Jazz

As I haven't contributed to MusicWeb Times before, I had better introduce myself (in case you haven't read my fascinating biography on the website - under "Reviewers"). A former lexicographer, I am now a freelance writer and part-time jazz drummer, as well as a member of the Delius Society. At various times I have reviewed classical music, pop and jazz. My favourite composers/musicians include Delius, Duke Ellington, Richard Strauss, Stevie Wonder, Christian Ferras, Erroll Garner, Aretha Franklin, Brahms, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Peter Donohoe, Dick Hyman, Michael Tippett, Ella Fitzgerald, Percy Grainger, Dudley Moore, Ravel, Dimitri Tiomkin, the Takacs Quartet, Spike Jones, Monteverdi, Andy Narell, Elgar, Ahmad Jamal, Poulenc and Carly Simon - but there are many more. I like to be excited by Respighi's "Pines of Rome" and Korngold's film music, and soothed by some of Vaughan Williams and Percy Whitlock.
I am the Editor of the MusicWeb's Jazz Section, which seems to be (inevitably?) the poor relation of the classical section. Yet I would like the jazz reviews to have a higher profile and we could do with more reviewers (surely more classical reviewers could add some jazz to their menus?). And I expect Len Mullenger would welcome any volunteer who is willing to help with uploading the jazz reviews to the website. At any rate, this is a sort of plea for the value of jazz, which is even beginning to be recognised as "serious" music by BBC Radio 3.
Reviewing jazz is different from reviewing classical music. Classical reviews often occupy a lot of space by comparing different recordings of the same work: something that happens rarely in jazz, which seldom repeats itself (although it is fascinating, for instance, to compare the umpteen different versions by Duke Ellington of his composition "The Mooche", which seemingly changes with every performance). Jazz musicians often play the same tunes (we tend to call them "standards") but they are given such widely varying treatments as generally to defy comparison.
However, this is one of the intriguing features of jazz, which has retained an interest in improvisation - something which has virtually disappeared from many forms of music, although it was good enough for Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Jazz has been called "the sound of surprise". This may make it hard to pin down, and it might explain why jazz is still often looked down upon as an inferior form of music. Yet jazz has (and had) its virtuoso composers - like Ellington, Gil Evans and Thelonious Monk - and also its virtuoso performers, like Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Oscar Peterson, Jaco Pastorius, Antonio Forcione, Eldar Djangirov, Richard Galliano and Stefano Bollani. I have only just encountered a remarkable pianist called Eyran Katsenelenbogen (no, really!) with a formidable technique and remarkable improvising ability.
Music is too multifarious for everyone to explore every aspect of it. In jazz, as in every other form of music, there is good and bad music - and one man's fish is another man's poisson (see a recent posting on this site about Suk). But there is a great deal of good music under the heading of "jazz" which is worth exploring if you can spare the time.
There is a cherishable joke in the 1961 film "Raising the Wind" where one orchestral musician asks another what he played at the previous night's concert. The musician says: "Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto and Beethoven's 5th Symphony". His friend asks "Who was conducting?" and the musician replies "I didn't look". Some record companies insist on continually releasing versions of the same old works, which still have their value but are in danger of becoming hackneyed and over-familiar. For a change, how about trying "the sound of surprise"? You may be pleasantly surprised.