Category Reading…
To Rush Would Be A Crime: After Shirley Horn’s Riffs on Albert Murray
Last Tuesday I joined Greg Thomas, Clifford Thompson, and Robert O’Meally on a panel celebrating Albert Murray’s writing and scholarship at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem on the occasion of Murray’s 100th birthday. Given the depth of their personal and studied familiarities with Murray, I’ll admit to being both honored and a bit daunted by the […]
Book review…Tsitsi Ella Jaji, “Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity”
My review of Tsitsi Ella Jaji’s excellent new book was just published in Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute. I’ll post a pdf to my academia.edu page soon, but until then, here’s the complete text and citation. Mark Lomanno. 2016. “Book Review. Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity. By Tsitsi Elli Jaji.” […]
Book review…Oxford Series in Recorded Jazz
My review of the first five books of the Oxford Series of Recorded Jazz was just published in the journal Twentieth-Century Music. The complete text (with hyperlinks added) is below and available on my academia.edu site as published. Here’s the proper citation: Mark Lomanno. “Oxford Series in Recorded Jazz.” Twentieth-Century Music vol. 12, no. 2 (September 2015): 279-285. […]
Review…’The Amazing Bud Powell’ by Guthrie Ramsey
[This review was published in the journal Jazz Perspectives (vol. 8, no. 1). Download a copy from my academia.edu webpage. -ML] The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop. By Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-0520243910 (hardcover). 240 pp. $34.95. In The Amazing Bud Powell: Black […]
CFP: Special Issue on Improvisation and the Liberal Arts
Improvisation and the Liberal Arts Call for submissions Special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation Guest edited by Jason Robinson, Mark Lomanno, and Sandra Mathern Like improvisation, the liberal arts advance our understanding of how individuals and communities interact with and relate to one another and derive meaning from human […]
Brute Blows for Garner: Improvising Agency and Celebrating 20 Years of Change at the Vision Festival
Monday, July 6th, 2015, marked the six-day anniversary of my third move to New York City. By then I had had enough time to rest up after the busy move, stock my fridge from the neighborhood Fairway, and hit up a few of those “only in NYC” spots that I’d missed so much. I spent the 4th […]
Science and Soul: Emergent Themes & the Improvising Classroom
In 2007 I left the NYC jazz scene to attend a PhD program in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the reasons I chose the program was for its reputation as one of the strongest programs in the country for incorporating anthropology and the social sciences into music research. As someone interested […]
Jazz in the Hollywood Machine: ‘Whiplash’, Insider Anxiety, and Riffing Violence
So the other day I finally watched Whiplash, in part because of the attention the film garnered on the Oscars. And I didn’t hate it. I mean, as a jazz musician, educator, and an empathetic person, there’s a lot to dislike and revile about the plot and particularly about the lightning rod bandleader Terence Fletcher, the […]
Methodological Potentiality and the Untranslatable: Sounding Difference in the Translating Riff. A Response to Helga Zambrano
Thanks to my colleagues at Ethnomusicology Review for inviting me to submit a response to a recent article on the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillén and Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. My article is posted here, but I’m including the text below as well. In her article, “Reimagining the Poetic and Musical Translation of ‘Sensemayá,’” Helga Zambrano presents […]
A belated happy 1st birthday to TRoS & the best 2013 jazz albums I (haven’t yet) heard
Such is the life of full-time professor who blogs part-time: lesson plans, class prep, and grading always come before new posts (the numerous half-drafted entries notwithstanding). I have been so immersed in grant applications, freelance academic writing, but most especially my majors-level jazz theory & improv course that I even forgot to mark the one-year […]
The Rhythm of Study 