Portal:Jazz

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Introduction

Welcome to Wikipedia's portal for jazz music.

The first music called jazz originated with southern blacks, however the accepted cultural birth place of this style of music is New Orleans, Louisiana, United States around the start of the 20th century. Jazz uses blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation, and blends African American musical styles with Western music technique and theory. Jazz musician and teacher Bill Evans, described jazz as more than just a musical genre but a process of making music whereby, "one minutes music is made in one minute's time". This is a key difference to composed music where there is less spontaneous creation of music and only limited space for the artist's own interpretation. (more)

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Selected article

Jazz harmony is the harmonic idiom or harmonies used in jazz. Similarities between jazz harmony and traditional or common practice harmony or tonality include, notational techniques, (e.g. the musical staff, clefs, accidentals etc.) many chord progressions, and many musical scales. In jazz harmony, however, additional tensions are added to harmonic progressions and jazz scales are also used.

Jazz music is characterized by its unique sound which is a combination of instruments such as the trumpet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone etc.

In jazz, chord construction is similar to traditional harmony but includes the wider use of 7th chords as well as chords containing compound intervals. Also, the principles of voice leading, the practice of smoothly moving individual notes of one chord to another, are considerably different from traditional harmony.

The piano and guitar are the two instruments which typically provide harmony for a jazz group. Players of these instruments deal with harmony in a real-time, flowing improvisational context as a matter of course. It is one of the biggest challenges in jazz.

In a big-band context, the harmony is the basis for the writing for the horns, along with melodic counterpoint, etc. The improvising soloist is expected to have a complete knowledge of the basics of harmony, as well as their own unique approach to chords, and their relationship to scales. A style of one's own is made from these building blocks, along with a rhythmic concept.

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Selected biography

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, widely considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Davis was late in a line of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. Many of the major figures in post-war jazz played in one of Davis' groups at some point in their career.

Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. (more)

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Selected world jazz article

Jazz is an American musical genre largely originated by African Americans but the style was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by musicians all over the world, including Australia. Jazz and jazz-influenced syncopated dance music was being performed in Australia within a year of the emergence of jazz as a definable musical genre in the United States.

Until the 1950s the primary form of accompaniment at Australian public dances was jazz-based dance music, modelled on the leading white British and American jazz bands, and this style enjoyed wide popularity.

It was not until after World War II that Australian jazz scene began to diversify as local musicians were finally able to get access to recordings by leading African-American jazz musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and bebop, cool jazz and free jazz exerting a strong influence on Australian musicians in the late 1950s and beyond. (more)

Did you know...

...that Crossover Jazz retains an emphasis on improvisation but attempts to make that improvisation commercially successful by couching it in a variety of marketable formats?
...that Loose Tubes were called "...the best instrumentalist of their generation (...) the most important band to appear on the British jazz scene" by Time Out?
...that The Sound of Jazz was a landmark television program that was part of CBS's Seven Lively Arts series?
...that Dakota Staton's success lead her to win Down Beat magazine's "Most Promising New Comer" award in 1955?

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Quotes

"By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with."
- Duke Ellington

"Jazz is the false liquidation of art—instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture."
- Theodor Adorno, quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith, 1978. ISBN 0094602204.

"Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things—not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music."
- Wynton Marsalis

"Improvisation is a desperate attempt to remember the tune.
- Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005)

(more)

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Selected picture

Martial Solal in 2006, with his Newdecaband (November 2006) edit

Jazz news

July 5: British jazz and blues singer George Melly dies at the age of 80. (BBC News)
April 20: American jazz pianist and composer Andrew Hill has died at the age of 75. (All About Jazz)
April 3: The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a world prominent school of jazz, will move from Los Angeles to New Orleans (BBC News)
March 31: The line up for the 50th Monterey Jazz Festival has been announced. (Jazz News)
March 28: Jazz clarinetist, Tony Scott has died at the age of 85 in Rome. His memorial service was held at 15:00 UTC on April 1. (All About Jazz)
March 24: UK jazz radio station theJazz will include presenters from April 6, 2007. (Radio Today)

Anniversaries

June 7, 2005: UK jazz radio station jazzfm.com launches on DAB and Sky Digital.

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WikiProjects

WikiProject Jazz

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Related portals

[[Image:|120px]] Music Classical guitar

Guitar Electronic music

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Jazz genres

v • d • e Jazz musicGenres Acid jazz • Asian American jazz • Avant-garde jazz • Bebop • Crossover jazz • Dixieland • Calypso jazz • Chamber jazz • Cool jazz • Free jazz • Gypsy jazz • Hard bop • Jazz blues • Jazz-funk • Jazz fusion • Jazz rap • Latin jazz • Mainstream jazz • Modal jazz • M-Base • Nu jazz • Smooth jazz • Soul jazz • Ska jazz • Swing • Trad jazz • West Coast jazz Topics Jazz piano • Jazz guitar • Jazz drumming • Jazz standard • Jazz royalty • Jazz band • Big band• "Jazz" Lists Standards • Albums • Genres • Festivals • ClubsLists of Musicians Musicians • Bassists • Trumpeters • Saxophonists • Drummers • Guitarists • Pianists • Vocalists • Clarinetists • Trombonists • Jazz fusion artists • Smooth jazz

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Things you can do

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Articles needing expansion or improvement

Lee Konitz - needs improvement
Pepper Adams
Lorez Alexandria
Iain Ballamy - telegram style, lots of headings
Birdland (the famous NY club)
Blue Note Records discography - self-explanatory
Bunny Brunel - Stub, needs more biography and expanded discography
Crossover Jazz - This is not the same as fusion jazz and needs an article to describe it.
Henry Busse - Trumpeter[1] whose article is under various warnings.
Roy Eldridge
European free jazz
The First Seven Days
Marian McPartland - Sort of stubby considering she's a fairly major figure.
Carmen McRae - The talk page says expansion is requested.
Airto Moreira - Large, but on verification notice.
Music of New Orleans - Some help would greatly be appreciated in this endeavor. Please though, no unreferenced material to be inserted; I know that goes without saying on Wikipedia. If unsure on how to reference something properly, please contact me and I will assist you. (Mind meal 20:44, 15 June 2007 (UTC))
Art Pepper
Pee Wee Russell - Adequate size, but on reference notice.
Antonio Sanchez - Long enough, but needs sources and more information.
Andy Sheppard
Frank Sinatra - Needs a professional wikinazi to look at it, I'm sure we can def get good status for it soon. Organised crime NEEDS to be referenced, and bio from 40's to 70's reffed and expanded.
Rex Stewart
Sarah Vaughan
Smooth jazz - numerous concerns with violations of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:RS and in turn, WP:N.
Cootie Williams
Johnny Windhurst
Tiny Bradshaw
Helen Sung Stub, needs more ...
Austin High School Gang - Just added -- currently a stub. Needs expansion.
Tommy Turk - Ditto.
Austin Peralta
Denny Jiosa - This jazz article by a new user needs a little Wiki love.