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Books > Music > Composers & musicians
The Stooges Brass Band always had big dreams. From playing in the streets of New Orleans in the mid-1990s to playing stages the world over, they have held fast to their goal of raising brass band music and musicians to new heights - professionally and musically. In the intervening years, the band's members have become family, courted controversy, and trained a new generation of musicians, becoming one of the city's top brass bands along the way. Two decades after their founding, they have decided to tell their story. Can't Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen members of the Stooges Brass Band, past and present. It is the culmination of five years of interviews, research, and writing. Told with humor and candor, it's as much a personal account of the Stooges' careers as it is a story of the city's musicians and, even more generally, a coming-of-age tale about black men in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. DeCoste and the band members take readers into the barrooms, practice rooms, studios, tour vans, and streets where the music is made and brotherhoods are shaped and strengthened. Comprised of lively firsthand accounts and honest dialogue, Can't Be Faded is a dynamic approach to collaborative research that offers a sensitive portrait of the humans behind the horns.
Despite his premature death in 1982, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould remains extraordinarily influential in contemporary music. Known especially for his interpretations of Bach and a wide range of classical, romantic, and twentieth-century composers, Gould was also an accomplished composer and conductor, as well as provocative lecturer, writer, and critic. His music remains vital on recordings, and his published writings, and taped radio documentaries and television specials are available for archival research. Canning's A Glenn Gould Catalog provides a detailed roadmap to his career as performer, conductor, composer, host, guest, narrator, writer, and producer. The volume's main catalog, organized by composer, documents Gould's commercial discography and Canadian public radio and television recordings with detailed information, including: recording dates and location, release or broadcast date, commercial catalog and internal matrix numbers, album or broadcast name, producer(s), and various notes. The Musical Repertoire and Recording Chronicle sections provide access to the recordings by composition and opus number and by recording data respectively. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Archives section lists Gould's radio and television programs by date, and other chronologies are included for his Sony Catalog, Other Commercial Releases, and Unreleased Recordings. A bibliography of Gould's published writings and a bibliographical note on writings about Gould complete the volume. Carefully documented, cross-referenced, and indexed, the Glenn Gould Catalog constitutes an autobiographical outline of Gould's career through his works. It is an important resource for research and a valuableadjunct to published biographies and critical studies. The compiler's lively introductory material is augmented by photographs and interview commentary from Gould's colleagues.
It's Chris Jagger's turn to lift the lid on one of the most colourful and exotic periods in British cultural history as he unrolls an insider's tale of growing up among the bombsites and ration books of post-war Dartford, weaving through the glittery underground of late 1960s countercultural London, spending months in India before most trod that path, the highs and lows of acting and film work, and pursuing his own unique musical adventures that have resulted in a number of albums and gigs across the world. Ultimately though it's the beguiling story of a close-knit family and deep brotherly ties, which endure from both sides of the spectrum.
This book, first published in 1934, contains the recollections of the varied and coloured life of a great pianist and composer, who is one of the most striking figures of the musical world. Rachmaninoff dictated his memoires to the author of this book, and much of the story is therefore told in the first person. The final chapter is Riesemann's own contribution. It is an estimate of Rachmaninoff's qualities as composer; it shows knowledge of all his more important works; and it shows discrimination. The whole book is an authoritative and interesting study of a popular artist.
Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill give a detailed account of the evolution of Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano solo, from its initial conception in the Black Forest in 1953 to its completion and premiere in the Parisian 'Concerts du Domaine Musical' at the end of the decade. Through close examination of the composer's birdsong cahiers they demonstrate how Messiaen translated nature into music in a way that had a major impact on his later work. They also consider issues of performance, and Messiaen's artistic relationship with his dedicatee and wife-to-be, Yvonne Loriod, including the significance of her two recordings of the cycle. This book illuminates the Catalogue from a variety of angles: its historical significance, as a study of how mimicry of nature can be transformed into music of mesmeric originality, and as a guide that offers a wealth of fresh insights to listeners and performers.
Robert Wyatt started out as the drummer and singer for Soft Machine, who shared a residency at Middle Earth with Pink Floyd and toured America with Jimi Hendrix. He brought a Bohemian and jazz outlook to the 60s rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves' garden in Mallorca. His life took an abrupt turn after he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralysed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom, and in the early eighties his solo work was increasingly political. Today, Wyatt remains perennially hip, guesting with artists such as Bjork, Brian Eno, Scritti Politti, David Gilmour and Hot Chip. Marcus O'Dair has talked to all of them, indeed to just about everyone who has shaped, or been shaped by, Wyatt over five decades of music history.
(Amadeus). This first, authorized biography of one of the 20th century's greatest violinists chronicles the life of Michael Rabin from his young boyhood to his premature death at the age of 35. By his teen years in the 1950s, he had already joined the ranks of violin greats and he was being compared to Heifetz, Milstein, Stern, and Francescatti. Lovingly detailed, rich in music history and drama, this biography documents the many forces that shaped Rabin's extraordinary life and career, from his meteoric rise to his surprising decline. Feinstein charts Rabin's many artistic successes, as well as his struggles to make the transition from wunderkind to adult virtuoso, and sheds light on the true reasons for his fall from grace, debunking the many rumors that surrounded him during that time. Feinstein also clarifies the facts relating to Rabin's sudden death. What emerges is a unique profile of a prodiginous talent and a tragic life.
