Gary Giddins

American director and writer
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroAmerican director and writer
PlacesUnited States of America
isFilm director Writer Non-fiction writer Biographer Critic Music critic Journalist
Work fieldFilm, TV, Stage & Radio Journalism Literature Science Music
Gender
Male
Birth21 March 1948, Brooklyn, USA
Age76 years
Star signAries
Education
Grinnell College
Awards
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 
American Book Awards1987
The details

Biography

Gary Giddins (born March 21, 1948) is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for The Village Voice from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986 Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a jazz repertory with musicians such as Tony Bennett.

He is the Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Selected works

Books

  • Riding on a Blue Note (1981)
  • Rhythm-a-ning (1985)
  • Celebrating Bird (1987)
  • Satchmo (1988)
  • Faces in the Crowd (1992)
  • Visions of Jazz: The First Century (1998)
  • Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years, 1903-1940 (2001)
  • Weather Bird (2004)
  • Natural Selection (2006)
  • Jazz (2009)
  • Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema (2010)
  • Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star - The War Years, 1940-1946 (2018)

Films

  • 1987 Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker
  • 1990 Masters of American Music: Satchmo - Louis Armstrong aka Satchmo
  • 2000 Contributor of interviews throughout the 10 part PBS series, Jazz by Ken Burns.
  • 2014 Bing Crosby Rediscovered – American Masters
The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 16 Apr 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.