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Christian Wolff
Par Michael Hicks, Christian Asplund. 2010
In this first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund trace the…
influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. Trained as a classicist rather than a musician, Wolff has never quite had both feet in the rarefied world of contemporary composition. Yet he's considered a "composer's composer," with a mind ensconced equally in ancient Greek tragedy and experimental music and an eccentric and impulsive compositional approach that eludes a fixed stylistic fingerprint. Hicks and Asplund cover Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story
Par Roni Stoneman, Ellen Wright. 2007
The tragicomic life story of one of America's best-known country entertainers, told with warmth and honesty This book recounts the…
fascinating life of Roni Stoneman, the youngest daughter of the pioneering country music family, and a girl who, in spite of poverty and abusive husbands, eventually became "The First Lady of Banjo," a fixture on the Nashville scene, and, as Hee Haw's Ironing Board Lady, a comedienne beloved by millions of Americans nationwide. Drawn from over seventy-five hours of recorded interviews, Pressing On reveals that Roni is also a master storyteller. In her own words and with characteristic spunk and candor, she describes her "pooristic" ("way beyond 'poverty-stricken'") Appalachian childhood, and how she learned from her brother Scott to play the challenging and innovative three-finger banjo picking style developed by Earl Scruggs. She also warmly recounts Hee Haw-era adventures with Minnie Pearl, Roy Clark, and Buck Owens; her encounters as a musician with country greats including Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, June Carter, and Patsy Cline; as well as her personal struggles with shiftless and violent husbands, her relationships with her children, and her musical life after Hee Haw. A volume in the series Music in American LifeRobert Ashley
Par Kyle Gann. 2012
This book explores the life and works of the pioneering opera composer Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers…
of the post-Cage generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s when he, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that toured extensively in the 1960s.During his tenure as its director, the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed "performance novels." These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical structures. Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, Kyle Gann chronicles the life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central. Gann examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera librettos.Carla Bley
Par Amy C. Beal. 2009
This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz…
composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. With fastidious attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, Amy C. Beal tenders a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Best known for her jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill," her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Bley has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz from highly accessible, tradition-based contexts to commercially unviable, avant-garde works. Beal details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. Beal also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. Showing her to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz, Beal's straightforward discussion of Bley's life and career will stimulate deeper examinations of her work.Lou Harrison
Par Leta E. Miller, Fredric Lieberman. 2006
Music's inclusivity--its potential to unite cultures, disciplines, and individuals--defined the life and career of Lou Harrison (1917-2003). Beyond studying with…
leading composers of the avant-garde such as Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, conducting Charles Ives's Pulitzer Prize-winning Third Symphony, and staging high-profile percussion concerts with John Cage, Harrison has achieved fame for his distinctive blending of cultures--from the Chinese opera, Indonesian gamelan, and the music of Native Americans to modernist dissonant counterpoint. Miller and Lieberman also pull readers into Harrison's rich world of cross-fertilization through an exploration of his outspoken stance on pacifism, gay rights, ecology, and respect for minorities--all of which directly impacted his musical works. Though Harrison was sometimes accused by contemporaries of "cultural appropriation," Miller and Lieberman's brisk study makes it clear why he is now lauded as an imaginative pioneer for his integration of Asian and Western musics, as well as for his work in the development of the percussion ensemble, his use of found and invented instruments, and his explorations of alternative tuning systems. Harrison's compositions are examined in detail through reference to an accompanying CD of representative recordings."MAXIMUM CLARITY" AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MUSIC
Par Ben Gilmore, Ben Johnston. 2006
Described by New York Times critic John Rockwell as "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer,"…
Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from jazz to Southern hymns--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This volume reveals he is also a truly literate composer, who writes and speaks about music with eloquence and charm. "Maximum Clarity" and Other Writings on Music spans forty years and brings together forty-one of Johnston's most important writings, including many rare and several previously unpublished selections. They include position papers, theoretical treatises, program notes, historical reflections, lectures, excerpts from interviews, and letters, and they cover a broad spectrum of concerns--from the technical exegesis of microtonality to the personal and the broadly humanistic. The volume concludes with a discography of all commercially available recordings of Johnston's music.Who Is Bruce Springsteen?
