JEREMY YUDKIN

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Get the latest book by Jeremy Yudkin!

THE LENOX SCHOOL OF JAZZ: A VITAL CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC AND RACE RELATIONS.

By Jeremy Yudkin.

Paperback.  160 pp.   30 b/w illustrations.  $18.

ORDER AT YudkinJaf@aol.com.  $22 including shipping by first-class US mail.

Published by the Lenox Library Association on the occasion of the Lenox Library’s 150^th Anniversary.

ISBN 0-9789089-1-0.

$22 including shipping by first-class US mail.

"This book is necessary!  It's way, way overdue."  - Randy Weston.

The Lenox School of Jazz ran only from 1957 to 1960 and only in the summers, but it boasted the greatest names in jazz on its faculty and some of today's jazz stars among its students.  This is the first book ever published on this hidden chapter in the history of jazz.  Filled with historical photographs, this book is lively and tells a fascinating story.

"The opportunity to form the School of Jazz was an incredible present from God."  - John Lewis.

 Among the teachers at the Lenox School of Jazz were Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, John Lewis and the other members of the Modern Jazz  Quartet, Dave Brubeck, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, and Booker Little; Oscar Peterson, Jim Hall, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Chuck Israels, Bob Brookmeyer, J. J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, and Max Roach.  Also on the faculty were George Russell,  Bill Russo, and Herb Pomeroy, as well as Gunther Schuller and Marshall Stearns.

 The most prominent among the students who studied at the Lenox School of Jazz were Ornette Coleman, Ran Blake, Don Cherry, David Baker, and Jamey Aebersold.  Also studying at the School were George Wein, Steve Kuhn, Arif Mardin, and Larry Ridley.

This book tells the story of the Lenox School of Jazz in an engaging and informative manner, focusing on its special contributions to the history of jazz and the story of how the School was formed and why it went out of business after only four years.

"The School of Jazz gave jazz an air of respectability that was unknown at that time."  - Sonny Rollins.

Like most stories in jazz, this one has an important racial element, and the book stresses the significant cultural breakthroughs achieved in the small-town, rural atmosphere of the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, the home of the famous classical music festival of Tanglewood.  African-American teachers were passing on the intellectual elements of jazz music to mostly white students, and black performers were thrust into a position of eminence and emulation by young white players.

"The Lenox School of Jazz was in incredible, unique, pioneering effort.  It was 20 years ahead of its time."  - Gunther Schuller.

This book makes a vital contribution to the history of American race relations as well as to the history of jazz.

"There was a real atmosphere of scholarship and dignity," says Sonny Rollins of the Lenox School of Jazz.  "There's no place quite like it now."

ORDER AT YudkinJaf@aol.com.  $22 including shipping by first-class US mail.

[All profits from the sale of this book benefit the Lenox Library Association.]

Jeremy Yudkin is a professor in the Department of Musicology and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies at Boston University.  He is also Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford University.  His fields of expertise include medieval music, Beethoven, and jazz.  He serves on the advisory panel for the new Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz and is a consultant on jazz to the Oxford English Dictionary. He is the founder and teacher of the Summer Music Seminars about music at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.

ORDER AT YudkinJaf@aol.com. $22 including shipping by first-class US mail.

[All profits from the sale of this book benefit the Lenox Library Association.]

Also by Jeremy Yudkin:

UNDERSTANDING MUSIC, 2007.

DISCOVER MUSIC, 2004.

MUSIC IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE, 1989.