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Jazz began in the early 1900s in the southern states of the US somewhere in New Orleans, but has since evolved into several different styles - easy to listen to and more complex jazz music. Alot of jazz is improved, which means that each musician bring his ideas to a piece.
Saxophone is one of the most popular jazz instruments. Famous Saxophone players include Sonny Rollins, Clarence Clemons, Steve Coleman and Courtney Pine.
Other Jazz instruments are:
American music born in the early part of the century from African rhythms and slave chants. It has spread from its African-American roots to a worldwide audience. Jazz developed from early ensemble improvisation to big band swing to the soloing brilliance of bop to thorny atonality and back to the current rearticulation of melody and harmony.
Jazz is like a musical language. When the musician play it like the way they are talking to each other in "jazz language". It is based on a tune or a theme. The tune itself maybe made up or based on a group of popular tunes.
A jazz group is made up to 2 parts: the rhythm section and the front line. The front line are the ones that play solos during a jazz piece which may include saxophone, clarient, trombone, trumpet and the right-hand side of the piano. The rhythm section is the part of the group that keeps a steady pulse to the music. It plays harmonies for the front line instruments which includes bass guitar, double bass, drums and the left hand side of a piano.
Can Jazz ever return to the fold of popular music? If the unfairly maligned Jamie Cullum has made inroads into the Pop world audience, other musicians have been seeking a hip-hop route.
The American saxophonist Steve Coleman has refined a high-minded and often tortuous fusion of bop and street rhythms, crowned with Afrocentric consciousness-raising. Courtney Pine has taken a crowd-pleasing route with his live shows. We can draw a veil over Branford Marsalis’s ill-fated efforts to mix bop with rap in his band Buckshot LeFonque - definitive proof, his disapproving brother, Wynton, might say, that blending jazz with hip hop is to turn gold into a base metal.
The quest goes on and now all eyes are on Soweto Kinch, 26, the Birmingham saxophonist who reached the shortlist of last year’s Mercury Prize. A single-minded player and composer, Kinch was one of the circle of young musicians who sought to reinvent the concert format on the recent multimedia tour, Future Sounds of Jazz. Soweto Kinch is a self-taught player. At the age if 13, he caught the jazz bug after an encounter with Wynton Marsalis.
Other Jazz Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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Rising Norah Jones
Norah Jones might be called an accidental pop star. Only a few years ago, the singer-songwriter-pianist was just another aspiring jazz artist.
 But a little album called "Come Away With Me" changed all that. Released in 2002, the jazz-tinged, folk-inflected disc became a surprise hit, garnering huge sales, an armful of Grammys and catapulting Jones into the pop stratosphere. The album´s breakout single, "Don´t Know Why," was nothing short of ubiquitous.
When she was a 14-year-old freshman in Grapevine, Texas, Jones wore "nerdy" glasses and had short hair -- far from her current sultry image -- but she had already displayed considerable talent as a pianist. Her mother, Lawton-born nurse Sue Jones, introduced her daughter to the opera as well as the canon of great jazz performers, and put Jones through five years of piano lessons.
Jones is also the daughter of legendary sitar master Ravi Shankar. While genetics undoubtedly played a role in Jones´ artistic growth, Shankar was not a presence in her life; Jones has only developed a relationship with him in the past few years. She mainly credits her mother for setting her on the right musical path.
"She listened to good music: Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin," said Jones, who performed a duet with Charles on his posthumously released CD, "Genius Loves Company".
Branford Marsalis (1961)
Branford Marsalis was born into one of the great jazz families: his father is pianist Ellis and his brother is trumpet player Wynton Marsalis. He has a new album, Eternal, on Rounder Records.
Features Joey Calderazzo, Eric Revis, and Jeff "Tain" Watts. Branford Marsalis knew that his quartet had achieved a new level of eloquence when two listeners told him on separate occasions that a ballad by the band had made them cry. "I had rarely heard that said about jazz before," says the acclaimed saxophonist, "and the comment made me realize that the quartet and I were achieving emotional development as musicians." The revelation led to Eternal, the September 2004 collection of original and classic ballads that realizes Branford´s goal of "aiming for what Billie Holiday could do, which was to get to the emotions of each song."
The 43-year-old Grammy award-winning musician has continued to exercise and expand his skills as a performer, a composer and, at the head of his Marsalis Music label, a producer for both his own projects and those of the jazz world’s most promising new artists. Marsalis is also dedicated to changing the future of jazz in the classroom. As both visiting scholar and part-time faculty member, he has shared his knowledge at such universities as Michigan State, San Francisco State and Stanford. Beyond these traditional avenues, Branford is bringing jazz to a wider audience and providing opportunities for college-aged musicians to interact with established players before live audiences through “Marsalis Jams,” an educational initiative of his new label that held its first sessions at Smith College and the University of New Hampshire to enthusiastic response from both student musicians and their teachers.
Jazzing in Catalina
 With 30 artists playing over three 10-show weekends, there is a lot to choose from at the Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival. Concert highlighting the music of beloved late saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. "It doesn´t always have to do with who is playing because a lot of people, especially those coming a large distance, tend to book far in advance, before we´ve even announced the lineup," says Art Good, promoter of the annual jazz festival, which is celebrating its 18th year starting this weekend. Besides the Catalina Festival, Good also hosts a syndicated smooth jazz radio show, smoothjazz.com Internet radio Web site, and promotes other festivals and jazz-themed trips and cruises.
"But then again, it is also very much all about personal taste," Good says. "I try really hard to balance the weekends." That balance includes such jazz heavyweights as Fourplay and Gerald Albright, the smooth styling of Everette Harp, the saxophone grooves of David Sanborn and the vocal talents of Lalah Hathaway.
Here is a look at a few of the artists who are taking part in this year´s festival:
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Harvey Mason - Besides Mason, the group includes pianist Bob James, guitarist Larry Carlton and bassist Nathan East. All four have been busy studio musicians in the past, and Mason says that with all that experience, it has made them adaptable to just about any situation, though he admits that the group´s sound changed a bit when original guitarist Lee Ritenour left the band and was replaced by Carlton.
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Kim Waters - Saxophonist Waters has been playing smooth jazz even before there was such a term. Waters uses a smaller group live, four to five players (depending on whether he is using a guitarist or not), than most players on the smooth jazz circuit.
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Lalah Hathaway - She will be toasting the debut of her new CD, " Outrun the Sky," the first under her own name in 10 years. It was released only a few months after Rhino Records came out with a new in-concert collection from her father, the late legendary singer / songwriter Donny Hathaway.
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Incendio - The Latin-flavored world music group, which revolves around the sometimes delicate, oftentimes fiery interplay of guitarists Jim Stubblefield and J.P. Durand, has been on the road constantly this year. They have been touring behind their fourth CD together, this one self-titled and released on the British label New World.
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Clarinet