<P><B>&#8220;<I>The Jazz Ear</I> will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing.&#8221;&#8212;Nat Hentoff, <I>Jazz Times</I></B></P><P>Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece <I>Kind of Blue</I>. Musicians often avoid discussing their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.</P><P>In <I>The Jazz Ear</I>, acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff discusses with jazz greats the recordings that most influenced them and skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz&#8212;from horn blare to drum riff&#8212;is conceptualized. Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation and attitude that define their music.</P><P>Playful and keenly insightful, <I>The Jazz Ear</I> is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.</P>