In his follow-up to 1998’s award-winning Visions of Jazz: The First Century Gary Giddins has collected 140 essays written over a 14-year period. His wide-ranging interests and expertise offer a thorough glimpse of jazz on the cusp of the century. The subject matter covers legendary artists such as Louis Armstrong and the MJQ, contemporary musicians such as D. D. Jackson and Ravi Coltrane, outstanding recordings, musical styles from Dixieland to the avant garde, and a series of articles on the annual JVC Festival. He concludes with a thought provoking essay entitled “How Come Jazz Isn’t Dead?”

Gary Giddins has covered jazz for the Village Voice for 30 years. He has produced documentary films, contributed commentary to Ken Burns’ Jazz, and won a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, two Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Awards, five ASCAP-Deems Taylor awards, a Peabody, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.He is the author of Riding on a Blue Note: Jazz and American Pop, Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation, Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker, Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, and Faces in the Crowd: Players and Writers.