Category: Guest Posts

Aziza Miller was a teacher in the New York City school system, and, because music has always been a huge part of her life, infused jazz into her classroom lessons whenever it was possible. She asked her students if they knew of any jazz musicians and found their realm of experience allowed for responses like Stevie Wonder or James Brown.

“I realize how blessed I was to be exposed not only to jazz but every kind of music,” recalls the pianist and singer. “The students didn’t get that exposure. I pondered over how I could pull them in so they would be interested.” She found her answer in rap, knowing the genre would pull them in and get them to listen.

Composer/pianist/teacher Phillip Keveren, who earned musical pedigrees from Cal State U and the University of Southern California, was driven to re-interpret the fugues and cantatas of Bach into jazz. Why, one may ask? Phillip says to blame it on the Swingle Singers.

 This early acapella group from the 1960s “sang” the classics. “They captured my imagination,” says Phillip. He decided to blend Bach and bop.

Have you always ‘heard’ classical through a jazz lens?
I have always loved jazz, and when I listen to classical music I am especially drawn to the harmonic progressions and colors.

Bob Bernotas might not be a jazzy household name, but he’s been writing about the genre for many years. With a successful monthly newsletter and as the host of a show by the same name on an East Coast college radio station, he’s dabbled in clarinet and sax but holds a soft spot for the trombone. In fact, Bernotas owns a Conn that was played in the Count Basie Orchestra.

His online newsletter is available free to subscribers (www.jazzbob.com). The content is mostly music with a substantial dose of politics and baseball thrown in. Readers will notice a particular penchant for Sinatra.

Bernotas is the author of Reed All About It: Interviews and Master Classes with Jazz’s Leading Reed Players and Top Brass: Interviews and Master Classes with Jazz’s Leading Brass Players.

A very cool cat with an inborn jazz sensibility, Morgan Monceaux is the author of several books about the cultural and art experience of black America. In 1994 he wrote “Jazz: My Music, My People” to introduce children to jazz.

His illustrations fly off the page with their jewel-tone vibrancy and uniqueness. Monceaux also adds text as an artistic element. Example: jazz singer Nina Simone is encircled by the words “high priestess of soul” while curlicues of red, blue and yellow swirl behind and around her.

Monceaux painted Sarah Vaughan, whose sound reminded him of his mother’s voice and made him feel warm inside. Nina Simone, he said, set the pace for his understanding of the 1960s and the protest movement. And Nat King Cole, “one of the coolest male singers of his time,” brought jazz into the homes of millions of people with his own TV show.

“I have a love of the female voice,” he said in a recent interview. “This book was a way of remembering my mother who gave me a love of jazz. It gives a history of jazz to show how it has impacted today’s music.”

“Bessie Smith” by Morgan Monceaux with permission.