In November 2016, Peter Pillitteri, an aspiring composer and one of the students in Ian Davis’ popular Orchestration for Strings course, emailed us out of the blue to tell us this incredible story: “‘Round Midnight is a 1986 film by Bertrand Tavernier about a fictitious jazzman, Dale Turner, who was played by the great jazz saxophonist, Dexter Gordon.…
Although a lot of songwriters have at least a basic sense of either the guitar or piano, there are still quite a few who rely solely on their voices when writing melodies and lyrics. While that’s a perfectly fine place to start, songwriters could gain a lot by expanding their instrumental horizons, especially when they…
You may not have known this, but yesterday was International Jazz Day. Look around, and you’ll find a ton of jazz festivals happening right this moment worldwide — from Denton, Texas to Espoo, Finland, and not to mention New Orleans. On the surface, it might seem like jazz is doing just fine, chugging along and as…
This is the fourth instalment in our series on How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, this series asks professional and semi-professional musicians performing and recording with all kinds of groups how they practice and what helps them stay organized. We’re getting to the heart of what it takes to grow your musical…
By Lee Dynes The sound palette of Arabic, Persian, and various Middle Eastern regional cultures are generally not typically heard in the West outside of TV shows like Homeland and some films. Those droning tones, the anguished cries reminiscent of classical singers like Oum Kalthoum of Egypt or Yusuf Omar of Iraq, can evoke uneasy feelings…
By Sarah Manning In an interview with the Rutherford Institute in 2012, journalist, author, and jazz critic Nat Hentoff told interviewer John W. Whitehead about some advice Duke Ellington had given him. “Look. Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.” That’s exactly what Nat…
Okay, so there’s no such thing as a “happy” blue note, I made that up. But if you’re curious as to why I did that, read on. To start, if you don’t know what a blue note is — or what the difference is between a “blue note” and a “blues scale note” — you should…
I’m a lifetime Philadelphian and proud of it. It’s an interesting place to grow up and be a musician. Philly is a big East Coast city that can feel like a small town of connected, but decidedly distinct neighborhoods and music scenes. The city is full of some of the oldest stuff in the country and…
By Brad Allen Williams Rudy Van Gelder died 25 August, 2016 at the age of 91, having made some of history’s most enduring sound recordings. If you’ve explored the variegated tapestry of 20th century recordings lumped together under the criminally reductionist banner of “jazz,” you probably know the name. If you’ve dug through crates and slid…
Few people I’ve ever met speak with the gravitas of Yusef Komunyakaa. A conversation with him can be a meditative experience. The words wrap themselves around ideas rather than simply standing in for them. Rhythmically, he speaks in spacious jazz solos, allowing pauses to be as significant as the words themselves and letting the meaning…
