The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music by Ben Ratliff

From the Publisher

“The Jazz Ear will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing.”—Nat Hentoff, Jazz Times

Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece Kind of Blue. Musicians often avoid discussing their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.

In The Jazz Ear, acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff discusses with jazz greats the recordings that most influenced them and skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz—from horn blare to drum riff—is conceptualized. Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation and attitude that define their music.

Playful and keenly insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.

Publishers Weekly

Ratliff, the jazz critic for the New York Times, spent just over two years interviewing jazz greats for a recurring feature at the paper: rather than ask musicians like Pat Metheny or Dianne Reeves to name their favorite records, Ratliff sat with them as they listened to songs and picked out the qualities they found most artistically compelling. The approach brings some surprises, as his subjects pick everything from Ukrainian cantorial music to Ralph Vaughan Williams to the Fifth Dimension, but each chapter brings provocative insights and will have readers scurrying to track down various records. (Ratliff also provides a listening guide for each of his interviewees.) Though each chapter stands alone, connections are made from one interview to the next; Metheny and Joshua Redman, for example, both select songs from Sonny Rollins. The interview with Redman also hints at Ratliff's argument in his 2007 Coltrane: The Story of a Sound about jazz as a collaborative medium, while Branford Marsalis speaks candidly about young musicians' failure to understand the melodic legacy they've inherited, then plays a jazz-influenced piece by Stravinsky to make his point. Whether you're a seasoned listener or just discovering the form, Ratliff is a wonderful guide. (Nov. 11)

Library Journal

Admirers of jazz should be deeply thankful for Ratliff, New York Times jazz critic and author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound . Jazz is perhaps the most elusive art form to discuss and critique, and Ratliff's latest book fills a vacuum in the realm of understanding jazz. Originally published as a series in the New York Times , the 15 conversations presented here consist of Ratliff sitting down with such diverse and talented luminaries as Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, and Dianne Reeves. The treasure of these conversations is not just their fluid and intimate manner but their focus on the recordings that had the greatest influence on the artists and their musical paths. Ratliff's insight that one may understand musicians more by discussing the music that moves them rather than the music they have created results in a unique rendering of some of the major jazz artists of our time. An added bonus is the recommended-listening section, in which Ratliff shares his list of his subjects' seminal recordings. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

Kirkus Reviews

Critical profiles illuminate the artistry of a variety of jazz musicians through conversations about the music they love. In his introduction, New York Times jazz critic Ratliff (Coltrane, 2007, etc.) explains where he got the idea of profiling some of his favorite artists by listening to music with them. One precedent was the "blindfold test," which has been a staple of Down Beat magazine for more than 60 years. The crucial difference is that where that test asks musicians to comment on a recording without being told the identity of the artist, Ratliff asked the artists to choose the recordings they wanted to discuss. Their choices are often revelatory. The legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter limits himself to The Complete Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, while vocalist Dianne Reeves opts for country singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter as one of her selections. (She also made lunch for Ratliff and explained that her cooking method is the same as her approach to singing: "I work with my ear and try to make it feel right, or I just keep changing it until I like the way it tastes.") Ratliff's own ear, sharp critical chops and scene-setting interaction with his subjects make the artists come alive on the page and make the reader eager to hear the music, both that discussed and that of the artist discussing it. The range of artists profiled extends from giants of jazz, including Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman, to composer Maria Schneider to the new generation of jazz artistry embodied by saxophonist Joshua Redman (who pays tribute to Rollins as a seminal influence). "Listening with someone else is an intimate act," writes Ratliff, "because music reveals itself bydegrees." So do these musicians.

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