ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

PIANO RECITALS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

by Ian Muldoon

March 28, 2022

Jazz is weird yet blood simple. Jazz is complex and endlessly bewitching and enthralling, able to churn up feelings and ideas better than any other art, and provide a deep and moving respite from the pain of our confusing lives. Jazz is just like life: somewhat incomprehensible but impossibly beautiful. Am I making myself clear? Take the simple pop song Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?) (Davis/Ramirez/Sherman) written for Billie Holiday with a strong melody for the horn (voice). It was given its first treatment by Holiday backed by strings.  In 1945 it was no 5 on the hit parade. It tapped into the zeitgeist of women pining for their absent WW11 husbands and boyfriends…

THE DEATH OF CHARLIE PARKER

by David Kastin

Excerpt from Kastin’s book Nica’s Dream: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness (2011)

Known to even the most casual jazz fan as Yardbird, or simply Bird, [Charlie] Parker not only helped forge the new style of jazz in Harlem's after-hours jam sessions, but beginning with the 1945 release of his groundbreaking bebop anthem, Ko Ko, he produced a decade-long string of revolutionary recordings of both his own engaging compositions and his transformative adaptations of popular songs—that were shot through with technical brilliance and blazing inventiveness. He also amassed a legion of devoted acolytes who sought to emulate his every attribute, document his every solo, and preserve his every bon mot—and tragic flaw—in well-honed anecdotes…

CITY OF LIGHT: THE NECKS AT THE OPERA HOUSE

by Mark Mordue

The Electrified Journalist, February 13, 2022

The fine art of forgetting is perhaps The Necks’ strongest attribute. A concert by the Australian three-piece slips between the tautly engaged and extended atmospheres of organic drifting, utilising bass, piano and percussion to become something so trance-inducing you lose track of where and whatever you are…