Description:
Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor revolutionized music from the end of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, expanding on jazz traditions with distinctly new concepts of composition, improvisation, instrumentation, and performance. Miles, Ornette, Cecil is the first book to connect these three icons of the avant-garde, examining why they are lionized by some critics and reviled by others, while influencing musicians across such divides as genre, geography, and racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Review Quotes:
"...an indespensable resource." --Andy Hamilton, The Wire
"I learned so much from Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz. It's really reporting, as well as listening. This is jazz from the inside - an essential book, not only for new listeners but for historians of jazz now, and in the future. We hear the musicians speak, informing the author - and us - thereby adding to how much more of the music we come to hear." --Nat Hentoff, writer, Jazz Times, Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal
"Howard Mandel assumes many roles here -- elucidating critic and devoted fan, knowledgeable listener and Boswellian acolyte, evangelist and champion of the avant garde -- all taken on with infectious enthusiasm." --George Kanzler, JazzTimes
"The most impressive aspect of the book is [Mandel's] writing: honest and evocative, flavorful and generous, enthusiastic and thought-provoking." --Art Lange, Jazz Notes