In a film Variety called an "elegantly crafted and illuminating portrait of the singular jazz legend," director John Scheinfeld explores the life, spiritual journey and music of John Coltrane, whose recorded works range from deeply expressive ballads to wildly expressive "sheets of sound." Scheinfeld crafts a story that reveals and affirms the impact Trane had on a variety of musicians, politicians, educators and artists - including Kamasi Washington,...

In this collection of musical portraits, jazz pianist and radio host Marian McPartland pays sparkling tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

In a preface to this new edition, published originally as All in Good Time, McPartland extends her commentary to include details of her long-running National Public Radio show Marian McPartland's

...

A brief recounting of the career of this jazz musician and composer who, along with his orchestra, created music that was beyond category.

In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now. Atticus Brady's new film uses an astonishing array of archival materials interwoven with interviews with friends, family, and fellow musicians, and features commentary from Woody Allen; Ahmad Jamal; Tonight...

Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players—some say the originator of jazz—who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.
In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central...

How did famous New Orleans jazz trumpet player Louis Armstrong get his first horn?
 
Seven-year-old Louis Armstrong was too poor to buy a real instrument. He didn’t even go to school. To help his mother pay the rent, every day he rode a junk wagon through the streets of New Orleans, playing a tin horn and collecting stuff people didn’t want. Then one day, the junk wagon passed a pawn shop with a gleaming brass

...