How To Listen To Jazz by Ted Gioia

[mjzee]

What’s the best way to listen to a Charlie Parker solo? Ted Gioia suggests singing along. In his satisfying new book, “How to Listen to Jazz,” Mr. Gioia recommends trying to “internalize” Parker’s style, which stood out for its virtuosity and angularity, by memorizing and singing even a small passage of one of his recordings. Such mimicry is precisely the course of study that was undertaken by the saxophonist himself when he was growing up in Kansas City and used to listen to recordings of Lester Young’s solos again and again, striving to copy them note for note. This virtual apprenticeship, as Mr. Gioia put it in a previous book, marked a “turning point in Parker’s musical development.”

A radiantly accomplished writer, a busy blogger and a pianist who has recorded several albums, Mr. Gioia conveys his passion for the music with vivid description and shrewd judgments, concentrating principally on the recordings made by jazz musicians rather than on details of their personal lives. (He writes about those in his “History of Jazz,” now in its second edition.) “Listening,” he holds, “is the foundation; everything else builds out of this starting point.”

More here: I Hear A Rhapsody - WSJ

Edited May 20, 2016 by mjzee

[JSngry]

The best reason for singing a solo is to get more of the body involved, especially the vibrations from the larynx that radiate outwards. Next thing you know, you're dancing.