In Their Own Words

Larry Kart's collected writings about jazz, Jazz In Search of Itself (Yale University Press) was published November 16. Discussing nearly seventy major jazz figures and many of the music's key stylistic developments, Kart sees jazz as a unique perpetual narrative--one in which musicians, their audiences, and the evolving music itself are intimately intertwined. The book discusses the supposed return to tradition that the music of Wynton Marsalis has come to exemplify, and includes detailed accounts of the careers of Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, and Lennie Tristano, and essays that explores jazz's relationship to American popular song and the jazz musician's role as actual and would-be social rebel.