An intimate exploration into the musical genius of fifteen living jazz legends, from the longtime New York Times jazz critic


Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece “Kind of Blue.” Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.


In The Jazz Ear, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. In the process, he skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz—from horn blare to drum riff—is created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music.


Playful and keenly insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.


Ben Ratliff has been a jazz critic at The New York Times since 1996. The author of Coltrane and The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.


Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece “Kind of Blue.” Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.


In The Jazz Ear, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. He coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz—from horn blare to drum riff—is created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music.  Playful and insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music. "In his introduction to The Jazz Ear, Ratliff explains what he learned by listening to musicians as they were listening to other players: 'What are the things they notice? What are their criteria for excellence? What makes them react involuntarily? The answers indicate what a musician values in music, which comes to connect what a musician believes music is for in the first place. And that is the big thing, the big question, from which all small questions descend.' That's why The Jazz Ear will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing . . . Clearly, jazz has also been at the center of the unbroken circle of Ben Ratliff's life all these years."—Nat Hentoff, Jazz Times


"There's a country music song, 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken?' of which I never tire, and it jumped to mind as I was reading an advance copy of Ben Ratliff's characteristically illuminating new book, The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music . . . You may have seen some of them in Ratliff's Listening With series in The New York Times. He not only has a deep, far-ranging knowledge of jazz, but like Count Basie comping his band, Ratliff leaves breathing and feeling space for the musician with whom he's talking . . . In his introduction to The Jazz Ear, Ratliff explains what he learned by listening to musicians as they were listening to other players: 'What are the things they notice? What are their criteria for excellence? What makes them react involuntarily? The answers indicate what a musician values in music, which comes to connect what a musician believes music is for in the first place. And that is the big thing, the big question, from which all small questions descend.' That's why The Jazz Ear will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing . . . Clearly, jazz has also been at the center of the unbroken circle of Ben Ratliff's life all these years—and we're all fortunate that The New York Times recognizes his value."—Nat Hentoff, Jazz Times    


"I've pored over Ratliff's reviews and previous books: his Times Essential Library: Jazz proves its title is no hyperbole, and his Coltrane: The Story of a Sound defies jazz-bio convention in favor of heady analyses. It's a rare trick to be writerly and accessible at once, but Ratliff pulls it off: He assumes intelligence of his reader but not knowledge, defining concepts and cross-pollinations and allowing his insights to snowball. He carries the stateliness of historic Times critics like Robert Palmer, but lets his own predilections—he knows a lot about avant-garde heavy metal for a jazz aficionado—and his generation seep through, casting him off into uncharted critical waters. Here's to the future—on record and in print."—Evan Haga, Jazz Times


"What's it like to listen to a Count Basie record sitting next to Hank Jones? Or to hear what Sonny Rollins has to say about Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young? The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music, the latest offering from the fine New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff, considers those and many other tantalizing questions—questions that often have surprising answers . . . Ratliff asked 15 jazz musicians—from elder titans like Sonny Rollins and Hank Jones to new generation stars like Maria Schneider and Joshua Redman—to pick four or five pieces of music to listen to with him. Their selections include many classic jazz recordings of course, but also an eclectic array of pieces of country, classical, pop and other musical genres. Ornette Coleman's first choice, for example, is a 1915 recording of Sabbath services in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue by cantor Josef Rosenblatt . . . The musicians' choices and their comments on the music are often revealing, and so are the author's insights about his subjects . . . The book's other subjects are Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny, Andrew Hill, Bebo Valdés, Dianne Reeves, Roy Haynes, Paul Motian, Branford Marsalis and Guillermo Klein. The Jazz Ear, which also includes a listening guide for the featured musicians, is highly recommended."—Jersey Jazz


"With his probing, empathetic questions and wide-ranging musical knowledge, Ben Ratliff elicits insightful, profound, and revealing remarks from some of the most important musicians of our time. These discussions are important for what these musicians have to say about their own artistic lives as well as for their enlightening re-evaluations of their musical heritage."—Richard Brody, author of Everything Is Cinema


"Ben Ratliff is the rare critic who can hold his own in conversation with musicians and incite them to reveal how they think and work. Whether it’s Wayne Shorter extolling Vaughan Will