Overview: Dharma Moon Press is pleased to announce the publication of Jazz in the New Millennium: Live and Well, Revised Edition, by Rick Mitchell.

The 8 ˝ by 11 book contains interviews with 84 prominent jazz musicians active in the 21st Century, including such living masters as Charles Lloyd and Pat Metheny, prime time players Jason Moran and Christian McBride and rising stars Esperanza Spalding and Cecile McLorin Salvant.

As Mitchell says in the introduction, “I am shaping the narrative with the questions I ask, and my analysis of the music is never too far from the surface. But as an interviewer, my primary objective is to let the musicians speak for themselves.”

The first edition was published in 2014 by Dharma Moon Press and DaCamera of Houston. At a hefty 275 pages, Jazz in the New Millennium: Live and Well, Revised Edition includes 40 new chapters, and dozens of new photos.

The book is easy to read and full of useful information for those who want to educate themselves about jazz and/or stay current with the latest trends and new artists. The book offers the most comprehensive overview of what is happening in jazz today that exists in print.

Verdict: For those not fully aware, in Jazz in the New Millennium: Live and Well, Revised Edition, author Rick Mitchell argues that the greatest music of the first 25 years of the 21st Century holds its own with any previous era of jazz, as the most talented musicians from around the world continue to find their way to this music and bring their unique cultural perspectives to the tradition of Duke, Monk and Trane.

“Will young listeners 50 years from now discover the recordings of Cecile McLorin Salvant and Joshua Redman and approach them with the same reverence we now have for Billie Holiday and Lester Young?” he asks. “I don’t know,” he answers, “but I am here to make the case that they should.”

OK, so let us be clear about this first fact, and that is this revised edition, now complete with an amazing 40 new chapters, is a big, and noted hefty book, and yet one that once started is so very hard to close until chapters have been completed.

In what is a most highly insightful, dutifully informative, and remarkably diligent with regard not just its content, but the author’s very own heartfelt observations, the prose sets about uncovering the movers and shakers active in jazz, then and now.

Often described as having developed into many different styles, including traditional jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, and jazz-rock, this American music genre can also be broken down into such sub-sections as: Improvisational, Rhythmic, Swinging, Polyphonic, Blue notes and complex chords, Call and response vocals, and Pitch and timbre distortions, et al.

Jazz originated in African-American communities in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was influenced by many musical styles, including blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythms, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music.

Being a music journalist myself, I cover any and all musical art forms, but one that has itself always been accessible to me at times when things needed to slow down around me, when I needed to bring a little calm to my life, was jazz. Sure, I understand there is more to jazz than just the slow, low slung blues-jazz aspects (and no, I am not referring to smooth jazz, moreover cool jazz), but for me I have always personally enjoyed those albums over the faster paced entries within the genre (such as Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, et al).

I also understand, and have witnessed during many a conversation on the subject, that many people think of jazz as an art form of music from the last century and beyond, a genre that has seen its day, played a good game, and has since been long retired, but that is far from the truth.

For many years now, decades even, jazz has seen a resurgence in popularity, which is in no small part due to jazz records being sampled so widely in hip-hop production. Yet in just the last decade, musicians from all across the jazz spectrum have tried to deconstruct some of the outdated tropes of jazz standards; instead opting to create a more open-ended sonic palette that incorporates the musical innovations of the later half of the 20th century.

What Rick does here is make sure that jazz is still very much a living form of music within the general consciousness, showcase that it has been growing all along via a steady undercurrent that has never let its foot off the pedal, and continues to be as well loved today as it ever was back then.

Furthermore, the book actually makes you want to go out and find the music and hear it yourself for all the artists mentioned, which if you do that, please make sure to hunt down the vinyl records of the titles, as CD/digital is just not gonna cut it through your speakers for such an intimate listening experience, trust me.

About the Author - Rick Mitchell is a radio programmer, journalist and teacher living in Portland, Oregon. He has been writing about all forms of music for national and regional newspapers and magazines for 50 years. From 1989 to 1999, he was the jazz and popular music critic for The Houston Chronicle.

His previous books include Garth Brooks: One of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House (Simon and Schuster, 1993) and Whiskey River (Take My Mind): The True Story of Texas Honky Tonk (University of Texas Press, 2007). Since 2015, he has produced a weekly one-hour radio program, also called Jazz in the New Millennium, syndicated nationally by the African American Public Radio Consortium.

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