I've been reading this for awhile, mostly as a pre-bedtime read, but now on summer break, am finally making progress. It's composed mostly of vignettes between two different points of view in WW II France and Germany.
A bit slow on the uptake here, but this has just become my second most expensive Kindle book; and the book that beats it was George Lewis' history of the AACM... Anyway thanks for the heads up despite my tortoise style delayed reaction.
Here's mine, though with some reading time this week there will be a couple more books to add by year's end. I am just finishing the Red Rising trilogy (and have disliked it increasingly the further I have read, which apparently puts me in the minority). For the second year running my least popular book was read by no one else.
Ted Gioia's How to Listen to Jazz was the best music book I read this year.
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu was probably the best sci fi novel I read, or maybe Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time - both excellent. I read some junk too, but hey, a guy has to get to sleep somehow.
Thanks Doofy - some to check on emusic, if they still carry them!
Update - the first on the list is John Coltrane Ascension. I thought that would be an easy one for emusic, as it must be out of copyright, but they do not have it! I am amazed, it shows how low they have fallen given that they have 498 albums by John Coltrane, not counting quartets etc....
@greg Ascension is 1966; I don't see anything that modern, and very little from Impulse that wasn't a live album or where he had co-billing. OTOH you can pick the cd up for almost nothing.
Honestly, I have to wonder why I am working my way through this book because it is very disturbing. I did enjoy(?) The Hot Zone back in the day. Timely, current, yeah. Scary as hell, also yeah.
I am part way into this. It jumps off from a description of an occasion when Bach in his old age met Frederick the Great, Frederick tried to humiliate Bach by setting him a near impossible compositional task in front of an audience, and Bach sat down and nailed it. The rest of the book (so far) is then basically alternating biographies of the two, with an eye to what shaped their very different ideas of what music is for (and in general Barock and Enlightenment views of music). Not being particularly expert on the period I am learning a lot. It's well written and engaging, an entertaining read (though I can't keep track of all the Bachs and Fredericks in the family histories). I'd recommend it.
A new book - I've just read the review and I am about to order, but I thought a few others here might be interested. The quote below is from Amazon's website.
One of jazz's leading critics gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changes is the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise.
"Playing changes," in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser's resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes--ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical--that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music. He traces the influence of commercialized jazz education and reflects on the implications of a globalized jazz ecology. He unpacks the synergies between jazz and postmillennial hip-hop and R&B, illuminating an emergent rhythm signature for the music. And he shows how a new generation of shape-shifting elders, including Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill, have moved the aesthetic center of the music.
Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters--from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding--who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.
@greg Don't know if you're a Spotifier, but Nate has created a playlist of tunes from his "must-have jazz albums." This list is so up my alley it's ridiculous...I'm sure I'll read Nate's book sometime soon
Recently finished Every Song Ever by Ben Ratliff, which I really highly recommend as a piece of music writing; lots of different ways to think about listening and inspired me to check out lots of things I hadn’t heard or paid attention to before.
Currently re-reading Portnoy’s Complaint, because of Philip Roth’s death, in paper book form, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, on my phone. I really love Donna Tartt; this is only her third novel, with one in 1992, one in 2002 and this one in 2013, but I feel like the slowness of her process really shows; so many little moments or phrases that just feel exactly perfect.
I really like that Ratliff book too. It's a helpful approach to some of the genres I listen to that are not very amenable to traditional musical categories.
Yeah - I like the way it can shift in an instant between something really far off the beaten path to something really center mainstream and then back again
It really scratched my itch for writing that tries to describe what the music does when you listen to it, rather than what its music-theoretical structure is, or who made it, or what equipment was used, or whether the lyrics are cool, etc.
I am part way into this. It jumps off from a description of an occasion when Bach in his old age met Frederick the Great, Frederick tried to humiliate Bach by setting him a near impossible compositional task in front of an audience, and Bach sat down and nailed it. The rest of the book (so far) is then basically alternating biographies of the two, with an eye to what shaped their very different ideas of what music is for (and in general Barock and Enlightenment views of music). Not being particularly expert on the period I am learning a lot. It's well written and engaging, an entertaining read (though I can't keep track of all the Bachs and Fredericks in the family histories). I'd recommend it.
Finished this a few days back. I thought it did agreat job of putting things in context. Thanks @Germanprof
A bit slow on the uptake here, but this has just become my second most expensive Kindle book; and the book that beats it was George Lewis' history of the AACM... Anyway thanks for the heads up despite my tortoise style delayed reaction.
Sorry, but I'm even slower on responding to this. Glad someone else is enjoying this book. Big fan of the, somewhat divisive, Sublime Frequencies label.
Tho I do an enormous amount of reading, I don't always find my way here to post them.
I had six books for Christmas, mainly off my Amazon list. Two were guide books to places we are going to be visiting in 2019, whilst a third was a cookery book I wanted. But three were music books, so plenty of reading ahead
Comments
I've been reading this for awhile, mostly as a pre-bedtime read, but now on summer break, am finally making progress. It's composed mostly of vignettes between two different points of view in WW II France and Germany.
A bit slow on the uptake here, but this has just become my second most expensive Kindle book; and the book that beats it was George Lewis' history of the AACM...
Anyway thanks for the heads up despite my tortoise style delayed reaction.
Here's mine, though with some reading time this week there will be a couple more books to add by year's end. I am just finishing the Red Rising trilogy (and have disliked it increasingly the further I have read, which apparently puts me in the minority). For the second year running my least popular book was read by no one else.
Ted Gioia's How to Listen to Jazz was the best music book I read this year.
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu was probably the best sci fi novel I read, or maybe Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time - both excellent. I read some junk too, but hey, a guy has to get to sleep somehow.
I think I need to check out whatever that is above
since I do a lot of reading - well, at least, I think I do.
This one seems right in the eMusers wheelhouse - The top half of the list is familiar to me, the rest not so much
Update - the first on the list is John Coltrane Ascension. I thought that would be an easy one for emusic, as it must be out of copyright, but they do not have it! I am amazed, it shows how low they have fallen given that they have 498 albums by John Coltrane, not counting quartets etc....
hell, also yeah.
A new book - I've just read the review and I am about to order, but I thought a few others here might be interested. The quote below is from Amazon's website.
One of jazz's leading critics gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changes is the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise.
"Playing changes," in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser's resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes--ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical--that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music. He traces the influence of commercialized jazz education and reflects on the implications of a globalized jazz ecology. He unpacks the synergies between jazz and postmillennial hip-hop and R&B, illuminating an emergent rhythm signature for the music. And he shows how a new generation of shape-shifting elders, including Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill, have moved the aesthetic center of the music.
Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters--from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding--who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.
@greg Don't know if you're a Spotifier, but Nate has created a playlist of tunes from his "must-have jazz albums." This list is so up my alley it's ridiculous...I'm sure I'll read Nate's book sometime soon
Currently re-reading Portnoy’s Complaint, because of Philip Roth’s death, in paper book form, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, on my phone. I really love Donna Tartt; this is only her third novel, with one in 1992, one in 2002 and this one in 2013, but I feel like the slowness of her process really shows; so many little moments or phrases that just feel exactly perfect.
Well, that's this song running through my head for the rest of the night
djh said: Sorry, but I'm even slower on responding to this. Glad someone else is enjoying this book.
Big fan of the, somewhat divisive, Sublime Frequencies label.
Tho I do an enormous amount of reading, I don't always find my way here to post them.