80+ Post-1960s Jazz Songs to Study for Modern Jazz Composition

A few weeks ago, a young musician asked me a simple question: “What tunes should I study if I want to learn how to compose modern jazz?”

My first answer was: “First of all, you should pretend to play modern jazz — that’s always a good starting point.”

Joking aside, I answered instinctively, mentioning a few pieces that immediately came to mind: some Wayne Shorter, some Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, some Chick Corea, some Herbie Hancock, some Keith Jarrett, some Michael Brecker, some Brian Blade, some Milton Nascimento, some Weather Report, and a few other composers whose music has deeply shaped the way I think about writing.

What started as a personal answer to a young musician quickly became a broader reflection on the pieces that have influenced me the most from a compositional point of view. Of course, this is not a complete list, and it could never be one. There are many more pieces, records, composers, songwriters, bands, and musical worlds that have shaped my writing, my ear, my sense of form, and the way I think about melody, harmony, rhythm, orchestration, and emotional direction.

Many of those influences go far beyond jazz itself. I am a huge fan of artists who are not usually associated with jazz, such as The Beatles, Paul Simon, David Crosby, James Taylor, Michael Jackson, David Foster, and many others. At the same time, I have been deeply shaped by classical composers such as Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, and Stravinsky, as well as by rock musicians and bands like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and so many others.

This List Does Not Replace the Foundations

Before going further, I want to make one thing very clear: this list does not replace the foundations.

I take for granted that anyone seriously interested in modern jazz composition should spend a lot of time with records such as Speak No Evil by Wayne Shorter, Maiden Voyage and Speak Like a Child by Herbie Hancock, Ready for Freddie by Freddie Hubbard, Nefertiti by Miles Davis, and many other essential albums from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

That world is not optional, because it contains so much of the grammar that later composers expanded, transformed, questioned, and reimagined. Without that foundation, it is very easy to mistake modernity for surface complexity, and to believe that a tune becomes “modern” simply because it has slash chords, odd meters, non-functional harmony, or a few unexpected modulations.

The post-1960s jazz songs in this list are not meant to replace the classic jazz repertoire. They are meant to open another door: a way to study how modern jazz composers developed melody, harmony, rhythm, orchestration, form, groove, and improvisational space after the language of bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, and the Great American Songbook had already been deeply absorbed.

This list is only a starting point, but I think it is a useful one.

It includes some of the post-1960s jazz compositions (with a fews from the late ’60s) that have influenced me the most and that I would suggest studying if you want to understand modern jazz writing more deeply. The complete downloadable guide includes a larger selection, but even that should not be seen as definitive. No list could ever fully represent the amount of music that can shape a composer.