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HARD BOP

Name: HARD BOP
Author: David H. Rosenthal
ISBN: 0-19-505869-0

JAZZ AND BLACK MUSIC, 1955-1965

by David H. Rosenthal ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1992

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Lively history by free-lance jazz-journalist Rosenthal of a brief but important musical era falling between post-Charlie Parker jazz and Stevie Wonder-style tunes. Today, Rosenthal explains, hard bop is heard only in revivals as the neo-bop fabrication of feelings of another era. But as musician Henry Threadgill complains: ``For the first time in the history of jazz, many young artists have become virtuosos of styles that have passed....Are we so nostalgic that we need virtuosos of the graveyard?'' Bop grew out of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell, elided into its second generation (and perhaps its finest flower) with effervescent, feelingful trumpeter Clifford Brown. Where classic bop had bubbled with ebullience, Rosenthal says, hard bop sprang from a cooler, more laid-back yet hard- swinging spirit, as exemplified by Miles Davis's seminal ``Bags' Groove.'' Davis had come into being with Parker, with a modest middle-range style of which Rosenthal does not think highly. It was only after a four-year bout with heroin that Davis returned with his ringingly inventive major style, the biting but full-toned phrasing of pieces like ``Bags' Groove'' and ``Cookin' '' and with synergies drawn from working with the emerging John Coltrane. Hard bop's most tragic figure is best seen, going by Rosenthal, in trumpeter Lee Morgan, who began recording with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers when only 18, winnowed an overactive style down to notes well weighed, worked up ``a timbre that seemed to convey a mixture of bitter irony and sorrow,'' and then, in 1980, was shot dead at age 30 by his spurned mistress at a jazz club on N.Y.C.'s Lower East Side. And at that point, hard bop and the milieu that buoyed it up—``ghetto life with jazz at its center''—vanished under Motown, soul, and ``concept albums.'' An original and compelling assessment.

Pub Date: April 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-19-505869-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN
by Paul Newman ; edited by David H. Rosenthal

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SLUM
by Aluísio Azevedo & translated by David H. Rosenthal

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.