Product Description

Music and the Creative Spirit is a book of interviews with today's innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde, including Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Fred Anderson, John Zorn, Joshua Redman, and others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #676771 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent resource
This book is very inspiring. The words of these phenomenol musicians speaks to inspiration and muse, cultural influences, and living in general. Most of the musicians here are jazz players, but their life experiences speak to improvisation, ideas, and the heart of music in any genre. Any contemporary musician especially would find this a rich resource.

about cultural and sociological state of jazz
I bought this expensive book on the recommendation of Pat Metheny (on his website), who is one of the interview subjects in the book.

I have found the book disappointing and frustrating. I guess I was hoping/expecting the musicians interviewed to be asked and respond to questions about learning and playing music, but there is very little of this. Instead the author endeavors to keep the conversation on the cultural and sociological status of jazz in contemporary culture. There is very little about music or musicianship, though occasionally one of the artists will mention these things in spite of the interviewers sociologically oriented questions. Often the musicians are being asked questions that are really outside the sphere of music, and call for cultural criticism.

Some of the artists interviewed do have opinions about the broader cultural and sociological background milieu in which jazz is performed and thus are able to discuss these matters intelligently with the interviewer.

If your interest is in the current status of jazz in contemporary culture, this is the book for you. If your interest is in the music that the interview subjects play, you will not find much here.

Their words resonate
The words of these great musicians/innovators/players really ring true and will both inspire you and get you thinking. Highly recommended. I am probably going to buy a few and give them as gifts.