First published in 2007, "Oklahoma!": The Making of an American Musical tells the full story of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Author Tim Carter examines archival materials, manuscripts, and journalism, and the lofty aspirations and mythmaking that surrounded the musical from its very inception. The book made for a watershed moment in the study of the American musical: the first well-researched, serious musical analysis of this landmark show by a musicologist, it was also one of the first biographies of a musical, transforming a field that had previously tended to orient itself around creators rather than creations. In this new and fully revised edition, Carter draws further on recently released sources, including the Rouben Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress, with additional correspondence, contracts, and even new versions of the working script used - and annotated - throughout the show's rehearsal process. Carter also focuses on the key players and concepts behind the musical, including the original play on which it was based (Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs) and the Theatre Guild's Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner, who fatefully brought Rodgers and Hammerstein together for their first collaboration. The crucial new perspectives these revisions and additions provide make this edition of Carter's seminal work a compulsory purchase for all teachers, students, and lovers of musical theater.

Claudio Arrau (1903-1991) was a Chilean pianist who devoted his life to an international performing and teaching career. As a child prodigy, he gained national recognition from government officials in Chile, including President Pedro Montt, who later funded Arrau's education in Germany. He completed his studies in Berlin with Martin Krause, a pupil of Franz Liszt, and later immigrated to New York City, where he began his teaching career and mentored a sizeable group of pupils. His unique and magnetic style impassioned his pupils and motivated them to teach his principles to the next generation of students, including author Victoria von Arx. Piano Lessons with Claudio Arrau highlights interviews with Arrau's surviving pupils (from his class in New York City, which he taught from 1945 to the early 1970s) that give readers an in-depth description of Arrau's principles of technique and performance. Quotations and lesson transcripts make Arrau's voice - and those of his former pupils - audible, and detailed references to over one hundred examples from filmed recordings make his famed technique visible. The bulk of the book features edited and previously-unpublished transcriptions of lessons Arrau gave his pupils, lavishly illustrated with musical examples. The author, herself a teacher and performer, draws information from numerous interviews with Arrau's pupils, from her experience studying with two of them, from videos of Arrau's performances, and from the recorded lessons. By culling these disparate sources of information and presenting them systematically in a single book, von Arx provides an insider's view of the art of piano playing as exemplified by one of the great artists of the twentieth century and offers the reader a virtual piano lesson with Claudio Arrau.

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, blues and comedy music during the big band era that became the start of R&B.

In a stunning narrative portrait of Louis Jordan, author Stephen Koch contextualizes the great, forgotten musician among his musical peers, those he influenced and the musical present.

Here is a fascinating collection of 20 wide-ranging interviews with the preeminent opera singers, conductors, directors, and designers working on and behind the stage today. In Living Opera, Joshua Jampol invites opera-lovers to listen in as performers such as Renee Fleming, Natalie Dessay, Rolando Villazon and Placido Domingo speak in exceptionally frank terms about their strengths and weaknesses and address such hard-hitting topics as how they deal with critics, vocal troubles, and balancing their career and family lives. We hear conductors such as James Conlon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Kent Nagano discuss their likes and dislikes about the state of contemporary opera, their own inspirations, whom they hope to inspire, and how opera can remain relevant today. World-class directors such as Robert Carsen and Patrice Chereau discuss the complexities involved in staging a successful opera. Jampol has unprecedented access to all the major singers, conductors, and directors, and the table of contents reads like a "who's who" of the global opera world. Each interview highlights a distinctive voice speaking about his or her career path, first break, colleagues, major influences, audiences, critics and all the diverse professions making up the emotional and extravagant world of the lyric arts. Jampol brings immense knowledge and a wonderful flair to these conversations, allowing his subjects to follow their thoughts wherever they lead and revealing in the process a more intimate, reflective side of such stars as Pierre Boulez, William Christie, Joyce DiDonato, Seiji Ozawa, Samuel Ramey, and many others. For anyone wanting to know more about the people behind the performances-what they think, how they feel, and who they really are-Living Opera is full of delights and surprises.

The music we hear is always inhabited by voices of previous performances. Because listening is now so often accompanied by moving images, this process is more complex than ever. Music videos, television and film music, interactive video games, and social media are now part of the contemporary listening experience.
In An Eye for Music, author John Richardson navigates key areas of current thought - from music theory to film theory to cultural theory - to explore what it means that the experience of music is now cinematic, spatial, and visual as much as it is auditory. Richardson maps out the terrain of recent audiovisual production over a wide array of styles and practices, and sketches out a set of common structures that inform how we experience sound and vision. Whether examining Philip Glass or The Gorillaz, Richard Linklater's Waking Life or Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, Richardson's arguments are both fascinating and provocative.

