Music and Performing Arts

This is a course open to anyone interested in learning more about jazz and understanding how the music developed. Participants do not have to be musicians or have any specific musical knowledge, although musicians are always be welcome too.

The course focuses on 10 key musicians who changed the face of jazz. It involves listening to their music, watching videos and discussing their often colourful lives. The aim is to explain what the musicians were aiming to achieve and how they were influenced by other musicians and the styles prevalent at the time in their genres.

As far as possible the musicians are in chronological order:

Louis Armstrong - from New Orleans to Swing - the first real jazz soloist

Duke Ellington - the man who developed the big band and made jazz an art form

Benny Goodman - the King of Swing

Ella Fitzgerald - the definitive jazz vocalist

Charlie Parker - the alto sax man who co-invented bebop

Dizzy Gillespie - the trumpeter who shared that role and also pioneered Latin jazz

Miles Davis - from bebop to cool jazz to fusion - a lifetime of constant evolution

Dave Brubeck - the jazz super-star pianist and master of obscure time signatures

John Coltrane - the tenor saxophonist who went far beyond bebop

Herbie Hancock - the keyboard man who embraced electronics and made jazz funky