Last year, we put together a playlist of jazz songs represented in a 1935 lecture series on jazz given by composer Baltasar Samper. It wasn’t just for the love of jazz. The playlist accompanies a new edition of Samper’s lectures prepared by Antoni Pizà and Francesc Vicens, forthcoming from Lleonard Muntaner. Jazz had only recently arrived in Europe, spreading quickly after the original Hot Club opened in France in 1931.

Música de jazz transcribes the full text of Samper’s lectures (in the original Catalan), from his own notes, with new essays by Pizà and Vicens.

From the cover:

“Samper is revealed in this text as an artist of tireless curiosity for culture in general and especially for technology and artistic and social innovations such as jazz or cinema.”

Música de jazz will be available to purchase later this month.

(The cover photo, taken by Charles Peterson, features Artie Shapiro, Joe Marsala, Oran “Hot Lips” Page, and Coleman Hawkins playing in NYC in 1939.)