Movies have never been the same since MTV. While the classic symphonic film score promised direct insight into a character's mind, the expanded role of popular music has made more ambiguous the question of when, if ever, we are allowed to see or share a character's emotions. As a result, the potential for irony and ambiguity has multiplied exponentially, and characterization and narrative capacities have fragmented. At the most basic level, this new aesthetic has required filmgoers to renegotiate some of their most basic instinctual connections with the human voice and with any sense of a filmmaking self. Music videos widened the creative vocabulary of filmmaking: they increased speeds of event in cinema and deflecting filmmakers from narrative, characterization, and storytelling toward a concentration on situation, feeling, mood, and time. Popular Music and the New Auteur charts the impact of music videos on seven visionary directors: Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, the Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Ashby and his contributors define these filmmakers' relation to the soundtrack as their key authorial gesture. These filmmakers demonstrate a fresh kind of cinematic musicality by writing against music rather than against script, and allowing pop songs a determining role in narrative and imagery. Featuring important new theoretical work by some of the most stimulating and provocative writers in the area today, Popular Music and the New Auteur will be required reading for all who study film music and sound. It will also be particularly relevant for readers in popular music studies, and its intervention in the ongoing debate on auteurism will make it necessary reading in film studies.

Although Mendelssohn was most famous during his lifetime as a composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor, he also enjoyed an enviable reputation as a highly skilled organist. The instrument had fascinated - one might almost say mesmerized - him from earliest youth, but aside from a year or so of formal training at the age of about twelve or thirteen, he was entirely self-taught. He never held a position as church organist, and he never had any organ pupils. Nevertheless, the instrument played a uniquely important role in his personal life. In the course of his many travels, whether in major cities or tiny villages, he invariably gravitated to the organ loft, where he might spend hours playing the works of Bach or simply improvising. Although the piano clearly served Mendelssohn as an eminently practical instrument, the organ seems to have been his instrument of choice. He searched out an organ loft, not because he had to, but because he wanted to, because on the organ he could find catharsis. Indeed, as he once exclaimed to his parents, after reading a portion of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, "I must rush off to the monastery and work off my excitement on the organ "
Mendelssohn's public performance on the organ in Germany was rare, and he gave but one public recital - in the Thomas-Kirche in Leipzig in 1840. In England, however, he evidently felt more comfortable on the organ bench and played there often before large crowds. Indeed, he performed as Guest Organist twice at the Birmingham Music Festivals, in 1837 and 1842.
Given Mendelssohn's profound affinity for the organ, it is remarkable that he composed but relatively little for the instrument, and assigned an Opus number to only two works - his Three Preludes and Fugues for Organ (Op. 37) and his Six Sonatas for the Organ (Op. 65). A small number of organ works, plus sketches and drafts, were scattered among his musical papers; most of these only gradually found their way into print, and it was not until the late twentieth century that an edition of his complete organ works was finally published. This volume is intended as a companion to that edition.

Once the center of agricultural prosperity in Alabama, the rich soil of the Black Belt still features beautiful homes that stand as a testimony to the region's proud heritage. Join author Jennifer Hale as she explores the history of seventeen of the finest plantation homes in Alabama's Black Belt. This book chronicles the original owners and slaves of the homes and traces their descendants, who have continued to call these plantations home throughout the past two centuries. Discover why the families of an Indian chief and a chief justice feuded for over a century about the land on which Belvoir stands. Follow Gaineswood's progress as it grew from a humble log cabin into an opulent mansion. Learn how the original builder and subsequent owners of the Kirkwood Mansion are linked by a legacy of exceptional and dedicated preservation. "Historic Plantations of Alabama's Black Belt" recounts the elegant past and hopeful future of a well-loved region of the South.

How does the immediate experience of musical sound relate to processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation?
This question lies at the heart of the studies presented in Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, a unique multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in a wide range of disciplines, including ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, and cognitive science. Addressing a wide range of musical practices from Indian raga and Afro-Brazilian Congado rituals to jazz, rock, and Canadian aboriginal fiddling, the coherence of this study is underpinned by its three main themes: experience, meaning, and performance. Central to all of the studies are moments of performance: those junctures when sound and meaning are actually produced. Experience-what people do, and what they feel, while engaging in music-is equally important. And considered alongside these is meaning: what people put into a performance, what they (and others) get out of it, and, more broadly, how discourses shape performances and experiences of music. In tracing trajectories from moments of musical execution, this volume a novel and productive view of how cultural practice relates to the experience and meaning of musical performance.
A model of interdisciplinary study, and including access to an array of audio-visual materials available on an extensive companion website, Experience and Meaning in Music Performance is essential reading for scholars and students of ethnomusicology and music psychology.

