HOW TO LISTEN TO JAZZ

The author's career as a pianist and music critic positions him well to explain how to critically listen to a complex musical form like jazz. Narrator Peter Ganim's ear for sentence structure makes him an able interpreter of the author's ideas. Some listeners will notice that his phrasing palette is a bit limited or repetitive, or that his vocal pitch sounds like it's being forced into a lower-than-normal range. But these complaints will become nonissues for most listeners because it's the author's extraordinary grasp of musical composition and performance that dominates the listening experience. His discussions of how jazz players think about musical structure and what performance aspects separate the pros from the rest of us are exceptionally lucid and enlightening. T.W. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2018]