From The Publisher
"Between 1995 and 2000, Wayne Enstice and Janis
Stockhouse interviewed dozens of women jazz instrumentalists and
vocalists. Jazzwomen collects 21 of the most fascinating interviews. The
participants discuss everything - their personal lives, musical training
and inspirations, recordings, relationships with other musicians, the
music industry, sexism on the bandstand - and often make candid and
revealing statements. At the end of each interview is a recommended
discography compiled by the authors." Every jazz listener, musician,
teacher, and student will be captivated by interviews with Marian
McPartland, Regina Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall,
and their peers. Includes a sampler CD with complete works by several of
the artists, including Jane Ira Bloom and Ingrid Jensen.
Here is what the critics have to say: Editorial Reviews
From Booklist At their best, question-and-answer interviews can
communicate personality as impressively as the best fiction. Such
outstanding examples of the form are masterpieces of the writer-editor's
craft, requiring immense sensitivity to the interviewee's vocal tone,
cadences, and inflections, and to the interviewee's characteristic
vocabulary. The interviewer must transform raw conversation, with all its
verbal tics and vocalized but nonverbal punctuation, into a readable
continuity that keeps the sense of what was said and more--the color and
juice of a distinctive person. Enstice and Stockhouse bat close to a
thousand with their interviews of 21 women who have made their way, often
enough to the pinnacle of acclaim, in the male-dominated world of jazz.
What pianist Marilyn Crispell says reflects the honed and carefully
marshaled strength that she unleashes with such brio in her cascading,
effulgent improvisations. JoAnne Brackeen, also a pianist, almost induces
levitation with the headiness of her kinesthetic worldview, in which
everything is ultimately musical. In her concern about dealing with the
almost-unheard-of-in-jazz predicament of being a star who is frequently
recognized offstage, singer-pianist Diana Krall discloses the pressure
that grace can live under. Drummer Dottie Dodgion, one of the least known
of these interviewees, exudes the professional savoir faire of a
half-century-long career. Each woman sounds unique, and as any jazz lover
would tell you, that's what makes each of them a jazzwoman. Sublime.
Ray Olson
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