Until recently, most scholars neglected the power of hearing cinema as well as seeing it. Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory breaks new ground by redirecting the arguments of foundational texts within film theory to film sound tracks. The book includes sustained analyses of particular films according to a range of theoretical approaches: psychoanalysis, feminism, genre studies, post-colonialism, and queer theory. The films come from disparate temporal and industrial contexts: from Classical Hollywood Gothic melodrama (Rebecca (1940)), to contemporary, critically-acclaimed science fiction (Gravity (2013)). Along with sound tracks from canonical American films, such as The Searchers (1956) and To Have and Have Not (1944), Walker analyzes independent Australasian films: examples include Heavenly Creatures (1994), a New Zealand film that uses music to empower its queer female protagonists; and Ten Canoes (2006), the first Australian feature film with a script entirely in Aboriginal languages. Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory thus not only calls new attention to the significance of sound tracks-it also focuses on the sonic power of characters representing those whose voices have all too often been drowned out. Dominant studies of film music tend to be written for those who are already musically trained. Similarly, studies of film sound tend to be jargon-heavy. By contrast, Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory is both rigorous and accessible to all scholars with a basic grasp of cinematic and musical structures. Moreover, the book brings together film studies, musicology, history, politics, and culture. Therefore, Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory will resonate for scholars across the liberal arts, and for anyone interested in challenging the so-called "hegemony of the visual."

The history of North Carolina's Outer Banks is as ancient and mesmerizing as its beaches. Much has been documented, but many stories were lost--until now. Join local author and historian Sarah Downing as she reveals a past of the Outer Banks eroded by time and tides. Revel in the nostalgic days of the Carolina Beach Pavilion, stand in the shadows of windmills that once lined the coast and learn how native islanders honor those aviation giants, the Wright brothers. Downing's vignettes adventure through windswept dunes, dive deep in search of the lost ironclad the "Monitor" and lament the decline of the diamondback terrapin. Break out the beach chair and let your mind soak in the salty bygone days of these famed coastal extremities.

While all but gone today, Jamestown's furniture industry was once the second-largest producer of furniture in the United States. Manufacturing boomed from 1816, when William Breed and Royal Keyes opened their shops, to the 1920s, when Jamestown was still one of the top wood furniture producers in the country. In the nineteenth century, the thriving railroad industry allowed Jamestown's quality creations to be distributed nationwide. After the Civil War, an influx of Swedish immigrants brought their craftsmanship and skills to Jamestown, forming Morgan Manufacturing, Empire Furniture Company and many others. Then, their pieces were valued for quality and durability; today, they're coveted by collectors as beautiful antiques. Local expert Clarence Carlson uncovers the fascinating story of Jamestown furniture.

Embodying Mexico examines two performative icons of Mexicanness--the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead of Lake P tzcuaro--in numerous manifestations, including film, theater, tourist guides, advertisements, and souvenirs. Covering a ninety-year period from the postrevolutionary era to the present day, Hellier-Tinoco's analysis is thoroughly grounded in Mexican politics and history, and simultaneously incorporates choreographic, musicological, and dramaturgical analysis.
Exploring multiple contexts in Mexico, the USA, and Europe, Embodying Mexico expands and enriches our understanding of complex processes of creating national icons, performance repertoires, and tourist attractions, drawing on wide-ranging ethnographic, archival, and participatory experience. An extensive companion website illustrates the author's arguments through audio and video.

In 1895, emissaries from the New York Yacht Club traveled to Deer Isle, Maine, to recruit the nation's best sailors, an "All American" crew. This remote island in Penobscot Bay sent nearly thirty of its fishing men to sail "Defender," and under skipper Hank Haff, they beat their opponents in a difficult and controversial series. To the delight of the American public, the charismatic Sir Thomas Lipton sent a surprise challenge in 1899. The New York Yacht Club knew where to turn and again recruited Deer Isle's fisherman sailors. Undefeated in two defense campaigns, they are still considered one of the best American sail-racing teams ever assembled. Read their fascinating story and relive their adventure.

This fascinating anthology is a dive into the personal letters of some of the brightest literary minds in history.

