Jazz Icons

One of the most influential recording artists of all time, Simone possessed a "magnificent intensity" that "turns everything—even the most simple, mundane phrase or lyric—into a radiant, poetic message."

Galás has been described as “capable of the most unnerving vocal terror”, with her three and a half octave vocal range. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of AIDS, mental illness, despair, injustice, condemnation, and loss of dignity. She has worked with many avant-garde composers.

O’Day was admired for her rhythm and dynamics, and for shattering the traditional image of the “girl singer”. Refusing to pander to any gender stereotype, O’Day presented herself as a “hip” jazz musician, in a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown.

Also known as the “First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz”, and “Lady Ella”, Fitzgerald had a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), and was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability.

One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his incisive, heavily chorded attack, his highly-amplified bursts of wild feedback, and for his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar.

In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe, “[i]n the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington.” Duke Ellington called his music “American Music” rather than jazz.

Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday “changed the art of American pop vocals forever.” She died with $.70 in the the bank.

“So What” has only two chords: D-7 and E♭-7. Davis said that the inspiration for the album came from a lamellophone player he heard in a Ballet Africaine performance, and a childhood memory of walking down a dark country road in Arkansas, hearing gospel music.

Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas, including rapidly passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. He remains probably the most influential saxophone player of all time.

His compositions are full of dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are consistent with Monk’s unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations.

Gillespie was such a complex player that contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead; it was not until Jon Faddis’s emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy’s style was successfully recreated. He was described as the “Sound of Surprise”.

“People are so obsessed with the surface that they can’t see the connections, but they are there. When I sit down and make music, a lot of things come together. Sometimes it falls a little bit towards the jazz, sometimes it falls toward rock, sometimes it doesn’t fall anywhere, it’s just floating in limbo.”