Bebop Cool Hard Free

  His greatest achievement as a musician, however, was to move beyond being regarded as a distinctive and influential stylist on his own instrument and to shape whole styles and ways o[r]

BEBOP

1940’S - MID 1950’S

Bebop Characteristics

Small combos (3 - 6 members)

Faster tempos than swing band tempos

Clarinet and rhythm guitar rarely used in bebop

Higher instrumental proficiency

Bebop became the 1st style of jazz that was not used for dancing

Disassociated from their own audience, their own employers, non-jazz musicians, and even from other jazz musicians

Trying to raise the level of jazz from dance music to a chamber art form

Status of jazz performer - from entertainer to artist

Drug’s effect on bebop musicians

Bebop Characteristics

“Minton’s playhouse - the hippest jazz club in NY

The first jazz style that was not used for dancing

Bebop was not enthusiastically accepted by the jazz community at the time of its emergence

The origins of bebop - hard to determine

The word "bebop" is usually stated to be nonsense syllables

Bebop did not have the same large audience enjoyed by the swing bands

Jazz, in general, despite of its popularity was not viewed as an art form by the general public

Bebop was the era from which the majority of our jazz giants

emerged

Bebop Characteristics

Complex melodies

Large melodic intervals

Abrupt changes in melodic direction

Highly syncopated, rhythmically quick and unpredictable

Original melodies commonly based on popular song chord progressions Blues form used often

Melodies in unison (trumpet and sax together)

  Usually improvised lines

Charlie Parker

“Bird”

of bebop

group of musicians including

Dizzy, Monk and Clark

Charlie Parker

generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an

uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular

entertainer

“Bird”

Dizzy Gillespie

improviser, building on the virtuoso style

of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of

harmonic complexity previously unknown

in jazz

Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles,

his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched

cheeks and his light-hearted personality

were essential in popularizing bebop,

which was originally regarded as

threatening and frightening music by many

listeners raised on older styles of jazz

every subsequent trumpeter, both by the

example of his playing and as a mentor to

younger musicians

Influenced: M Davis, R Rodney, F

Navarro, K Dorham, T Jones

Dizzy Gillespie on The Muppet Show

Dizzy Gillespie & Louis Armstrong - Umbrella Man

Bebop Pianists

Bud Powell

Classically trained pianist Created the model of bebop piano Approach derived from Tatum with bop phrasing of Parker and Gillespie

Modern comping two or three note chords

Bebop Musicians

Kenny Clarke - drums

House-drummer at Minton’s Playhouse w/ Gillespie, Monk, C Christian, B Powell

4/4 pulse from bass drums to ride cymbal

Bass drum and snare independent background accents

Oscar Pettiford - bass

Bass-cello-bandleader, first bassist to apply virtuosity of Blanton within bebop context

Co-leader with Dizzy, worked with Ellington

Bebop Musicians

Oscar Peterson – piano

Style derived from Tatum and Powell

Extraordinary technique

Max Roach – drums

House-band at Monroe’s Uptown House with Bird & Diz

Developed K Clarke's style into bebop

Modern Jazz Quartet

John Lewis-piano-arranger-composer

Milt Jackson-vibraphone; warm bluesy melodic lines w/ slow vibrato

Bebop Musicians

J.J Johnson - Trombonist-composer

Paved the path for trombonist in the bop style

Active composer, particularly for TV and movies in the 70’s

Sonny Stitt - alto-tenor sax, "Lone Wolf”

Recording over 100 records

The greatest disciple of Charlie Parker

Sonny Rollins - tenor sax

One of the last still living legends of jazz;

Still performs very actively throughout the world

Clifford Brown – trumpet

An influential and highly rated musician

Considerable influence on later jazz trumpet players

Miles Davis

giants of jazz

only for his contribution to the

development of cool jazz but rather

he was an innovative force in the

evolution of jazz

and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13,

2006

Miles Davis

He was never considered to have the highest level of technical ability

regarded as a distinctive and influential stylist on his own instrument and to shape whole styles and ways of making music through the work of his bands,

in which many of the most important jazz musicians of the second half of the Twentieth Century made their names

Dave Brubeck

His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote

the Dave Brubeck Quartet's most famous piece, "Take Five", which is

in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic Brubeck experimented with time signatures through much of his career, recording "Pick Up Sticks" in 6/4, "Unsquare Dance" in 7/4, and "Blue Rondo à la Turk"

