I'm a writer, editor, teacher (27 years at New York University), NPR arts reporter, blogger, media consultant, guerrilla videographer and president of the Jazz Journalists Association, also on the board of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. I've consulted on books by musicians, including Sam Newsome's Life Lessons from the Horn; Ellen Johnson's Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan, and Oliver Lake's as yet unpublished memoir.
My own books include Future Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1999), Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008) and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (as general editor; published by Billboard Books/Flame Tree Publishing 2005). I've also contributed to The Art of Conduction (by Lawrence Douglas “Butch Morris, Karma Publishing, 2017), the Oxford Companion to Jazz (OUP, 2005), anthologies published by DownBeat/Hal Leonard, and several academic journals. Over the past 40 years I've written innumererable liner notes, columns, magazine and newspaper articles, record reviews, news reports, radio scripts, a play and a novel.
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I'm a writer, editor, teacher (27 years at New York University), NPR arts reporter, blogger, media consultant, guerrilla videographer and president of the Jazz Journalists Association, also on the board of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. I've consulted on books by musicians, including Sam Newsome's Life Lessons from the Horn; Ellen Johnson's Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan, and Oliver Lake's as yet unpublished memoir.
My own books include Future Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1999), Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008) and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (as general editor; published by Billboard Books/Flame Tree Publishing 2005). I've also contributed to The Art of Conduction (by Lawrence Douglas “Butch Morris, Karma Publishing, 2017), the Oxford Companion to Jazz (OUP, 2005), anthologies published by DownBeat/Hal Leonard, and several academic journals. Over the past 40 years I've written innumererable liner notes, columns, magazine and newspaper articles, record reviews, news reports, radio scripts, a play and a novel.
I've often spoken about issues of arts journalism, jazz, improvisation and American culture - at Berklee College of Music, Leeds School of Music, University of Toronto-Guelph, the Pop Conference, Jazz the University of Heidelberg, Sienna Jazz Institute Dartmouth College, the University of Jordan (Amman) and for Young Chicago Authors, among other cites. I've participated in if not moderated panel discussions at the Jazz Connect Conference, the New School Jazz program, the International Association of Jazz Educators conferences, the Portland PDX Jazz Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, Sienna Jazz Institute, and diverse other events, besides producing the Jazz Journalists Association's long-running Talking Jazz webinar series (on Youtube). I toured Armenia and Kiev, sponsored by the US Department of State, speaking on jazz to students from elementary grades through conservatory, and the general public.
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