Jazz Icons The Giants of Jazz Home Piano Saxophone Trumpet Vocals Guitar Search Contact Nina Simone Posted on July 14, 2017 One of the most influential recording artists of all time, Simone possessed a magnificent intensity that turns everything, even the most simple mundane phrase or lyric into a radiant poetic message. Posted in Piano, Vocals Tagged Women in Jazz, Civil Rights Struggle Diamanda Galas Posted on July 14, 2017 Galás has been described as “capable of the most unnerving vocal terror”, with her three and a half octave vocal range. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of AIDS, mental illness, despair, injustice, condemnation, and loss of dignity. She has worked with many avant-garde composers. Posted in Piano, Vocals Tagged Avant Garde, Gothic, Opera, Women in Jazz Anita O'Day Posted on July 14, 2017 O'Day was admired for her rhythm and dynamics, and for shattering the traditional image of the “girl singer”. Refusing to pander to any gender stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a “hip” jazz musician, in a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. Posted in Vocals Tagged Female Vocalists, Swing, Big Band, Women in Jazz Ella Fitzgerald Posted on July 14, 2017 Also known as the “First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz”, and “Lady Ella”, Fitzgerald had a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), and was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability. Posted in Vocals Tagged Female Vocalists, Women in Jazz Sonny Sharrock Posted on July 14, 2017 One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his incisive, heavily chorded attack, his highly-amplified bursts of wild feedback, and for his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar. Posted in Guitar, Free Jazz Tagged Avant Garde, Jazz Rock, Trance Duke Ellington Posted on July 14, 2017 In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe, “[i]n the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington.” Duke Ellington called his music “American Music” rather than jazz. Posted in Piano Tagged Bandleaders, Composers Billie Holiday Posted on July 14, 2017 Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday “changed the art of American pop vocals forever.” She died with $.70 in the the bank. Posted in Piano, Vocals Tagged Jazz and the Law, Women in Jazz Miles Davis Posted on July 14, 2017 “So What” has only two chords: D-7 and E♭-7. Davis said that the inspiration for the album came from a lamellophone player he heard in a Ballet Africaine performance, and a childhood memory of walking down a dark country road in Arkansas, hearing gospel music. Posted in Piano, Vocals Tagged Bebop, Cool Jazz, Free Jazz Charlie Parker Posted on July 14, 2017 Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas, including rapidly passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. He remains probably the most influential saxophone player of all time. Posted in Piano, Vocals Tagged Bebop, Jazz and Drugs Thelonious Monk Posted on July 14, 2017 His compositions are full of dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are consistent with Monk's unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations. Posted in Piano Tagged Avant Garde, Bandleaders Dizzy Gillespie Posted on July 14, 2017 Gillespie was such a complex player that contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead; it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated. He was described as the “Sound of Surprise”. Posted in Piano, Trumpet Tagged Bebop, Civil Rights Struggle John Zorn Posted on July 14, 2017 “People are so obsessed with the surface that they can't see the connections, but they are there. When I sit down and make music, a lot of things come together. Sometimes it falls a little bit towards the jazz, sometimes it falls toward rock, sometimes it doesn't fall anywhere, it's just floating in limbo.” Posted in Saxophone, Vocals Tagged Avant Garde, Bandleaders, Free Jazz Proudly powered by WordPress. Theme jazzicons by your name here. top