TOWARD JAZZ

Andre Hodeir, author of the classic Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, is here represented by several of his articles which appeared between 1953 and 1959 in various musical anthologies, in Jazz Review, Jazz Hot and Down Beat. Hodeir calls this one a transitional collection, one of ""poetic meditations"" each inspired by an individual Jazz musician. Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Milt Jackson, The lonious Monk and Charlie Parker are among the individuals reappraised. For the lay reader, Hodeir's condemnation of fallen musicians who have become celebrities, of the hack, uncreative spectres who have nothing left to say, and his tribute to Charlie Parker's The Bird Is Gone, will prove stimulating because comprehensible. His insistence upon objective analysis rather than subjective vagary will make most of this rough going for the non-musician.