Master in the Making (Lennie Tristano)
Ulanov explores the early career of the pianist/composer in order to ask what the roots of his prodigious talent may be.
Books and Writings
Ellington Writes Of Race Problem in Vivid Music
This review of Barry Ulanov's biography of Duke Ellington appeared in Ebony Magazine in January 1946. It summarizes Ulanov's account of the racial obstacles Ellington and his musicians faced and their various strategies for transcending them. "It is an American band," Ellington says of his orchestra, "because it is democratic."
Barry Ulanov on "Jump for Joy" and "Black, Brown and Beige"
This resource presents two chapters from Barry Ulanov's Duke Ellington, the first full biography of the great composer and orchestra leader. They deal with two of the composer's most important extended works: the musical "Jump for Joy" and the concert suite "Black, Brown, and Beige."
Deconstructin(g) Jazz Improvisation: Derrida and the Law of the Singular Event
Literary critic Jacques Derrida was skeptical that jazz improvisation could actually transgress or ignore preset formal and harmonic structure-the "law of jazz"-to achieve totally spontaneous creations and unique, unpremeditated events. Ramshaw argues that no event generated in jazz improvisation is ever totally singular, nor is such an event totally absent in legal institutions, otherwise held to be diametrically opposed to the spontaneity of jazz. She refers to Derrida's own writings on deconstruction for this insight.
Play -- The First Name (Jacques Derrida)
Translator Timothy S. Murphy notes that Jacques Derrida wrote "Play-The First Name" in response to Ornette Coleman's invitation for him to perform onstage with Coleman and pianist Joachim Kühn at a concert in France. The piece contains Derrida's meditations on the nature of improvisation.
The Other’s Language: Jacques Derrida Interviews Ornette Coleman
Two highly original thinkers share their views on improvisation. Both experienced discrimination: one as an Algerian Jew in colonial France, the other as an African-America in depression-era Texas. Both believe it put them at a distance from their own "languages of origin" yet spurred them to creative acts.
Jacques Derrida on improvisation:
"The very concept of improvisation verges upon reading, since what we often understand by improvisation is the creation of something new, yet something which doesn't exclude the pre-written framework that makes it possible."
Barry Ulanov on "Jump for Joy" and "Black, Brown and Beige"
This resource presents two chapters from Barry Ulanov's Duke Ellington, the first full biography of the great composer and orchestra leader. They deal with two of the composer's most important extended works: the musical "Jump for Joy" and the concert suite "Black, Brown, and Beige."
Constructing the Jazz Tradition
This artful survey of interpretations of jazz history is also a challenge to the notion that there can or should be any single one. DeVeaux shows that common claims as to what jazz is about-a form of resistance, a folk art, an autonomous high art-coexist uneasily, and that each has been used to support otherwise antagonistic stylistic agendas. He calls for closer inquiry into the nuanced history of each period and rejects dogmatic assertions of jazz' "essence."
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