Mervyn Cooke - The Cambridge Companion to Jazz

The vibrant world of jazz may be viewed from many perspectives, from social and cultural history to music analysis, from economics to ethnography. It is challenging and exciting territory. This volume of nineteen specially commissioned essays provides informed and accessible guidance to the challenge, offering the reader a range of expert views on the character, history and uses of jazz. The book starts by considering what kind of identity jazz has acquired and how, and goes on to discuss the crucial practices that define jazz and to examine some specific moments of historical change and some important issues for jazz study. Finally, it looks at a set of perspectives that illustrate different takes on jazz ways in which jazz has been valued and represented.

Mervyn Cooke is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Jazz, The Chronicle of Jazz , and Britten and the Far East ; co-author of Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd ; editor of The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (1999) and The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (forthcoming) and is currently writing a history of film music for Cambridge University Press. He is also a composer and pianist.

David Horn was Director of the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool from 1988 to 2002. He was a founding editor of the journal Popular Music (Cambridge University Press) and is author of two bibliographies of American music. He is currently joint managing editor of The Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World.

For a list of titles published in the series, please see .

For a list of titles published in the series, please see .

For a list of titles published in the series, please see .

The Cambridge Companion to Jazz

Edited by

Mervyn Cooke

Professor of Music, University of Nottingham

David Horn

Director, Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool