West Coast Jazz Essentials

West Coast Jazz Essentials

While the jazz scenes in Los Angeles and San Francisco were often overlooked compared to their East Coast and Midwest counterparts during the '40s and '50s, the West Coast has long produced a kaleidoscope of fantastic pioneering music. West Coast jazz often refers to the lighter sounds of cool jazz, which thrived in L.A. during the '50s, but the city was also an early base for beboppers like Charlie Parker and Howard McGhee, and it was where Ornette Coleman first formulated his paradigm-shifting free jazz in the late '50s. Big-band leaders Stan Kenton and Shorty Rogers forged a complex sound that moved away from the dance floor, while small-group leaders like Chico Hamilton and Jimmy Giuffre experimented with classical influences. Up in the Bay Area, pianist Dave Brubeck pioneered his metrically complex sound, eventually topping the charts with Time Out in 1959. The region continues to be a jazz hotbed, proven by the epic spirituality of Kamasi Washington or the hip-hop-drenched sounds of Terrace Martin.

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