In 1954 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, the second

Paul Desmond

Known to have possessed an idiosyncratic wit, he was one of the most

Modern Jazz Quartet

With Astrud Gilberto – “The Girl from Ipanema”

Specializing in relaxed, even melancholy music`

“Lighthouse at Hermosa Beach”-center of activities Competition between East Coast and West Cost Cool Most of West Coast musicians - white, associated with Most of East Coast musicians - African American,

West Coast musicians working in Hollywood studio

Gunther Schuller

Schuller coined the term “third stream” in a lecture Thus describing a style that is a synthesis of classical music and jazz

It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between

Language, gestures, improvisation, and

rhythmic drive

Instrumentation (orchestra, string quartet, etc.), forms (fugue, suite, concerto, etc.), and

compositional techniques

Hard Bop 

emotionally based

Used highly rhythmical melodies and less complex

Borrowed elements from African American church

Adopted the truly American, and oral idioms found in

Art Blakey

modern bebop style of

drumming

“Jazz Messengers”

synonymous with hard drive

and pulsating excitement

Art Blakey

Art Blakey

the “Jazz Messengers”

Over more than 30 years his band the Jazz Messengers included

many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz

this regard

profoundly influential on mainstream jazz

Horace Silver

humorous and funky playing

style and for his pioneering

contributions to hard bop

small jazz groups during the

1950s – 1960s

Horace Silver

Charles Mingus

Parker, Thelonious Monk, Negro

gospel music, Mexican folk music

and performance

Charlie Mingus

jazz pianists of the 20th century

His use of impressionist harmony, his inventive

interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and his

syncopated and polyrhythmic melodic lines influenced

a generation of pianists

His works continue to influence pianists, guitarists,

composers, and interpreters of jazz music around the

Grammy Awards and nominations

In 1994, he was posthumously honored with the

Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Bill Evans

Free Form 

Free Jazz - Characteristics

definition is complicated by many musicians in other styles drawing on free jazz,

or free jazz sometimes blending with other genres

than in most earlier styles

Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians

Free jazz normally retains a general pulsation and often swings but without regular meter, and often with frequent accelerando (gradually speeding up the tempo) and ritardando (gradually slowing down the tempo), giving an impression of the rhythm moving in waves

Rhythm is more freely variable but has not disappeared entirely

for solos

movement of the 1950s and 1960s

st known leader of the jazz avant-garde

He initiated a controversy of strong, opposing

opinions from many of the other established

jazz leaders, including Miles Davis &

Cecil Taylor

acknowledged as one of the inventors of free jazz

practices and jazz improvisations and can be heard as

either classical or jazz

characterized by an extremely energetic, physical

approach, producing exceedingly complex improvised

sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate

polyrhythms At first listen, his dense and percussive

music can be difficult to absorb His piano technique

has often been likened to drums and percussion rather

than to any other pianists

Cecil Taylor

John Coltrane

avant-garde One of the most dominant influences

on post-1960 jazz saxophonists and has inspired an

entire generation of jazz musicians

instrument

minutes in length)

increasingly spiritual dimension that would color

his legacy His conception of expression in jazz

became increasingly mystical, Gnostic and

cathartic

Coltrane received a posthumous Special Citation from the

Pulitzer Prize Board (2007) for his "masterful

improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to

the history of jazz.”

Posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime

Achievement Award (1992)

John ColtraneSaint John Coltrane

Art Ensemble of Chicago

An avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s AEC explore world-based modern jazz music

Notable for its integration of musical styles spanning jazz's entire history and for their multi-instrumentalism, especially the use of what they termed "little

instruments" in addition to the traditional jazz lineup

•  “Little instruments" can include bicycle horns, bells, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and

a vast array of percussion instruments (including found objects)

The group also uses costumes and face paint in performance These

characteristics combine to make the ensemble's performances as much a visual spectacle as an aural one, with each musician playing from behind a large array of drums, bells, gongs, and other instruments When playing in Europe in 1969, the group were using more than 500 instruments

Sun Ra & Sun Ra Arkestra (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra")

Pianist, composer, arranger, synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy", musical compositions and performances

Quite a controversial jazz figure

Known by several names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee

•  Denied his connection with birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.”

•  He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun) Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afro-futurism as he preached "awareness" and peace above all

He experimented with electronic instruments

1 st composer in Chicago to employ techniques of collective improvisation in big-band

compositions

His music touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing music, from bebop to free jazz

He was also a pioneer of electronic music, space music, and free improvisation, and was one

of the first musicians, regardless of genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboards

most other forms of jazz