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Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music, linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States, which features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
A big band is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
John Lenwood "Jackie" McLean was a North-American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and educator, and is one of the few musicians to be elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in the year of their death.
Jazz fusion is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.
Harold McNair was a Jamaican-born saxophonist and flautist.
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.
Arthur Blakey was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was briefly known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Shorter came to wide prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he went on to join Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and from there he co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He has recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader.
Henry "Hank" Mobley was an American hard bop and soul jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Stan Getz, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players like Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him "one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era."
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than four decades, Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note, Milestone, and Verve.
Richard Edwin Morrissey was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor sax, soprano sax and flute.
Nick Brignola was an American jazz baritone saxophonist.
Neo-bop refers to a style of jazz that gained popularity in the 1980s among musicians who found greater aesthetic affinity for acoustically-based, swinging, melodic forms of jazz than for free jazz and jazz fusion that had gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. It contains elements of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz. As both neo-bop and post-bop categories denote eclectic mixtures of styles from the bebop and post-bebop eras, the standards for separating the two categories are not clear. In the United States neo-bop is associated with Wynton Marsalis and "The Young Lions," although they have also been referred to as post-bop. Neo-bop was also embraced by established musicians who either ignored the avant-garde and fusion movements, or returned to music based on more traditional styles after experimenting with them. The return to more traditionally-based styles earned praise and also criticism. Miles Davis called it "warmed over turkey" and others deemed it to be too dependent on the past. The movement, however, received praise from Time magazine and others who welcomed the return of more accessible forms of jazz. There were also those who deemed it a valid evolution from hard bop.
Stephen 'Steve' Gregory is an English jazz saxophonist and composer. He plays tenor, alto, soprano and baritone saxophone as well as the flute.
The Airmen of Note is the premier jazz ensemble of the United States Air Force and part of the United States Air Force Band. Created in 1950 to carry on the tradition of Major Glenn Miller's Army Air Corps dance band, the "Note" is a touring big band that consists of 18 professional jazz musicians from across the United States.
James Robert Belden was an American saxophonist, arranger, composer, bandleader, and producer. As a composer he may be best known for his Grammy Award winning orchestral jazz recording, Black Dahlia (2001). As producer he is mostly associated with the remastering of seminal recordings by trumpeter Miles Davis for Columbia Records.
Walt Levinsky was an American big band and orchestral player, composer, arranger and bandleader. While many of his big band assignments were as lead alto sax player, his favorite instrument was the clarinet.
Bob Snyder was a musician known for playing tenor sax, alto sax, clarinet, and flute. He performed with The Airmen of Note, the Glenn Miller Air Force Dance Band, and Lionel Hampton. He also served as staff musician for Motown Records, Stax Records, and WJR radio. He made a very popular clarinet recording of the song "Amazing Grace" at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
While the French horn is primarily used in classical music pieces, in the mid-20th century it broke into the jazz world. While the instrument remains relatively rare, the role of the French horn in jazz has developed from its beginnings in the 1940s through to the 2010s. Note that the expression "horns" in jazz is often used colloquially to refer to all wind instruments used in jazz