It's not simply that pianist Vince Guaraldi slipped jazz past the unsuspecting in composing A Charlie Brown Christmas, the evergreen "Peanuts" animation and soundtrack that has become inescapably part of the holiday.
In my music history classes, particularly in November and December, students have
often asked me about the relationship between jazz and Christmas: "Why are so many
popular Christmas songs so jazzy?" It is a good question—indeed, many of the most
popular secular Christmas music does have a jazz flavor, while a few are actually jazz.
As temperatures drop and days grow short, Winter is once again upon us. For those looking to listen to the sounds of the season without resorting to December's relentless slew of glossy, generic cash-grabs, jazz can be a breath of fresh, wintry air.
From 2015 through 2020, a personal research project included my reading dozens of jazz books and related media. They included mainstays such as the massive reference The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, Ben Ratliff's excellent interview collection The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music, the off-shore perspectives of Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain and Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan and the...
Everybody's best friend. Okay, so not everyone loves dogs. But find yourself buried in an avalanche and it will be a dog that sniffs you out. The last person found alive after the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11 was sniffed out by a rescue dog. Guide dogs helped lead their blind owners to safety from the...
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