The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music

Have you ever thought about how you actually listen to jazz? As a non-musician, I was intrigued when the publisher sent me a review copy of The Jazz Ear by New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff. The book’s subtitle – “Conversations over Music” - more appropriately describes the content since it is essentially a series of interviews with 15 mainstream musicians as to the music they like. Fellow critic Nat Hentoff calls this compilation “a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians’ playing.” Ratliff contends that jazz is full of its own history (although pre-bebop jazz is hardly discussed) along with constant reinvention as the musicians work out small and precise variations on well-established languages. He tells us that Sonny Rollins helped teach a generation of listeners to hear jazz in a new way. Rollins states, “Improvisation is storytelling. It’s like talking gibberish and making sense. Somebody wrote that what I was doing in a certain song was asking a question and then answering the question. Jazz means freedom.” Joshua Redman’s take is that “Jazz has to do with sincerity as much as form. Art, in the world of honest emotional experience, is never about absolutes or favorites or hierarchies or number ones. These days I listen to, love and am inspired by all forms of music.” Trombonist-composer Bob Brookmeyer questioned �