The newly published Chronicle of Jazz by China Pictorial Publishing House will take you to know jazz for a century. No matter its origin, development, prosperity or decline, it will be presented one by one in this book. The great events, famous musicians and orchestras experienced in the past 100 years will make you re-understand the various styles of jazz from its origin to the present.
The author of this book is British pianist and composer Mervyn Cook, a famous music professor in Nottingham, England. While teaching at the university, he wrote and edited a lot of jazz history. From the book, we can see Mervyn Cook's professionalism and his detailed description of jazz history, which is very helpful for us to fully understand jazz.
Compared with other music, jazz has its own uniqueness, among which the most freedom is high improvisation. It is not difficult to see that every development and change of jazz will emphasize the importance of improvisation.
During the period from 1895 to 1905, a new light music style merged with the rough blues style, and the original jazz came into being.
Jazz was of great significance to the United States at that time, because it meant that America finally had its own voice.
Paul whiteman once said: 300 years ago, jazz came to America in chains.
Today, we think jazz is an elegant art music, but at that time, jazz was popular music.
Compared with classical music, chamber music and strings in Europe, jazz is gradually mixed with fanaticism, destruction, hysteria, decadence, corruption, alcoholism, melodrama, Lombardy and dullness in its development.
Until the end of 1960s, miles davis initiated the jazz rock style. With the birth of modern jazz and the influence of innovation and retro, jazz is no longer the kind of punk music that leads naive people to degeneration, betrayal and slander, but has gradually evolved into more mature and serious artistic music under the leadership of many great music leaders.
During this period, a large number of jazz artists emerged, including John Lewis, Ms. Dai (), wynton marsalis, tommy smith and superstar herbie hancock.
The death of Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Sade Jones, Woody Herman and Jill Evans also marked the end of an era.
This book contains a large number of high-definition pictures, including musicians, album covers, posters, live photos of performances and so on. With the author's detailed introduction to the rise and change of jazz from its birth to modern jazz, it shows the development of jazz in the past hundred years.
Like everything that has experienced ups and downs, jazz experienced a low ebb and a great success, and then changed from bottom music to serious artistic music. During this period, generations of jazz musicians made various changes with tenacious steps.
As the chapter "Bruce in the New Millennium" said, the new era still brings terrorist atrocities, natural disasters and economic disasters. However, the musical wealth of jazz continues to remind the world that a century ago, jazz began to evolve from blues, and blues was as tough as being oppressed.