Swing U

Award-winning jazz biographer Stephanie Stein Crease guides you through a five-week exploration of the life and career of Gil Evans (1912-1988), whose innovative work as an arranger, composer and band leader helped transform the sound of modern jazz. His collaborations with Miles Davis resulted in three best-selling jazz albums of all time. An array of jazz stars including Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and David Sanborn performed on Evans’s own brilliant recordings.

Frank Sinatra was one of the most ground-breaking, beloved, and enduring singers in the history of the world. Walking comfortably between the worlds of Jazz and Pop, Sinatra revolutionized so much of how we think about popular singing, and along the way created some of the greatest vocal works of all time.

Cecil Taylor (1929-2018) was a hugely important figure in avant-garde jazz from the 1950s until his death. A pioneer of what came to be known as “free jazz,” his early work synthesized influences from Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver and classical music into a florid, romantic, and at times overpowering style that shocked as many listeners as it enraptured. Author Philip Freeman will take students through Taylor’s work in four connected lectures.

Louis Armstrong first met Panamanian-born pianist Luis Russell in New Orleans in the early 1920s. The two became fast friends, who soon found themselves on similar career paths. Armstrong began recording Russell compositions as early as 1926 and joined him for a series of recordings and live performances beginning in 1929. After years of making numerous seminal Decca recordings, Russell was replaced as Music Director, but remained Armstrong’s pianist until 1943, eventually leaving to start his own band. Though their musical partnership was over, Armstrong and Russell remained close friends, with Russell visiting Armstrong’s home in Corona, Queens and even writing songs for the trumpeter until the end of his life. This course will examine all stages of Armstrong and Russell’s friendship and musical partnership.

Join saxophonist, composer, bandleader, author, and educator Allen Lowe as he guides you through an extraordinary array and range of black music in America, including some of the earliest recordings we have. Through it, he will explore the questions of some of Jazz’s origins, examining the importance of Ragtime, jug band music, medicine show music, minstrelsy, and more to the development of Jazz, and tackle the complexities of race and music in America. In exploring the complex, fascinating, and wildly varied music of the 1800s, we can better understand Jazz’s origins in American popular music.

In 1956, CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow set up a visit for Louis Armstrong to visit the Gold Coast of Africa, soon to become the independent nation of Ghana. Murrow sent a camera crew and photographers to document Armstrong’s every move, which became the centerpiece of the documentary film Satchmo the Great. Armstrong was treated as a hero during this short stay and was invited by Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah to Ghana’s Independence Day celebration in 1957. By 1960, the United States State Department sent Armstrong as a “Jazz Ambassador” on a massive tour of nearly the entire continent that lasted several months. Rare recordings, video footage, and photographs survive from these historic trips and will be shared by the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s Director of Research Collections, Ricky Riccardi.