Jazz Roots Sound Check

In this episode, some of today’s top jazz artists will help break down and clarify what’s happening when a jazz band plays and explore the function and role of each individual member and how they work together to make a cohesive, creative and collectively felt musical statement. Learn about what it means to solo and/or improvise, the role of collaboration and the role the audience plays in a jazz performance, and how all these are central to making the art form.

This episode will introduce viewers to some of today’s most dynamic, visionary jazz artists. In their own words, a variety of artists with different origins around the world will share personal stories, how they got started, how they were intro­duced to jazz, what inspired them to want to play professionally, who their teachers, role models and mentors have been, how they’ve negotiated various challenges and obstacles and what they love about life as a professional musician.

This episode introduces the history and lineage of the tenor saxophone in jazz from the early jazz era of the 1920s through the present. Learn more about how conceptual and technical approaches to the horn have evolved throughout the history of the art form and how the instrument’s most creative masters — including Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Sam Rivers and Branford Marsalis — have explored and expanded the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument.

This episode introduces audiences and young musicians alike to the history and lineage of jazz trumpet from the early jazz era of the 1920s through to the ever-evolving genre it has become in present day.  Learn about how conceptual and technical approaches to the instrument have evolved and how the most creative masters — including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis —have explored and expanded the technical and expressive capabilities of the art form throughout history.

This episode introduces the history and lineage of jazz piano from the 1920s early jazz era through the present, exploring how conceptual and technical approaches to the instrument have evolved. Learn how the most creative masters of the piano — such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Jason Moran and Herbie Hancock — have explored and expanded the technical and expressive capabilities of the piano throughout the various eras of the genre, including big band, bebop and hard bop.

This episode introduces audiences and young musicians alike to the history and lineage of jazz drumming from the 1920s early jazz era through the present, examining how conceptual and technical approaches to the instrument have evolved throughout the history of the art form and the extent to which the technical and expressive capabilities of the drums have been explored and expanded by some of the instrument’s most creative masters, including Sonny Greer, Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Lenny White and Lewis Nash.