This article provides background on Allen Forte’s 1958 lecture, “The Development of Diminutions in American Jazz,” which is published for the first time in this issue of the Journal of Jazz Studies. Topics include the context in which the lecture…

Allen Forte, the prominent Yale music theorist, delivered this previously unpublished lecture in Germany in 1958. In “Forte’s Lecture on Jazz: An Introduction” (included elsewhere in this issue), Benjamin Givan states that this lecture is “the earliest known analytical study…

In 1986, the adventurous and accomplished jazz pianist Andrew Hill (1937–2007) presented his composition “Verona Rag,” based loosely within the traditional ragtime idiom. Through close analysis of Hill’s studio recording, the author explains how this composition is “an exemplary illustration…

In 1944, Duke Ellington told a writer from The New Yorker that his composition “Harlem Air Shaft,” recorded four years earlier, was inspired by the myriad sounds heard in the air shaft of a Harlem apartment building (“You hear fights,…

Musicians featured in this collection of Ed Berger's photographs include Eric Alexander, Geri Allen, Billy Bang, Eddie Bert, Ray Bryant, Candido, Ron Carter, Marc Cary, Dave Douglas, Kurt Elling, Ned Goold, Wycliffe Gordon, Henry Grimes, Chico Hamilton, Roy Hargrove, Barry…

While many written sources on tonal jazz harmony are implicitly aware of the fundamental differences between "stable" and "unstable" chords, little significant work has examined an improvising jazz pianist's harmonic options in terms of stability, or "consonance." For this article…

In 2002 the author published Birth of the Cool, a folio of the Miles Davis nonet repertoire of 1948 to 1950, based on the original manuscripts. This article gives a brief history of the nonet and its music; describes how…

The close collaboration between Chick Corea and Paco de Lucía shows a clear example of the connection between jazz and flamenco. The release of Corea’s My Spanish Heart (1976), an explicit approach to the Latin and Spanish musical spheres, and…

A recent book by jazz musician Randall Sandke strongly criticizes jazz writers and scholars for presenting a biased and misleading picture of jazz history. His basic thesis is that, because of ideology, the standard jazz texts exaggerate the importance of…

In jazz improvisation, the meter of the original theme is strictly preserved, and the middleground harmonies are maintained, while the original melody is varied freely, especially with respect to its grouping structure—where phrases begin and end. This poses problems for…