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.

OLD AND NEW JAZZ DREAMS          

by Ian Muldoon

January 27, 2024

American jazz star Tyshawn Sorey - percussionist, drummer, pianist, trombonist - performed and composed a 43’ work consisting of one piano note with minor variations. It was part of a double CD That/Not (2007). Sorey is a modern leader in the glorious jazz firmament. In that firmament there have been many comets and meteorites and some stars that may shine forever - Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Thelonious Monk among them. In its evolution, in reaction to the times in which it lived, it went from event music like marches, funerals, work, to entertainment music, most notoriously, that music during Prohibition called The Jazz Age when thousands of small clubs thrived and provided employment. The small group work of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong became models of polytonality and of polyrhythmic and of improvised music, elements of some of which had been evident in the world of Bartok and Milhaud…

DEWEY REDMAN AT THE PERFORMANCE SPACE

by Eric Myers

Down Beat, July, 1986

The Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA), a small but effective contemporary jazz society formed in 1985, pulled off an impressive coup recently by bringing the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman from New York for performances as part of the Festival of Sydney. This visit has, one hopes, ushered in a new era for visiting American musicians…

WYNTON MARSALIS: JAZZ PHENOMENON TO TRUMPET ABOUT

by Kevin Jones

The Australian, February 5, 1994

He’s been lionised and vilified, praised and condemned but, at 32, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is the most important figure in jazz today. A jazz messiah who has saved the music's soul or a neo-conservative who has kept the music frozen in time? It's a debate which has raged for a decade and will probably continue into the next century. And while it is hard to pinpoint one musician responsible for the healthy state of jazz after the parlous years of the late 1960s and 70s, there is no doubt Marsalis has been the catalyst for its renewed popularity, especially among a new generation of young musicians and listeners…