As with pianist Bill Evans’ recordings, Ratliff’s book can be appreciated on many levels--by everyone from novice listeners to skilled musicians. He set up “listening” sessions with fifteen diverse musicians who were asked to select five or six pieces of music. The results of the sessions indicate how musicians hear, what they notice, how they measure excellence. And if the reader can listen along with at least some of the selections, there is a lot to be learned about the intricacies of jazz.

The diverse talents with whom Ratliff engages represent different generations, styles, and instruments--composer/bandleader Maria Schneider, saxophonist Sonny Rollins, pianist Hank Jones, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, guitarist Pat Metheny, vocalist Dianne Reeves, drummer Roy Haynes, and others. Some of the selections are surprising, coming as they do from pop and folk sources. Artists such as Count Basie and Miles Davis crop up but so do classical composers Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky and artists from Brazil, Cuba, and Argentina.

Getting inside the heads of these great musicians lends insight to the music. Ratliff includes enough biographical detail to enhance understanding of the musicians’ choices and at the end of the book he lists recommended CD’s by each interviewee with short commentary. This is good resource book to own, mark up, and mull over.

Ben Ratliff has been a jazz critic at The New York Times since 1996. He is the author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound and The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz.