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Lecture

Alyn Shipton
The History of Jazz, Part 4: Some Key Movements in Later 20th Century Jazz

Wednesday 7.05.2025

How to watch

This lecture starts on 7 May at 5:00pm (UK).

Summary

Following the birth of modern jazz in the 1940s and ’50s, this lecture looks at the subsequent improvisational innovations of John Coltrane (1926-67), the compositional originality of Charles Mingus (1922-79), and the restless explorations of Miles Davis (1926-91), leading to the birth of jazz fusion. There is also a sideways glance at free jazz through the work of Ornette Coleman (1930-2015) and Cecil Taylor (1929-2018).

Alyn Shipton

An image of Alyn Shipton

Alyn Shipton has worked in music for many years as a writer, editor, and player. He was the publisher of the New Grove Dictionary series in the 1980s working on musical instruments, American music, jazz, and opera, in addition to commissioning the Grove handbooks in musicology. His own books include numerous biographies, mainly of jazz musicians, including Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Ian Carr, and Cab Calloway, as well as the songwriter Jimmy McHugh. His other books include the award-winning life of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, and a study of the relationship between visual arts and jazz. He has edited six volumes of oral history, including the memoirs of pianist George Shearing and of the New Orleans musician Danny Barker. His New History of Jazz (2001, revised 2007) won awards on both sides of the Atlantic and is now well established as one of the standard works on the subject. Since 1989 he has presented and produced programmes on music and history for BBC Radio. As a double bassist, he has played with many leading British jazz groups, and he currently co-leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band.