What is jazz? Louis Armstrong purportedly said: If you have to ask, youll never know. Music scholar and distinguished professor Ted Buehrer conducts a captivating series of lectures designed to help musical enthusiasts become more astute, sophisticated jazz listeners. In these compelling lectures, Professor Buehrer introduces concepts common to nearly all forms of music before focusing on unique aspects of jazz appreciation from early jazz to Swing, Bebop, Fusion, and the contemporary jazz scene.

Drummer Max Roach once remarked that recordings are the textbooks of jazz. The two-CD compilation Jazz: The First 100 Years, included in this package, is considered by Professor Buehrer to be an invaluable supplement to his lectures. The detailed listening guides contained in the course guide booklet are designed to further assist ones understanding and appreciation of jazz.

Course Syllabus
Lecture 01 Listening to Jazz: Part I: Basic Parameters of Music and the Jazz Rhythm Section
Lecture 02 Listening to Jazz: Part II: The Sounds and Forms of Jazz
Lecture 03 Listening to Jazz: Part III: Appreciating Jazz Improvisation
Lecture 04 The Origins of Jazz
Lecture 05 New Orleans
Lecture 06 Chicago and the Transition to Early Swing
Lecture 07 The Swing Era
Lecture 08 Swing to Bebop
Lecture 09 Bebop: The Birth of Modern Jazz
Lecture 10 The 1950s and a Profusion of Styles
Lecture 11 Into the 1960s
Lecture 12 Jazz in the 1960s
Lecture 13 Jazz Fusion
Lecture 14 The Contemporary Jazz Scene