Par Stephanie Sabol. 2016
Not only was Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA," he has risen to become a twenty-time Grammy winner and American…
icon.Bruce Springsteen grew up in a blue-collar New Jersey town, where his parents struggled to make ends meet. Bruce didn't fit in at school but found solace in rock and roll and playing guitar. After the breakup of a local band he'd joined, Springsteen went out on his own and people began to take notice. He signed with Columbia Records and under pressure to come up with a hit, wrote "Born in the USA," which tells the story of America during the years of the Vietnam War. A multi-millionaire and twenty-time Grammy winner, the Boss has remained a working class hero whose music deals with the political and social changes in our country.Zayn: A New Direction
Par Sarah Oliver. 2015
Zayn Malik shocked the world in 2015 when he left One Direction. When the biggest boy band on the planet…
formed in 2010, few could have expected the furor this would cause! Follow Zayn from his childhood to his stardom in One Direction-a group that put out a string of number-one hits-and see what lies ahead for him as a solo artist. In early 2016, Zayn's first single as a solo artist, "Pillowtalk," debuted at number-one on the charts!Sarah Oliver is the author of Around the World with One Direction and One Direction A-Z.One Day It'll All Make Sense
Par Adam Bradley, Common. 2011
From the hip hop icon, Hollywood star, and "a true artist and writer of deep talent" (James McBride, author of…
The Color of Water)--a candid, New York Times bestselling memoir ranging from his childhood on Chicago's South side and his emergence as one of rap's biggest names.Common has earned a reputation in the hip-hop world as a conscious artist by embracing themes of love and struggle in his songs. His journey toward understanding is rooted in his relationship with a remarkable woman, his mother. Common holds nothing back in this gripping memoir, both provocative and funny. He tells what it was like for a boy with big dreams growing up on the South Side of Chicago. He reveals how he almost quit rapping after his first album sold only two thousand copies. He recounts his rise to stardom and talks about the challenges of balancing fame, love, and family. Through it all, Common emerges as a man in full. Rapper. Actor. Activist. But also father, son, and friend. His story offers a living example of how, no matter what you've gone through, one day it'll all make sense.Prince: Singer-Songwriter, Musician, and Record Producer
Par David Robson. 2010
In a music industry where one-hit wonders come and go, Prince, son of a black father and a white mother,…
is a long-running exception. With his monster guitar work, suggestive songs, and a fashion sense that is all his own, this biracial achiever has spent over thirty years as a pop culture icon. His albums Purple Rain, Sign "O" the Times, and Musicology set new standards for pop music showmanship. His work in filmmaking and multimedia proved him to be one of the more progressive artists in the business, all the while earning him millions of dollars and legions of avid fans. Yet Prince's prodigious talents have sometimes fallen victim to his excesses and obsessions. Explicit lyrics and squabbles with record executives are but two of the more controversial chapters in a long and rich career. Through it all, Prince has forged an extraordinary musical legacy and brought fans of all races together to enjoy his unique combination of rock, funk, and R&B. This new biography offers an in-depth look at a living legend and explores his genius through interviews as well as his timeless music.Sean "Diddy" Combs (Superstars of Hip-Hop)
Par Z. B. Hill. 2013
Few people are as successful in business and music as Sean Combs. Today, Combs (also known as Diddy) makes music…
fans love and still has time to succeed in business. Combs has even won an Academy Award for producing a movie. It seems there's nothing he can't do! Sean "Diddy" Combs is the story of how one boy from the projects grew up to be one of the most powerful men in hip-hop. Read about how Combs became a star in the 1990s. Learn about how important Combs has been to the history of hip-hop and how he's stayed successful over the years by trying new things.The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
Par Rj Smith. 2012
The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights…
activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made.The One delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject-almost medieval-poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era.At the heart of The One is Brown's musical genius. He had crucial influence as an artist during at least three decades; he inspires pity, awe, and revulsion. As Smith traces the legend's reinvention of funk, soul, R&B, and pop, he gives this history a melody all its own.The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones
Par Rich Kienzle. 2016
In the vein of the classic Johnny Cash: The Life, this groundbreaking work explores the wild life and extraordinary musical…
career of "the definitive country singer of the last half century" (New York Times), who influenced, among others, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, John Fogerty, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks.In a masterful biography laden with new revelations, veteran country music journalist/historian Rich Kienzle offers a definitive, full-bodied portrait of legendary country singer George Jones and the music that remains his legacy. Kienzle meticulously sifted through archival material, government records, recollections by colleagues and admirers, interviewing many involved in Jones's life and career. The result: an evocative portrait of this enormously gifted, tragically tormented icon called "the Keith Richards of country."Kienzle chronicles Jones's impoverished East Texas childhood as the youngest son of a deeply religious mother and alcoholic, often-abusive father. He examines his three troubled marriages including his union with superstar Tammy Wynette and looks unsparingly at Jones's demons. Alcohol and later cocaine nearly killed him until fourth wife Nancy helped him learn to love himself. Kienzle also details Jones's remarkable musical journey from singing in violent Texas honky tonks to Grand Ole Opry star, hitmaker and master vocalist whose raw, emotionally powerful delivery remains the Gold Standard for country singers.The George Jones of this heartfelt biography lived hard before finding contentment until he died at eighty-one--a story filled with whiskey, women and drugs but always the saving grace of music.Illustrated with eight pages of photos.Angel Standing By
Par P. J. Mcfarland. 1999
"There really aren't mistakes. Be very adventurous and brave in your life. Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous--there's really nothing…
