Recommended Reading

On Art and Criticism

• Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (essay)
• Better Living Through Criticism by A.O. Scott

On Music

There are of course many, many books about Black American Music music: these are just a few suggestions to get you started:

• Notes and Tones by Art Taylor.
• Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia
• Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century by Nate Chinen
• As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution 1957-1977 by Val Wilmer
• Black Music by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
• Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

Biographies:

• The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazz Man as told to Tom Stoddard. An amazing first hand account of New Orleans and the early days of the music.
• Claude Ranger: Canadian Jazz Legend by Mark Miller. Mark has written a number of great books about jazz in Canada. This book is an amazing record of Canada’s jazz scene in the last half of the 20th C.
• Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter by Michelle Mercer. A favourite recent biography.

On Art and Practise:

• A Guide for the Perplexed Werner Herzog – conversations with Paul Cronin.
• Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
• The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti. Read it with special attention to the following passages: Don’t Pretend There Is No Leader; How To Improvise, and How Not To Improvise; The Rocks Game; What Experimental Music is For; These Projects Don’t Make Money; Doing One Thing Doesn’t Mean You’re Against Something Else; Get Louder or Quit.
• No Such Thing As Silence by Kyle Gann. John Cage’s 4’33”
• Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna

Interviews and Profiles

• Ethan Iverson: Interview with Tim Berne. All of Ethan’s interviews are worth reading – so much great stuff in there. I particularly like this interview with Tim Berne.
• Ethan Iverson: Interview with Bob Cranshaw.
• The Ethereal Genius of Craig Taborn. Adam Shatz. June 22, 2019.
• The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie by John Jeremiah Sullivan. New York Times Magazine, April 13 2014.
• Henry Threadgill by Frederick Tuten. Bomb Magazine, Jan 20 2022.

Check out The Black Music History Library

YouTube

• Charlie Haden @ IAJE 2019
• Percy Heath: Artists House Music Interview

A variety of articles, in no particular order:

These are all pieces that I’ve read in the last few years that relate in some way to playing music. Please note that a subscription may be required to access some of them. They’re from a relatively narrow selection of publications (stuff I subscribe to or read regularly.)

The Woman Who Made van Gogh. New York Times Magazine, April 14, 2021. (Packaging the artist’s work and biography together.)

A Jazz Drummer’s Fight to Keep His Own Heart Beating. New York Times, Aug 5, 2020. Milford Graves.

Henry Rollins: Blow Up Your Taste in Music. LA Weekly, March 12th, 2015.

Faking Cultural Literacy. Karl Taro Greenfeld. New York Times, May 24th, 2014.

The Scourge of Relatability. Rebecca Mead. The New Yorker, August 1, 2014.

The Paradox of Art as Work. A.O. Scott. New York Times, May 9, 2014.

Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Life in Piano Lessons by Jeremy Denk. The New Yorker, April 8, 2013.

Like This or Die: The Decline of Criticism in the Age of the Algorithm by Christian Lorentzen. Harper’s April 2019

Arts Critics Emerging, We Dare Hope! Robert Harris. The WholeNote, March 29, 2019.

Meh!-lennials: On Generational Analysis. N+1. Issue 22: Conviction. Spring 2015.

Jazz Wouldn’t Be the Same Without Them. But Few Applauded These Hidden Figures. Giovanni Russonello. New York Times, Dec 26, 2018.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time at 20 – melancholy masterpiece changed games forever. Keza MacDonald. The Guardian, Dec 11, 2018. (I’ve often thought that the tone of your art is informed by the tone of the art you most identify with early in life…)

Adam Benjamin: Some Thoughts on Listening. International Society of Jazz Arrangers & Composers.

The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age. Alex Ross. The New Yorker, May 13, 2017.

In Praise of Blue Notes: What Makes Music Sad? Ben Ratliff. New York Times, Jan 15, 2016.

On The Politics of Staying in Canada. David Balzer. Canadian Art, September 15, 2016.

Sports Should Be Childs Play. David Epstein. New York Times, June 10th, 2014. (I think about this article often in terms of how it relates to the pitfalls of too much specialization in the arts)