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Rating: 
Summary: an irrelevant book more akin to the ugly PCs of Rush Limbaug
Review: and perhaps with the same ears. to wit...
Mr Piazza thinks that avant garde music is primitive, not sophisticated. He needs his ears examined.Even more ugly is the PC he brings to his discourse. To Mr Piazza, to like fusion and avant garde is to be a racist.
Rating: 
Summary: Must Read
Review: If you want to know more about the state of jazz in the nineties, this book is a MUST READ!!! Incredible well-written and thoughtful.
Rating:
Summary: an irrelevant book more akin to the ugly PCs of Rush Limbaug
Review: The only reason this gets 2 instead of 1 star is the one chapter that provides a well-supported critique (for an essay) of Collier's Ellington biography. That is the only part of the whole book worth reading and it is the only part exempt from the critique to follow. The chapters are previously pubished essays that simply don't cohere and make up an aimless scheme of a book. The aim, purportedly, is to provide Piazza's conception of jazz's essence. The book is one big outline of a project for multiple books. Each chapter can be a basis for a stimulating book. I just think that Piazza doesn't feel like writing one so this is what you get. The essays meander and drag on either because they are too offhand in delivery; too uncharitable towards their targets of critique (with occasional, strategic, contrived, and, based on my impression, disingenuous, bows to diplomacy); and too disparate to achieve the goal Piazza sets out in the introduction. Also, I think I'm sick of the debate over Marsalis due to its shallowness and callousness. Regardless, this book is a reader's waste of time, energy, and money. I think Piazza is capable of writing a good book but he simply lacked the initiative to write one that is both well conceived and well executed
Rating: 
Summary: An outline for multiple books. Too sketchy for one.
Review: The only reason this gets 2 instead of 1 star is the one chapter that provides a well-supported critique (for an essay) of Collier's Ellington biography. That is the only part of the whole book worth reading and it is the only part exempt from the critique to follow. The chapters are previously pubished essays that simply don't cohere and make up an aimless scheme of a book. The aim, purportedly, is to provide Piazza's conception of jazz's essence. The book is one big outline of a project for multiple books. Each chapter can be a basis for a stimulating book. I just think that Piazza doesn't feel like writing one so this is what you get. The essays meander and drag on either because they are too offhand in delivery; too uncharitable towards their targets of critique (with occasional, strategic, contrived, and, based on my impression, disingenuous, bows to diplomacy); and too disparate to achieve the goal Piazza sets out in the introduction. Also, I think I'm sick of the debate over Marsalis due to its shallowness and callousness. Regardless, this book is a reader's waste of time, energy, and money. I think Piazza is capable of writing a good book but he simply lacked the initiative to write one that is both well conceived and well executed
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