STEVEN ISOARDI
From 1989 to 1999, Steven L. Isoardi, Ph.D. was the researcher/interviewer for the “Central Avenue Sounds” project of the UCLA Center for Oral History Research, and from 2000 to 2003 for their “Beyond Central” project, compiling forty-seven life-history interviews with Los Angeles jazz musicians. He authored and edited Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 1998), which won the 1999 Oral History Association Book Award, as well as editing Jazz Generations (Continuum, 2000) and Songs of the Unsung (Duke University Press, 2001), the autobiographies of L.A. jazz greats Buddy Collette and Horace Tapscott. For Rhino Records, he produced the 4-CD set Central Avenue Sounds, and edited/authored the accompanying 100-page booklet. In 2006, his history of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and community arts movement of South Los Angeles – The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles– was published by the University of California Press.
Dr. Isoardi has also contributed articles to various publications, including the revised edition of the Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Current Research in Jazz, Grove Dictionary of American Music, and Il giornale della musica. He has served as a consultant and/or commentator on documentary films on tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely (in production), alto saxophonist Frank Morgan (The Sound of Redemption, 2016), Bebop and Jelly Roll Morton (both by Don McGlynn), The Gathering (2020), on the feature film Flock of Four (Bristol Pictures, 2018), as well as the documentary film on the African American community arts scene – Leimert Park: the story of a village in south central Los Angeles– produced and directed by his partner, Jeannette Lindsay, 2008. Among his current projects, he is working with Dark Tree Records in Paris, France, to issue music from the Horace Tapscott Archive, as well as that of other Los Angeles musicians.
Horace Tapscott Website – a work in progress: https//horacetapscott.free-jazz.net