Jazz

Classic collection of essays on jazz music and musicians by a French critic and music historian.


"First trained as a violinist, then as a composer, André Hodeir began writing about jazz in the 1940s. As editor-in-chief of the French magazine Jazz Hot, he was an early proponent of bebop and its practitioners, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.


Downbeat called Hodeir's first compilation of jazz writings, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, "the best analytical book on jazz ever written," and Martin Williams named it and Hodeir's second book, Toward Jazz, "two of the most important critical works ever written on the subject." While Hodeir's ideas sparked widespread debate, his study of jazz improvisation and his use of music theory shed new light on the intricacies of jazz composition and arrangement and helped launch a new era of jazz criticism."-UMICH.edu