1959: THE YEAR THAT CHANGED JAZZ

These events feature a combination of lecture and performance. Each week will highlight several albums and an included companion course book will provide context to the music.

COURSE DESCRIPTION 

1959 was a pivotal and transformative year for jazz, beginning with the now infamous Esquire Magazine article entitled “The Golden Age of Jazz,” giving us the iconic photo and documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. This bold proclamation would become a self-fulfilling prophecy that year, with America on the cusp of great social change and political upheaval, and musicians starting to break away from bebop, exploring new, experimental forms that represented an awakening in jazz.

Among the seminal recordings released in 1959, we will explore Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, the album that gave birth to modal jazz; the complexity and melodic genius of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps; Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, which did away with conventional harmony and form altogether; Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, which pushed the boundaries of meter and rhythm in jazz, and the energized and politically charged compositions of Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um, among many others.

While the 1960s would become one of the most revolutionary times in modern culture, many transformative changes would take root in 1959, a year that not only produced groundbreaking and trendsetting albums, but launched a pivotal moment that took the jazz branch of the musical tree and split it into many different directions. Join guitarist and music educator Terrence Brewer as we explore the music and the musicians that revolutionized jazz in 1959.