Researching the essence of the blues for his master’s degree, tenor saxophonist Efraïm Trujillo made some spectacular discoveries: ‘facts’ that had been assumed and passed on as truths by musicologists for decades turned out to be untenable. For example, the oft-mentioned ‘blue note’ is not an essential characteristic of the blues as has always been […]
Gershwin
Louis Armstrong paved the way
Fifty years ago, the American trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971), founder of improvised jazz, died. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926 – 1991) said about his predecessor: “You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played.” The general public knows Armstrong for songs like ‘What A Wonderful World’ and ‘When […]