How to Listen to Jazz

Monk’s intimate, exhaustive and poetic improvisations pioneered new languages of modern jazz and helped birth bebop as a seminal art form. “And then there was the silence. There is nothing more daunting and mysterious. We flood silence with chatter, we fill it with noise or notes rather than let it reveal what it knows or just let it be,” wrote mus... See more

In rhythm and blues, the soloists were generally more “selfish”, concerned to express their own feelings, depending on the rest of the band to keep the beat going and the volume up while they blew their hearts out and their heads off. In jazz, there was usually more interplay between musicians, more exploration into melody and harmony, less relianc

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