Is God Is is a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge. Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award, Aleshea Harris collides the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, and Afropunk in this darkly funny and unapologetic world premiere.

In More Than Meets the Eye, Georgina Kleege explores the ways that ideas about visual art and blindness are linked in many facets of the culture. While it may seem paradoxical to link blindness to visual art, western theories about art have always been haunted by the specter of blindness. The ideal art viewer is typically represented as possessing perfect vision, an encyclopedic knowledge of art, and a photographic memory of images, all which allow for an unmediated wordless communion with the work of art. This ideal viewer is defined in polar opposition to a blind person, presumed to be oblivious to the power of art, and without the cognitive capacity to draw on analogous experience. Kleege begins her study with four chapters about traditional representations of blindness, arguing that traditional theories of blindness fail to take into account the presence of other senses, or the ability of blind people to draw analogies from non-visual experience to develop concepts about visual phenomena. She then shifts focus from the tactile to the verbal, beginning with Denis Diderot's remarkable range of techniques to describe art works for readers who were not present to view them for themselves, and how his criticism offers a powerful warrant for bringing the specter of blindness out of the shadows and into the foreground of visual experience. Through both personal experience and scholarly treatment, Kleege dismantles the traditional denigration of blindness, contesting the notion that viewing art involves sight alone and challenging traditional understandings of blindness through close reading of scientific case studies and literary depictions. More Than Meets the Eye introduces blind and visually impaired artists whose work has shattered stereotypes and opened up new aesthetic possibilities for everyone.

The common admission that 'everything I know about religion I learned from the movies' is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the 1915 silent movie Regeneration and ending with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema. Each of the contributors to Catholics in the Movies has chosen one movie from over one hundred years of moviemaking to discuss what happens when an organized religion - not just Bible stories or spiritual themes - enter into a film. Arranged chronologically, Catholics in the Movies sets the films within a wider historical narrative while providing close readings of critical themes and images that go beyond the conventional. Several chapters focus on the many directors and screenwriters who were raised in Catholic families, and who explore this faith in complex and compelling ways. Authors look at film classics like Going My Way and The Song of Bernadette to reveal how Catholic characters simultaneously reflect outsider status as well as the 'American way-of-life.' They consider the violence of The Godfather and the physicality of The Exorcist not simply as antonyms for religion but as tightly linked to Catholic sensibilities. Lesser known films like Seven Cities of Gold and Santitos are examined for their connection to historical movements like anti-communism and Mexican immigration. Tracing the story of American Catholic history through popular films, Catholics in the Movies should be a valuable resource for anyone interested in American Catholicism and religion and film.

Carl Schachter is the world's leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis. His articles and books have been broadly influential, and are seen by many as models of musical insight and lucid prose. Yet, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom. At the Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School of Music, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at special pedagogical events around the world, he has taught generations of musical performers, composers, historians, and theorists over the course of his long career. In Fall 2012, Schachter taught a doctoral seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center in which he talked about the music and the musical issues that have concerned him most deeply; the course was in essence a summation of his extensive and renowned teaching. In The Art of Tonal Analysis, music theorist Joseph Straus presents edited transcripts of those lectures. Accompanied by abundant music examples, including analytical examples transcribed from the classroom blackboard, Straus's own visualizations of material that Schachter presented aurally at the piano, and Schachter's own extended Schenkerian graphs and sketches, this book offers a vivid account of Schachter's masterful pedagogy and his deep insight into the central works of the tonal canon. In making the lectures of one of the world's most extraordinary musicians and musical thinkers available to a wide audience, The Art of Tonal Analysis is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of music.

The media play a key role in post-apartheid South Africa and is often positioned at the centre of debates around politics, identity and culture. Media, such as radio, are often said to also play a role in deepening democracy, while simultaneously holding the power to frame political events, shape public discourse and impact citizens' perceptions of reality. Broadcasting Democracy: Radio and Identity in South Africa provides an exciting look into the diverse world of South African radio, exploring how various radio formats and stations play a role in constructing post-apartheid identities. At the centre of the book is the argument that various types of radio stations represent autonomous systems of cultural activity, and are 'consumed' as such by listeners. In this sense, it argues that South African radio is 'broadcasting democracy'. Broadcasting Democracy will be of interest to media scholars and radio listeners alike.

As in the earlier editions, the emphasis is on the practical fundamentals of orchestration. The Sixth Edition has been expanded and revised to reflect new developments in instruments and orchestral practice, and a new listening compact disc has been added that contains selected examples of orchestration.

This is the first comprehensive and illustrated study of the most important form of theatre in the entire Roman Empire - pantomime, the ancient equivalent of ballet dancing. Performed for more than five centuries in hundreds of theatres from Portugal in the West to the Euphrates, from Gaul to North Africa, solo male dancing stars - the forerunners of Nijinsky, Nureyev, and Baryshnikov - stunned audiences with their erotic costumes, subtlety of gesture, and dazzling athleticism. In sixteen specially commissioned and complementary studies, the leading world specialists explore all aspects of the ancient pantomime dancer's performance skills, popularity, and social impact, while paying special attention to the texts that formed the basis of this distinctive art form.

A handy and engaging chronicle, this book is the most detailed production history to date of the original Broadway version of Cabaret, showing how the show evolved from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories, into John van Druten's stage play, a British film adaptation, and then the Broadway musical, conceived and directed by Harold Prince as an early concept musical. With nearly 40 illustrations, full cast credits, and a bibliography, The Making of Cabaret will appeal to musical theatre aficionados, theatre specialists, and students and performers of musical theatre.

Theater music directors must draw on a remarkably broad range of musical skills. Not only do they conduct during rehearsals and performances, but they must also be adept arrangers, choral directors, vocal coaches, and accompanists. Like a record producer, the successful music director must have the flexibility to adjust as needed to a multifaceted job description, one which changes with each production and often with each performer. In Music Direction for the Stage, veteran music director and instructor Joseph Church demystifies the job in a book that offers aspiring and practicing music directors the practical tips and instruction they need in order to mount a successful musical production. Church, one of Broadway's foremost music directors, emerges from the orchestra pit to tell how the music is put into a musical show. He gives particular attention to the music itself, explaining how a music director can best plan the task of learning, analyzing, and teaching each new piece. Based on his years of professional experience, he offers a practical discussion of a music director's methods of analyzing, learning, and practicing a score, thoroughly illustrated by examples from the repertoire. The book also describes how a music director can effectively approach dramatic and choreographic rehearsals, including key tips on cueing music to dialogue and staging, determining incidental music and underscoring, making musical adjustments and revisions in rehearsal, and adjusting style and tempo to performers' needs. A key theme of the book is effective collaboration with other professionals, from the production team to the creative team to the performers themselves, all grounded in Church's real-world experience with professional, amateur, and even student performances. He concludes with a look at music direction as a career, offering invaluable advice on how the enterprising music director can find work and gain standing in the field.

Alfred's Basic Prep Course, Levels A through F, was written to answer a demand for a course of piano study designed specifically for students who are five years old and up. This course offers a careful introduction of fundamentals, music that fits comfortably under the young student's normal hand span, plus constant reinforcement--all leading to results beyond those generated by other piano methods. After Lesson Book B, the student may progress to Prep Course, Lesson Book C or choose to go directly into the faster paced Level 1B of Alfred's Basic Piano Library. The complete Prep Course consists of six books (Levels A through F).

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt offers an illuminating study of Narsinha Mehta, one of the most renowned saint-poets of medieval India and the most celebrated bhakti (devotion) poet from Gujarat, whose songs and sacred biography formed a vital source of moral inspiration for Gandhi. Exploring manuscripts, medieval texts, Gandhi's more obscure writings, and performances in multiple religious and non-religious contexts, including modern popular media, Shukla-Bhatt shows that the songs and sacred narratives associated with the saint-poet have been sculpted by performers and audiences into a popular source of moral inspiration.
Drawing on the Indian concept of bhakti-rasa (devotion as nectar), Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat reveals that the sustained popularity of the songs and narratives over five centuries, often across religious boundaries and now beyond devotional contexts in modern media, is the result of their combination of inclusive religious messages and aesthetic appeal in performance. Taking as an example Gandhi's perception of the songs and stories as vital cultural resources for social reconstruction, the book suggests that when religion acquires the form of popular culture, it becomes a widely accessible platform for communication among diverse groups. Shukla-Bhatt expands upon the scholarship on the embodied and public dimension of bhakti through detailed analysis of multiple public venues of performance and commentary, including YouTube videos.
This study provides a vivid picture of the Narasinha tradition, and will be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to understand the power of religious performative traditions in popular media.