progress”
The conductor Otto Klemperer once said, “Listening to a recording is like going to bed with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe.” Recordings have long been … Read More “Cadenza: Oliver Overhauled”
One of my favorite Aldous Huxley essays is “Music at Night,” from his occasionally deranged but mostly illuminating 1931 collection of the same name. Only … Read More “Cadenza: Shuffle Along”
It may be difficult to recall the incredible excitement that greeted the release, in 1973, of Martin Williams’ The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, a … Read More “Cadenza: Beyond Labels”
One of the delightfully weird things about the underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s was how retro they were musically. Sex and drugs were … Read More “Cadenza: Swinging the Funnies”
Some 30 years ago, an editor asked me to interview and review Anita O’Day, who died Nov. 23, at 87, of complications from pneumonia. Even … Read More “Cadenza: Incomparable!”
The journey to Ouro Preto in Brazil is not easy. Even with short waits between the three legs of the trip, it takes most of … Read More “Cadenza: The Thrill of Brazil”
In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, the upstanding dandy Thomas Buddenbrook dismisses his wife’s elitist devotion to music as a “rather tasteless snobbery.” Gerda remonstrates that the … Read More “Cadenza: Ornette!!!!”
Dizzy Gillespie: Is there a more resonant name in jazz or music or life? Think about it. He spearheaded a generation of musicians that demanded … Read More “Cadenza: Dizzy’s Divine Comedy”
New York City has served as the primary locus for jazz’s evolution for 80 years, without quite engendering the mythological resonance of the cities that … Read More “Cadenza: New York’s Lofty Intentions”
In 1976, the Pulitzer Prize’s Special Awards and Citations division recognized Scott Joplin, 59 years after his death. In 1998, it honored George Gershwin, 61 … Read More “Cadenza: It’s Always Monk’s Time”
In July 1975, Jackie McLean returned to action after a seven-year layoff spent teaching. The venue was New York’s briefly reawakened Five Spot, on St. … Read More “Cadenza: Jackie McLean, 1931-2006”
A mental bank shot put me in mind of a musician I had not listened to in several years: Charles Luckeyth Roberts. Not that there’s … Read More “Cadenza: Call Him Lucky”
The delayed, coincidental arrival in the middle 1950s of two extremely dissimilar novels–Kerouac’s hurried On the Road and Nabokov’s fastidious Lolita–helped spur a renewal of … Read More “Cadenza: Travels With Bill”
One of the more inventive bookings in New York clubs is the Jazz Standard’s “Voices and Songs,” a Monday night, bargain-price ($15) series designed to … Read More “Cadenza: New Dutch Swing”