This collection is a look into the personal lives of some of the world's most beloved poets, novelists, and playwrights. Take a peek into their correspondence, where you might be surprised what you learn. The letters contain wisdom and life lessons from the likes of John Keats and Oscar Wilde, as well as shared feelings of loneliness from Charlotte Brontë, loss from Ovid, and love from George Eliot.

With one letter for every day of the year, you can start or end your day with words from some of the brightest minds that ever put pen to paper. This is a collection with emotional, historical and literary significance, helping us to understand some of our favourites even further.

This anthology spans the centuries from the classic to the contemporary, and includes Ignatius Sancho, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, the Brontës, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou, and many more.

The swelling flows of migration from Africa towards Europe have aroused interest not only in the socio-political consequences of the migrants' insistent appeals to 'fortress Europe' but also in the artistic integration of African migrants into the cultural world of Europe. While in recent years the creative output of Africans living in Europe has received attention from the media and in academia, little critical consideration has been given to African migrants' modes of narration and the manner in which these modes give expression to, or are an expression of, their creators' transcultural realities. "Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe" responds to this need for reflection by examining the manner in which migrants compose and negotiate their Euro-African affiliations in their narratives. The book brings together scholars in the fields of literary and art criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology for an extensive interdisciplinary exchange on the specific modes of narration displayed in Euro-African literatures, the visual arts, and cinema, as well as offering ethnographic case studies. The result is a wide range of reflections on how African artists, writers, and ordinary people living in Europe experience and explore their transcultural and/or postcolonial environments, and how their experiences and explorations in turn contribute to the construction of modern Euro-African life-worlds.

Explore the haunted history of the RMS "Queen Mary."

Has the virtual invaded the realm of the real, or has the real expanded its definition to include what once was characterized as virtual? With the continual evolution of digital technology, this distinction grows increasingly hazy. But perhaps the distinction has become obsolete; perhaps it is time to pay attention to the intersections, mutations, and transmigrations of the virtual and the real. Certain it is time to reinterpret the practice and study of music. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, edited by Shelia Whiteley and Shara Rambarran, is the first book to offer a kaleidoscope of interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars around the globe on the way in which virtuality mediates the dissemination, acquisition, performance, creation, and reimagining of music. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality addresses eight themes that often overlap and interact with one another. Questions of the role of the audience, artistic agency, individual and communal identity, subjectivity, and spatiality repeatedly arise. Authors specifically explore phenomena including holographic musicians and virtual bands, and the benefits and detriments surrounding the free circulation of music on the internet. In addition, the book investigates the way in which fans and musicians negotiate gender identities as well as the dynamics of audience participation and community building in a virtual environment. The handbook rehistoricizes the virtual by tracing its progression from cartoons in the 1950s to current industry innovations and changes in practice. Well-grounded and wide-reaching, this is a book that students of any number of disciplines, from Music to Cultural Studies, have awaited.

This book puts sampling studies on the academic map by focusing on sampling as a logic of exchange between audio-visual media. While some recent scholarship has addressed sampling primarily in relation to copyright, this book is a first: a critical study of sampling and remixing across audio-visual media. Of special interest here are works that bring together both audio and visual sampling: music that samples film and television; underground dance and multimedia scenes that rely on sampling; Internet "memes" that repurpose music videos, trailers and news broadcasts; films and videos that incorporate a wide range of sampling aesthetics; and other provocative variations. Comprised of four sections titled "roots," "scenes," "cinema" and "web" this collection digs deep into and across sampling practices that intervene in popular culture from unconventional or subversive perspectives. To this end, Sampling Media extends the conceptual boundaries of sampling by emphasizing its inter-medial dimensions, exploring the politics of sampling practice beyond copyright law, and examining its more marginal applications. It likewise puts into conversation compelling instances of sampling from a wide variety of historical and contemporary, global and local contexts.

The world of media production is in a state of rapid transformation. In this age of the Internet, interactivity and digital broadcasting, do traditional standards of quality apply or must we identify and implement new criteria?
This profile of the work of the Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS), presents a strong argument that new developments in digital media are absolutely dependent on an understanding of traditional excellence. The book stands alone in placing equal emphasis on theoretical and practical aspects of its subject matter and avoids jargon so as to be easily understood by the general reader as well as the specialist.
Chapters discuss:
- animation - navigable architectural environments - moving image narrativity
- questions of truth and representation - virtuality/reality - synthetic imaging
- interactivity
This broad analysis of current research, teaching and media production contains essential information for all those working or studying in the areas of multimedia, architecture, film and television.
The book is designed as a core text for the Cambridge University 1 year MPhil Degree in Architecture and the Moving Image.

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores. It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.