Jazz guitarist and composer Jim Hall talks about his life in music with Larry Appelbaum, senior music reference specialist in the Library's Music Division.
Speaker Biography: Jim [James Stanley] Hall was born in Buffalo, Dec. 4, 1930. After studying composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he studied classical guitar and began working with Chico Hamilton's Quintet and the Jimmy Giuffre Three. A gifted, thoughtful improviser, Hall is best known for his collaborations with Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans and Ron Carter, as well as highly regarded recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, Art Farmer, Paul Desmond and his own trios. Hall is a serious composer of formal music, the author of several books on jazz guitar and the subject of a 1998 documentary film, "Jim Hall-A Life in Progress." In 2004, he received the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award.