One of the finest of all jazz writers, Whitney Balliett's ability to bring his subjects to life and somehow transform the indescribable magic of jazz into words has long put him at the top of his field. Balliett graduated from Cornell University in 1951, had a short stint at the New Yorker, wrote for the Saturday Review during 1953-57 and since then has written regularly for the New Yorker. Along with Nat Hentoff, he was the musical adviser for the remarkable "Sound of Jazz" television special in 1957. Although his own tastes in jazz leans towards swing era veterans and mainstream, Balliett has also sympathetically and definitively portrayed most of the more modern giants. His articles have been collected in revised form in many books including The Sound of Surprise (a term that he coined to describe jazz at its best), Dinosaurs in the Morning, Such Sweet Thunder, Ecstasy at the Onion, New York Notes, Improvising, Night Creature, Goodbyes and Other Messages, American Singers, American Musicians and American Musicians II, among others. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi