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Books in the Music in American Life series

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  • - Ether Music and Espionage
    by Albert Glinsky
    £20.99

    Written by an award-winning composer whose music has been performed in the US, Europe, and the Far East, this title combines the whimsical and the treacherous into a chronicle that takes in various things from the KGB to Macy's store windows, Alcatraz to the Beach Boys, Hollywood thrillers to the United Nations, Joseph Stalin to Shirley Temple.

  • by Carol A. Hess
    £23.99 - 102.99

  • by William C. Banfield
    £23.99 - 102.99

  • by Sarah Nelson
    £91.49

  • by Joseph Horowitz
    £29.49

    "Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that only artists in free societies can produce great art became a bedrock assumption of the Cold War. That this conviction defied centuries of historical evidence--to say nothing of achievements within the Soviet Union--failed to impact impregnable cultural Cold War doctrine. Horowitz shows how the efforts of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom were distorted by an anti-totalitarian "psychology of exile" traceable to its secretary general, the displaced Russian aristocrat/composer Nicolas Nabokov, and to Nabokov's hero Igor Stravinsky. In counterpoint, Horowitz investigates personal, social, and political factors that actually shape the creative act. He focuses on Stravinsky, who in Los Angeles experienced a "freedom not to matter," and Dmitri Shostakovich, who was both victim and beneficiary of Soviet cultural policies. He also takes a fresh look at cultural exchange and explores paradoxical similarities and differences framing the popularization of classical music in the Soviet Union and the United States. In closing, he assesses the Kennedy administration's arts advocacy initiatives and their pertinence to today's fraught American national identity. Challenging long-entrenched myths, this book newly explores the tangled relationship between the ideology of freedom and ideals of cultural achievement"--

  • by Howard Pollack
    £50.99

    "A pivotal twentieth-century composer, Samuel Barber earned a long list of honors and accolades that included two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and the public support of figures like Serge Koussevitzky and Marian Anderson. Barber's works have since became standard in concert repertoire and continue to flourish across high art and popular culture. Acclaimed biographer Howard Pollack (George Gershwin, Aaron Copland) offers a multifaceted account of Barber's life and music while placing the artist in his social and cultural milieu. Born into a musical extended family, Barber pursued his ambitions from childhood. Pollack follows Barber's path from his precocious youth and training through a career where, from the start, the composer consistently received prizes, fellowships, and other recognition. Stylistic analyses of works like Adagio for Strings, the Second Symphony, the opera Vanessa, and Piano Concerto No. 1 stand alongside revealing accounts of the music's commissioning, performance, reception, and legacy. Throughout, Pollack weaves in accounts of Barber's encounters with musical contemporaries like Leonard Bernstein and Dmitri Mitropoulos, performers from Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price to Vladimir Horowitz, patrons, admirers, and a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in and out of the arts. He also provides an eloquent portrait of the composer's decades-long relationship with, and break from, Gian Carlo Menotti. Informed by new interviews and immense archival research, Samuel Barber is the long-awaited critical and personal biography of a monumental figure in twentieth-century American music"--

  • by Steve Fishell
    £18.99

  • by Rose Marshack
    £16.49

    "As a member of Poster Children, Rose Marshack took part in entwined revolutions. Marshack and other women seized a much-elevated profile in music during the indie rock breakthrough while the advent of new digital technologies transformed the recording and marketing of music. Touring in a van, meeting your idols, juggling a programming job with music, keeping control and credibility, the perils of an independent record label (and the greater perils of a major)-Marshack chronicles the band's day-to-day life and punctuates her account with excerpts from her tour reports and hard-learned lessons on how to rock, program, and teach while female. She also details the ways Poster Children applied punk's DIY ethos to digital tech as a way to connect with fans via then-new media like pkids listservs, internet radio, and enhanced CDs. An inside look at a scene and a career, Play Like a Man is the evocative and humorous tale of one woman's life in the trenches and online"--

  • by Steve Fishell
    £91.49

  •  
    £22.49

    This second volume of Music in Black American Life offers research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and Black Music Research Journal, and in two book series published by the University of Illinois Press: Music in American Life, and African American Music in Global Perspective. In this collection, a group of predominately Black scholars explores a variety of topics with works that pioneered new methodologies and modes of inquiry for hearing and studying Black music. These extracts and articles examine the World War II jazz scene; look at female artists like gospel star Shirley Caesar and jazz musician-arranger Melba Liston; illuminate the South Bronx milieu that folded many forms of black expressive culture into rap; and explain Hamilton's massive success as part of the "tanning" of American culture that began when Black music entered the mainstream. Part sourcebook and part survey of historic music scholarship, Music in Black American Life, 1945–2020 collects groundbreaking work that redefines our view of Black music and its place in American music history.Contributors: Nelson George, Wayne Everett Goins, Claudrena N. Harold, Eileen M. Hayes, Loren Kajikawa, Robin D. G. Kelley, Tammy L. Kernodle, Cheryl L. Keyes, Gwendolyn Pough, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Mark Tucker, and Sherrie Tucker

  •  
    £22.49

    This first volume of Music in Black American Life collects research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and the Black Music Research Journal, and in the University of Illinois Press's acclaimed book series Music in American Life. In these selections, experts from a cross-section of disciplines engage with fundamental issues in ways that changed our perceptions of Black music. The topics includes the culturally and musically complex Black music-making of colonial America; string bands and other lesser-known genres practiced by Black artists; the jubilee industry and its audiences; and innovators in jazz, blues, and Black gospel. Eclectic and essential, Music in Black American Life, 1600–1945 offers specialists and students alike a gateway to the history and impact of Black music in the United States.Contributors: R. Reid Badger, Rae Linda Brown, Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Sandra Jean Graham, Jeffrey Magee, Robert M. Marovich, Harriet Ottenheimer, Eileen Southern, Katrina Dyonne Thompson, Stephen Wade, and Charles Wolfe

  • by Christopher M. Reali
    £18.99 - 91.49

  • by Bob Black
    £16.49 - 91.49

  • by Ben Johnston
    £23.99 - 37.49

    The collected writings of composer Ben Johnston

  • by Shana Goldin-Perschbacher
    £20.99 - 91.49

  • - The Washington, DC, Hardcore Scene, 1978-1983
    by Shayna Maskell
    £20.99 - 91.49

  • - Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America
    by Jake Johnson
    £91.49

  • - Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More!
    by Helena Simonett
    £25.99 - 102.99

    The accordion in the new world

  • by Robert B Winans
    £25.99 - 102.99

  • - Barney Childs in Conversation
    by Barney Childs
    £50.99

  • - Southwestern Ohio's Musical Legacy
    by Fred Bartenstein
    £23.99 - 91.49

  • - Unpublished Lectures
    by Elliott Carter
    £46.49

  • - How James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir Created a Gospel Classic
    by Robert Marovich
    £16.49

  • - A Polyrhythmic Life
    by Alejandro L. Madrid
    £85.49

  • by Kevin Mungons & Douglas Yeo
    £102.99

  • - Making a Scene in the American Heartland
    by Jonathan Wright & Dawson Barrett
    £18.99 - 91.49

  • - Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer
    by Wayne Enstice & Dottie Dodgion
    £18.99 - 91.49

  • by Larry Starr
    £16.49

  • - Essays after a Sonata
    by Kyle Gann
    £23.99

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