Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce.

by Alfred Appel Jr. Knopf, September 2002 $35.00, ISBN 0-394-53393-3

Peppered throughout, with full-color reproductions of art and photography, the 295 pages of Jazz Modernism are visually and tactilely exciting--from the extreme close up of Louise Armstrong on the cover to the smooth glossy paper stock the text is printed on. But this is not imply a book of art, it is instead an ambitious treatise on relationship of art and jazz, more specifically, a call for the inclusion of jazz composers, musicians and the music of the class jazz era (1920 to 1950) to the modernist tradition in the arts.

At first glance, Louis Armstrong, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Fats Waller make strange bedfellows. But upon closer look, maybe not. Appel, a professor of English at Northwestern University, draws clear parallels of influence and style between the literature, art and music of the time, comparing, for example, the syncopated language of Joyce's prose in Ulysses to the rhythm of bebop and back again. The text is heavily anecdotal and easily likened to late-night conversations with an hopped-up, overzealous jazz enthusiast who also harbors a deep love for post modernism jargon.

Ultimately, Jazz Modernism is a four-chapters-long letter from a thorny and attentive lover. Clearly a fan, Appel packs this handsome book with the sort of information that instantly elevates you to an infinitely cooler stratosphere at cocktail parties. For example, Appel includes which recordings could be found in the jazz record collections of Mondrian, Picasso, Brancusi and Matisse; he also relates a tale of a meeting between Igor Stravinsky and Charlie Parker at Birdland in 1951. Could a jazz enthusiast asks for anything more?

--Zakia M. Carter