Kevin Whitehead (Author)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kevin Whitehead (* 1952 ) is an American jazz author and journalist.

Life

Whitehead graduated from Oswego State University in New York, then earned a Masters in American Literature and Culture from Syracuse University . He began writing for the short-lived Oswego County Times in New York State in the early 1970s . In 1979 he wrote his first record review, Joni Mitchell's Mingus (1979).

Since the late 1970s, Whitehead has been writing regularly about jazz, including a. since 1987 for the NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross , also for a number of newspapers and magazines such as JazzTimes , Chicago Sun-Times , Chicago Reader , Down Beat , Village Voice and the Volkskrant . He lived in the Netherlands in the late 1990s.

Whitehead wrote New Dutch Swing (1998) and Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010) and (with photographer Ton Mijs) Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (2011). He is also editor of Bimhuis 25: Stories of Twenty-five years at the Bimhuis . His various works have appeared in anthologies such as Jazz: The First Century, The Gramophone Jazz Good CD Guide, Mixtery: a Festschrift for Anthony Braxton , Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2006 and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra , the Astro Black and other Solar Myths .

From 1987 Whitehead also wrote a number of liner notes for albums and the like. a. by Ab Baars , Sylvie Courvoisier , Charles Gayle , François Houle , Phillip Johnston , Sheila Jordan , Henry Threadgill , Myra Melford ( Alive in the House of Saints , 1993), Michael Moore , Simon Nabatov / Han Bennink , Pharoah Sanders , Daniel Schnyder , Aki Takase as well as the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble , Clusone 3 or the ICP Orchestra. In 2012 he was nominated for the JJA Award of the Jazz Journalists Association for the liner notes of the Sam Rivers album Trilogy (Mosaic Select) . He has also taught jazz literature in the form of musician's autobiographies and jazz stories and films at Towson University, the University of Kansas, and Goucher College.

As an improvisation musician, Whitehead played in the free jazz formation Starship Beer (album Nut Music As Free As the Squirrels ) and performed in the New York Knitting Factory , in the Chicago venues Empty Bottle and HotHouse as well as in Zaal 100 in Amsterdam . He lives near Baltimore.

Publications

  • New Dutch Swing: An in-depth examination of Amsterdam's vital and distinctive jazz scene . Billboard Books, New York 1998, ISBN 0-8230-8334-9 .
  • Kevin Whitehead, Herman te Loo, John Corbett : Bimhuis 25. Stories of twenty five years at the Bimhuis. Bimhuis, Amsterdam 1999, OCLC 67738497 .
  • Why Jazz ?: A Concise Guide. Oxford University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-973118-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ jjajazzawards.org
personal data
SURNAME Whitehead, Kevin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1952