23Arts Summer Music Fest: Playing Changes

Author Nate Chinen, who has been writing about jazz for more than twenty years (a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times), joins 23Arts with saxophonist Patrick Bartley Jr. to chart the origins of jazz historicism and contemplate the rise of an institutional framework for the music. “Playing changes,” in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. Chinen’s Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of real changes—ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical—that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century.