|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
Living The Jazz Life Conversations With Forty Musicians About Their Careers In Jazz  W.
Royal StokesOxford University Press, 2002 Paperback. 288pp. b&w illustrations £9.99
In some forty interviews with saxophonists, pianists, singers, composers, and string, brass and rhythm players, Stokes illuminates the lives of the artists and the sheer pleasure of the sounds they create. Stokes paints a vivid portrait of jazz musicians - bringing to life their influences, their careers and their art. We hear firsthand how they became interested in jazz and how they emerged onto the jazz scene. Stokes ranges across the globe in his interviews, introducing us to vaudeville stars, blues musicians and a dozen women instrumentalists - like the acclaimed violinist Regina Carter - from the many who now shine on a stage where they were once limited to vocals alone. Nat Adderley recalls how he and his brother grew up across from a Tabernacle Baptist Church and how as boys on Sunday they would listen to the music from the church - tambourines and trombomes and a blind man playing the piano. From legendary veterans Jackie McLean and Louie Bellson to such rising stars as Diana Krall, Cyrus Chestnut and Igrid Jensen, Stokes gathers together the brightest lights in the jazz firmament, capturing not only the life of the musician, but how the musician gives life to jazz. |
|
|
||||||||||
|
© Jazzscript 2002 Wendover Bookshop, 35 High Street, Wendover, Bucks, United Kingdom HP22 6DU tel / fax: +44 (0)1296 696204 | email |
No
music is as individual as jazz, and no writer is as deft at bringing out
what is individual in each artist as W. Royal Stokes. As a reviewer, feature
writer, public radio host and auithor of three books on the subject, Stokes
has spent three decades covering the jazz scene. Now he draws on that
rich store of knowledge and friendship to introduce us to the jazz life.