Charlie Parker Techniques Of Improvisation

Martin provides a new overall assessment of the importance of Charlie Parker through an analysis of his improvisations in a variety of genres. Earlier studies of Parker argue that his style is based on an extensive network of melodic formulas that are combined to create solos. Because the same formulas appear throughout his improvisations regardless of the theme, these studies concluded that the solos do not usually relate to the original melodies. Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation provides a much-needed reassessment by showing that Parker's solos are often related to the original themes in unexpected and sometimes ingenious ways. Numerous transcriptions are provided. This groundbreaking technical study will be of interest to musicologists and serious students of jazz.

"Charlie Parker, Composer is the first assessment of a major jazz composer's oeuvre in its entirety. Providing analytical discussion of each of Parker's works, this study combines music-theoretical, historical, and philosophical perspectives. A variety of analytical techniques are brought to bear on Parker's compositions, including application of a revised Schenkerian approach to the music that was developed through the author's prior publications. After a review of Parker's life emphasizing his musical training and involvement in composition, the book proceeds by considering the types of Parker pieces as categorized by overall form and harmony and the amount of preplanned music they contain. The historical circumstances of each piece are reviewed, and, in some cases, sources of the ideas of the most important tunes are explored. The introduction includes a discussion of the ontology of a jazz composition. The view is advanced that the Western concept of a music composition needs to be expanded to embrace practices typical of jazz composition and forming a significant part of Parker's work. While focusing on Parker's more conventional tunes, the book also considers his large-scale melodic formulas. Two formulas in particular are arguably compositional, since they are repeated in subsequent performances of the same piece. As part of the research for this book, all of Parker's copyright submissions to the Library of Congress were examined and photographed. The book reproduces the four of them that were copied by Parker himself"--

Before his death at the age of twenty-seven, Jean-Michel Basquiat completed nearly 2,000 works. These unique compositions—collages of text and gestural painting across a variety of media—quickly made Basquiat one of the most important and widely known artists of the 1980s. Reading Basquiat provides a new approach to understanding the range and impact of this artist’s practice, as well as its complex relationship to several key artistic and ideological debates of the late twentieth century, including the instability of identity, the role of appropriation, and the boundaries of expressionism. Jordana Moore Saggese argues that Basquiat, once known as “the black Picasso,” probes not only the boundaries of blackness but also the boundaries of American art. Weaving together the artist’s interests in painting, writing, and music, this groundbreaking book expands the parameters of aesthetic discourse to consider the parallels Basquiat found among these disciplines in his exploration of the production of meaning. Most important, Reading Basquiat traces the ways in which Basquiat constructed large parts of his identity—as a black man, as a musician, as a painter, and as a writer—via the manipulation of texts in his own library.

Dial Records catered to jazz musicians and record collectors. Charlie Parker was one of the major jazz artists to record with Dial. His Dial sessions occurred at the personal depths and artistic peaks of his career during which he introduced a number of such jazz staples as Ornithology and Scrapple from the Apple. His ten sessions associated with Dial are presented in detail and include the repertory, original issues and reissues, titles and notated transcriptions, and analyses of performances. Commentary explains many of the titles to Parker's pieces and collates the various recordings in which he performed his Dial repertory outside the confines of the Dial studios; these celebrated performances helped to shape modern jazz. In addition to the catalogue of Parker's Dial recordings, jazz historians and scholars alike will appreciate the historical narrative detailing the evolution of Dial Records, its owner Ross Russell, and its business relations with Charlie Parker. This examination of the 1940's jazz record business sheds light on the dissemination of jazz via records. Five appendices complete this well organized and thorough study of Charlie Parker and his legendary Dial recordings.

Biography of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. This ebook is a static version of an article from Grove Music Online, a continuously updated online resource, offering comprehensive coverage of the world’s music written by leading scholars. For more information, visit www.oxfordmusiconline.com.