to lose. There's no wrong you can't make right again, so be kind to yourself. . . There are no bounds." --JewelAngel Standing By offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the struggles and successes of Jewel Kilcher, who in a few short years went from living in her van near the beach in San Diego to becoming a multiplatinum recording artist and nationally best selling author. With personal photographs and exclusive interview material, this fascinating account is not to be missed by any fan moved by the music of Jewel.Shania Twain
Par Michael Mccall. 1999
Shania Twain is not your average pop star. She has mega-hits like "You're Still the One", multi-platinum albums (Come on…
Over)...but she's much more than merely the sum of her success. Growing up in rural Canada amidst great poverty. Shania spent summers working for her father in a reforestation crew, learning how to handle an axe and wield a chainsaw as well as any man. At age 21, both her parents were killed in a magic car crash, and she was left to raise three younger siblings alone. The discipline and diligence she was forced to learn was then turned to her music career, with astounding results. From the cover of Rolling Stone to Country America, this cross-over wonder has charmed millions of music lovers around the world, and her fan base continues to grow Here, finally, is her whole story, complete with never-before-seen photos and insider information. This is the book Shania fans have been waiting for.Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul
Par James Mcbride. 2016
National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the "real" James Brown after receiving a tip that promises…
to uncover the man behind the myth. His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown's legacy. Kill 'Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown's rough-and-tumble life, through McBride's lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride's travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown's never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown's family and thousands of others were displaced by America's largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Brown's sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Brown's most influential nonmusical creation, his "adopted son," the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown's first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown's estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown's estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown's body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter's yard in South Carolina. James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBride's own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill 'Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Brown's great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today. Praise for Kill 'Em and Leave"Thoughtful and probing . . . with great warmth, insight and frequent wit. The results are partisan and enthusiastic, and they helped this listener think about the work in a new way. . . . James McBride's welcome elucidation . . . is clear, deeply felt and unmistakable."--Rick Moody, The New York Times Book Review "[McBride] turns out to also be the biographer of James Brown we've all been waiting for. . . . McBride's true subject is race and poverty in a country that doesn't want to hear about it, unless compelled by a voice that demands to be heard."--Boris Kachka, New York "The definitive look at one of the greatest, most important entertainers, The Godfather, Da Number One Soul Brother, Mr. Please, Please Himself--JAMES BROWN."--Spike Lee "James McBride on James Brown is the matchup we've been waiting for, a musician who came up hard in Brooklyn with JB hooks lodged in his brain, a monster ear for the truth, and the chops to write it."--Gerri Hirshey, author of Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music "An unconventional and fascinating portrait of Soul Brother No. 1 and the significance of his rise and fall in American culture."--Kirkus ReviewsFrom the Hardcover edition.Really the Blues
Par Bernard Wolfe, Ben Ratliff, Mezz Mezzrow. 1946
Mezz Mezzrow was a Jewish boy from the slums of Chicago who learned to play the clarinet in reform school…
and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Fats Waller. Really the Blues, the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe, is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, and a picture of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, "the odyssey of an individualist. . . the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle were everyone was too busy making money."The Musical Work of Nadia Boulanger
Par Jeanice Brooks. 2013
Nadia Boulanger - composer, critic, impresario and the most famous composition teacher of the twentieth century UO was also a…
performer of international repute. Her concerts and recordings with her vocal ensemble introduced audiences on both sides of the Atlantic to unfamiliar historical works and new compositions. This book considers how gender shaped the possibilities that marked Boulanger's performing career, tracing her meteoric rise as a conductor in the 1930s to origins in the classroom and the salon. Brooks investigates Boulanger's promotion of structurally motivated performance styles, showing how her ideas on performance of historical repertory and new music relate to her teaching of music analysis and music history. The book explores the way in which Boulanger's musical practice relied upon her understanding of the historically transcendent masterwork, in which musical form and meaning are ideally joined, and show how her ideas relate to broader currents in French aesthetics and culture. "Born To Run
Par Dave Marsh. 1996
Who Was Pete Seeger? (Who was?)
Par Stephen Marchesi, Noel Maccarry. 2017
Pete Seeger was an American folk musician and social activist whose outspoken songs about freedom and justice got him blacklisted…
from radio and TV for years.Pete Seeger was still singing and playing the banjo for tens of thousands of fans even when he was at the age of ninety-four. Born in New York City on May 3, 1919, Pete came from a family of musicians. Despite writing and singing folk songs that all of America knows, not many kids know his name. Why? Because his ties to the Communist Party got him banned from radio and television for many years! Well-known for his civil rights activism with Martin Luther King Jr., Seeger also spearheaded efforts that cleaned up the Hudson River and made it beautiful again. His best-known songs include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer" and "Turn, Turn, Turn."In this easy-to-read biography from the New York Times best-selling series, Pete Seeger is revealed as not just a performer but as a champion for a better world and the eighty illustrations contained in the book help bring his story to life.