Customer Reviews

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is just a thorough piece of work. With music examples, pictures, selected discographies, bios, and how their music influenced the world of jazz. It also features great articles about nightclubs and libraries. This is a huge book, and very cheap also, so this is something every jazz fan should have.

This is a valuable jazz reference source, and a good companion book to the Penguin guide to jazz. It is particularly useful for looking up the biographies of artists that you're interested in. Less useful are the lists of jazz club venues - likely to be quite out of date by now.

What I liked especially about the dictionary, is its comprehensiveness. Artists from all continents are covered - although musicians from far-flung places (as in not-in-the-USA)are more likely to be missing. On the negative side, you'll find that the book is now out of date when it comes to contemporary musicians.

I have for example compiled a list of all artists born in African, Australia and New Zealand from the book. While a number of well-known musicians are missing, the youngest person on my list was born in 1947 - 55 years ago - not good for a book that was reviewed in 1994. One would suspect that the contemporary jazz renaissance of the 1990s is totally absent.

So in summary, this is a well-written, well edited, good reference source, but badly in need of an update. I would also enjoy more personal details about artists in the next edition.

This is a book every jazz musician and jazz fan should own. There is amusing trivia: How many people know that drum brushes were originally marketed as fly swatters? There are transcriptions of arrangements as well as of improvised solos. And of course there are biographical essays. The book is serious and scholarly and deep yet easily readable and entertaining.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns

This encylcopedia was a huge and expensive dissapointment. If you are not a jazz freak with 1 million cd-s, you wan't find this peace all that very usefull. I mean, the article about chet baker is only twice as long as the article on chave baker, cheese baker and other non relevant bakers. This is advanced guide for real experts. On the top of it, all articles are dull written, not even close to a readable and interesting biographies of people but only as a list of information, many of which is not very usefull. Some hints about nightclubs are good, but that could

Avoide it.....