The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music - Softcover

Ben Ratliff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080509086X ISBN 13: 9780805090864

Publisher: Times Books, 2009

Synopsis

Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece "Kind of Blue." Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts. In THE JAZZ EAR, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. In the process, he skill fully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz from horn blare to drum riffs created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music. Playful and keenly insightful, THE JAZZ EAR is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.

About this title

Review:

THE JAZZ EAR will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing. --Nat Hentoff, Jazz Times.

A small treasure. Ratcliff takes his curious, catholic ear to 15 artists and tangos with them on their own physical and psychic turf. - --Time Out New York

About the Author:

Ben Ratliff has been a jazz critic at The New York Times since 1996. The author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound and The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz (ISBN: 978-0-8050-7068-2), he lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: Times Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 080509086X
• ISBN 13: 9780805090864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256