July 21-27, 2005

artpicks

Gene's List

by Shaun Brady

Books

Already on the defensive with BRAC breathing down its neck, Willow Grove may not be the best place to go looking for a fight. But Beaver College piano prof Gene Rizzo drops into the local Barnes & Noble with that most divisive of tomes, the list book. Rizzo's slim volume, The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time (Hal Leonard, 222 pp., $19.95), is a fairly demure opening salvo, featuring brief bios on each entry and little in the way of explanation for the rankings. Yet the book offers plenty to spur debate, given that Rizzo's tastes fall well on the conservative side of even the Wynton Marsalis Official Jazz Standard. Thelonious Monk is placed way down at number 15 on a list that includes latter-day bop revivalists like Monty Alexander and Benny Green in its top ten. (Green's entry is largely spent marveling at his youth, despite the fact that, at 42, he's older than Coltrane was when he died. Don't look for relative toddler Jason Moran's name between these covers.) Sticking to the Ken Burns narrative, Rizzo's conception of jazz excludes most of the innovations of the past 50 years, ignoring free improv by relegating Cecil Taylor to the "Honorable Mention' appendix and not even granting Marilyn Crispell a spot on the "Top Ten Women' afterthought. Rizzo begrudgingly allows Keith Jarrett to sneak in at number 50, well below a host of semi-obscure post-Shearing easy listening types. As the author notes, "the quantification of talent is tricky business," but for those itching for battle I offer my own pet talking point: Where the hell is Andrew Hill?

Gene Rizzo appears Sat., July 23, 2 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 102 Park Ave., Willow Grove, 215-659-1001.