Stratusphunk

The contemporary music magazine.

Following the same format as the acclaimed first volume, this selection of the best 250 modern jazz records and CDs places each in its musical context and reviews it in depth. Additionally, full details of personnel, recording dates, and locations are given. Indexes of album titles, track titles, and musicians are included.

Patterns for Jazz stands as a monument among jazz educational materials. Condensed charts and pertinent explanations are conveniently inserted throughout the book to give greater clarity to the application of more than 400 patterns built on chords and scales -- from simple (major) to complex (lydian augmented scales).

The bibliography lists nearly 5,000 compositions by 200 composers of jazz and "art" music, indicating where scores or realizations can be purchased, rented, or borrowed, and which Boston area libraries have them in their collections.

Stratusphunk - George Russell was a unique figure in jazz. He was a theoretician, a composer of note, a working musician, and an educator. He began his life's work developing the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization in the mid-forties. One of a rare breed of thinker-musicians, through his ideas and music, Russell had a remarkable influence on the development of jazz after 1950. From his early composition with Dizzy Gillespie of "Cubano-Be, Cubano-Bop," through the changes wrought by modal jazz as a consequence of his ideas, to his impact on the Scandinavian and European scenes, his achievements are among the most outstanding in the music. His life story weaves its way through contemporary jazz intersecting with the lives of many of its most colourful characters. Charlie "Bird" Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Carla Bley were not just Russell's contemporaries. They were his peers, his colleagues and his friends. He touched their lives and music and, in turn, was encouraged by them. Originally published in 2010 under the title George Russell: The Story of an American Composer, Duncan Heining's biography of George Russell appears in a newly revised paperback edition for the first time.