When it comes to 'essential listening' lists, many of the best jazz singers are omitted in favour of instrumentalists. We wanted to use this article to provide a snapshot of some of the most important jazz vocalists in history, taking you from the early 1930's through...
This guest article is written by Tyran Grillo who, back in May of 2015, achieved the goal of reviewing every album released on ECM Records and the ECM New Series imprints. He continues to review new releases at Between Sound and Space. The music of ECM Records is a...
Jazz standards have long formed the bedrock of education for most musicians and provide a list of 'classic' repertoire for musicians to draw upon. These jazz standards are tunes that all musicians are expected to know and, as such, they're frequently played at jam...
For most Western jazz musicians, touring in Japan is pretty high up the dream to-do list. Ever since the 1960s, the jazz greats have been performing and recording there, with "live in Japan" (or sometimes "live in Tokyo) albums gracing the discographies of everyone...
Bebop emerged in the 1940's as a reaction to the more commercial, audience-friendly music that came before it. Its fast tempos, virtuosic solos and rich harmonic vocabulary marked a massive turning point in the development of jazz. In this article, we've rounded up 10...
Whilst jazz is of course, historically, an African American art form, European musicians have been performing this music since the 1920's and have played an important role in the development of the style and its many sub-genres. Back in the early days, with with no...
Getting to where we want to be as jazz improvisers can be a daunting prospect: there’s so much to learn, and there are so many different ways to approach it. Sometimes it can seem like there’s just too much stuff to practise. Of course, as we’re often told,...
Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis was a restless innovator and a cultural icon, whose music changed dramatically multiple times over the course of his five-decade career. He was at the forefront of various key musical movements and, as perhaps jazz’s greatest...
What are the best guitars for jazz? And what about jazz amps? Or strings? We've already written about some of the greatest jazz guitarists in history but, for this guide, we wanted to focus on the gear they use. So keep reading for some of the key considerations and...
Welcome to our rough guide to some of the main types of jazz; the styles and sub-genres within the music. The term ‘jazz’ covers a very broad selection of music, and two recordings or musicians labelled as such may, at least superficially, appear to have very little...
Whether you're a fan or a musician, here's our rundown on some of the best jazz clubs in Paris in 2020... France has played an important part in jazz history, welcoming all sorts of legendary musicians over the years. Some came to play at the many festivals that take...
Learning jazz solos by the masters can help your own playing in a whole host of ways. It allows you to analyse what makes a certain phrase sound so good, and to use the material to develop your own improvisational vocabulary. Once you’ve learnt a solo, playing it...
If you ask any serious jazz fan or musician to tell you what the 10 best jazz albums of all time are, you'll probably receive either a very short answer ("impossible!") or a long one, which is subject to change depending on the day of the week. With so many thousands...
Whilst jazz guitarists might not have been in the spotlight during the early days of jazz, their importance in the development of this music soon became apparent. Picking 10 of the best jazz guitar players of all time was not an easy task (and we're already working on...
In many ways, NYC is the centre of the jazz world. And, as such, New York jazz clubs, bars & venues provide a place where jazz fans and musicians alike can hear some of the best music of the day. From living legends to the stars of tomorrow - and everything in...
Almost every classic jazz album contains at least one jazz ballad, where the artist can showcase a more expressive or sentimental side to their playing, perhaps in contrast to the rest of the set. Historically, these have often been romantic ‘torch songs’ drawn from...
Whether you're a jazz fan or musician, checking out what's new right now - and who's writing about it - is an interesting exercise. Through our work running press campaigns for jazz musicians, we're in touch with many writers, bloggers and editors around the world and...
Perhaps out of all the styles and sub-genres within this music, Free jazz - or Avant-garde as some of it is labeled - is hardest to pin down. It's hard to classify exactly what constitutes this music, as it means different things to different artists. Free jazz...
The term 'Cool Jazz' may have been primarily introduced by journalists and record labels in 1950s America, but there's no doubting that some of the greatest jazz musicians in history can be associated with this style. Often using detailed written arrangements and even...
We put together this list to showcase some of the best jazz drummers of all time, from the early pioneers such as Max Roach and Art Blakey through to modern-day greats like Jeff "Tain" Watts and Brian Blade. But rather than simply run through our choices, we asked...
