Customer Reviews

The New Face of Jazz: An Intimate Look at Today's Living Legends and the Artists of Tomorrow

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It's audacious of the author to attempt a style that was perfected so masterfully by Studs Terkel, but she pulls it off handily. Each profile feels extremely intimate, like a precious few minutes in the back of a cab or in an elevator with today's great jazz artists. In a few pages (in some cases a few paragraphs) she offers a clear look into the minds of her subjects. I admit I started in the index, looking for my favorite jazz musicians and being disappointed a few times, but as the author herself says, the book isn't an encyclopedia or a who's who. There are plenty of interviews that didn't make the cut and hundreds of musicians she never interviewed. But the ones she did include capture precisely why I love jazz so much. There is desire and passion and heartache and inspiration in each profile. There is a need to do right by the art form, and a need to push it further.

The downside to the book is that, if you're anything like me, it will cost you far more than the purchase price. With every profile, I found myself thinking, 'I love this person! I need to buy some of their music!'

I bought this as a gift for my father-in-law but ended up reading it first. It's a great book to have around as one can just pick it up and read from it at one's convenience. There are insightful interviews from musicians I've heard of and from many I have not. Nevertheless, it's all great reading.

The New Face of Jazz is compendium of many of today's shining stars of jazz. Each entry features a brief analysis, followed by the artist's own words, describing his or her approach to music or making more personal observations. Artists of any genre or medium can learn from the artistic lessons of today's jazz greats. I admit to being less than thoroughly educated in the world of jazz, but I found the book both entertaining and enlightening. I listened to the music of those musicians I could find on Napster as I read the section on each, and I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences of my life. I highly recommend this book, not just to jazz afficionados, but to anyone interested in music, or anyone pursuing their own creative path.

A fascinating, approachable guide to jazz...I bought it as a gift but not before collecting a few names, writing down a few websites, and sampling some tracks. This book is a great way to expand your horizons. A very useful and well written book with a fresh approach to the world of jazz.

Book arrived quickly and in perfect shape, and was even gift wrapped, which worked out perfectly since it was a birthday present!! Thanks!

I was honored to be included among the artists profiled in this book and to be a part of the writer's holistic statement of where Jazz is today. She didn't adjust or orchestrate the profiles, but maintained the integrity, the honesty of what was shared with her. We are real people, living our everyday lives, raising our families, paying our bills, who happen to make our living by writing, arranging, teaching, performing, perpetuating the music we have such a deep passion for. As a former studied musician herself, she understood us with an intuitive insight, knew what to ask, how to listen, how to present each of us in our own uniquenesses.

What a great overview of the many personal "faces" that show how far Jazz has come, of where it is today, and how it still plays such an intricate role in our American culture, our American story. Kudos to Cecily Janus for her artistry as a writer and as the sensitive messenger of our stories.

On the whole, an interesting overview. But be warned! the title should be read as 'The New Face of United States Jazz', and some of the artists profiled are hardly 'new', and even some of the oldest, however worthy, may never become household names in the jazz house. To be fair, the subtitle is 'an intimate look at today's living legends and the artists of tomorrow.' But some might be tempted to say, 'today's living fossils', and all of the featured are artists of today rather than tomorrow: who knows where most of them'll be in ten years time? Largely gone and forgotten, one suspects. Also, some of the missing persons are puzzling. Why is Chris Potter not here? or Dave Holland? or David Berkman? Oscar Perez but no Danilo!.... I could go on. However, David Binney is here, saying interesting things as usual, as are Donny McCaslin, Charlie Hunter, the Mason brothers, Ingrid Jensen, Maria Schneider, and, probably the youngest, Esperanza Spalding (most of the women included are singers or pianists, of course, so I've cherry-picked a few important names who are not). These are of a younger generation but are hardly 'artists of the future': they are already well-established names! But they stand alongside old-timers of the likes of McCoy Tyner, Steve Swallow, George Duke and Phil Woods, who can hardly be considered to be part of any 'new' face. And then there's the rest of the world (yes, amazingly, there is a world of jazz outside the USA!). Any overview of 'The new face of jazz' must surely have to include all those Scandinavian, Polish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Indian, Japanese, Australian, English, and Scottish jazz musicians (let alone the vibrant scenes in Africa, the Caribbean and South America)? or are they just to be regarded as pale imitations of that 'genuine' American thing? I think not. In fact, as one of the musicians in this book says, the audience for jazz outside the USA is now more open to progressive ideas than anywhere in the genre's country of origin. To sum up, this is a disappointing and vexing book in many ways, but still worth buying for the occasional gems of wisdom and insight which are dispensed by those who have been included (by some largely unfathomable selection process), and a chance to encounter some new and very interesting artists. I'm off to listen to some Chie Imaizumi!