With his extensive three-volume investigation, the author has newly drawn the image of Gustav Mahler for our time. Should Mahler's symphonies really be categorized as "absolute music"? - Little-known manuscript sources contain significant hints to the contrary: programmatic titles and catchwords or phrases, mottos, literary allusions, associations, sighs, exclamations. Mahler fully understood his symphonies as "erlebte Musik", music of experience, as autobiography in notes, and as expressions of his "weltanschauung". All the symphonies, including the purely instrumental ones, can be traced back to programs that Mahler originally made public, but suppressed later on. A knowledge of the programmatic ideas provides access to a hitherto barely sensed interior metaphysical world that is of crucial importance for an adequate interpretation of the works. This first volume uncovers the complexity of relations between Mahler's wide-ranging reading and education, his aesthetics and his symphonic creation. About the German edition of this book: "One of the most thoroughgoing and comprehensive investigations of Gustav Mahler's work and world to date." (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) "The way in which Mahler's literary background, his education, and his aesthetic and philosophical maxims are presented here indeed opens up a new approach." (Die Musikforschung)
After a string of commercial disappointments, in 1986 Australian rock band The Church were simultaneously dropped by Warner Brothers in the US and EMI in Australasia. The future looked bleak. Seemingly from nowhere, their next record, Starfish, became an unlikely global hit. Its alluring and pensive lead single, 'Under the Milky Way', stood in stark contrast to the synth pop and hair metal dominating the 1980s. A high watermark of intelligent rock, Starfish musically anticipated alternative revolutions to come. Yet in making Starfish, The Church struggled with their internal contradictions. Seeking both commercial and artistic success, they were seduced by fame and drugs but cynical towards the music industry. Domiciled in Australia but with a European literary worldview, they relocated to Los Angeles to record under strained circumstances in the heart of the West Coast hit machine. This book traces the story of Starfish, its background, composition, production and reception. To the task, Gibson brings an unusual perspective as both a musician and a geographer. Drawing upon four decades of media coverage as well as fresh interviews between the author and band members, this book delves into the mysteries of this mercurial classic, tracing both its slippery cultural geography and its sumptuous songcraft. Situating Starfish in time and space, Gibson transports the reader to a key album and moment in popular music history when the structure and politics of the record industry was set to forever change.
A 'cult' band with a mass following, the band's last five albums have made the top 30 in the UK. Still active, recording and touring. Completely unique - no other band mixes progressive rock, metal and jazz in the same way. There has never been - and never will be - another band like Opeth. Formed in Stockholm, Sweden circa 1989, their roughly thirty-year career showcases a melding of diverse influences; a prevailing commitment to songwriting and instrumental excellence; and unwaveringly chameleonic vision - no matter the cost - that's unmatched by any of their stylistic peers. Be it their most unashamedly brutal early LPs, their multifaceted and near-faultless mid-period opuses, or their somewhat polarizing recent glimpses into macabre 1970s-esque prog/jazz rock eccentricity, mastermind Mikael Akerfeldt and company continuously create records that push themselves, their audience, and progressive music as a whole, forward. The result is easily among the most extraordinary, dependable, and laudable legacies in modern metal. Using a meticulously crafted mixture of original analysis and behind-the-scenes research, this book digs into all facets of Opeth's output to discover how they innovated and evolved with practically every release. After all, each 'observation' - from their 1990s black metal classics (Morningrise and My Arms, Your Hearse) and 2000s progressive death metal masterpieces (Blackwater Park and Ghost Reveries) to their stunning progressive rock/jazz fusion excursions of the 2010s (Pale Communion and In Cauda Venenum) - found Opeth ceaselessly harvesting a one-of-a-kind catalogue that's still remarkably influential and impressive
Warren Roberts has discovered a Rossini that others have not seen, a composer who commented ironically and satirically on religion and politics in Post-Napoleonic Europe. This book examines Rossini within the context of his own time, one of Napoleonic domination of Italy, restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in Naples in 1815, and the 1830 Revolution in Paris. Using the techniques of the historian,and reading librettos as texts, the author analyzes the five operas treated in detail in the book (Il barbiere di Siviglia, Cenerentola, La gazza ladra, Matilde di Shabran, and Il viaggio a Reims) as responses, each in its own way, to the history that the composer experienced. Roberts shows that Rossini made probing commentaries on politics and religion in a time of reaction and revolution, and that the composer was well-informed on post-Napoleonic politics. Rossini's comic writing served very serious purposes, exposing the problems and complications of an age that he observed with striking clarity. Warren Roberts is Professor Emeritusof History at the University at Albany, SUNY, and has published extensively on eighteenth-century French culture.
In this unique homage to an American icon, journalist and award-winning author Pete Hamill evokes the essence of Sinatra--examining his art and his legend from the inside, as only a friend of many years could do. Shaped by Prohibition, the Depression, and war, Francis Albert Sinatra became the troubadour of urban loneliness. With his songs, he enabled millions of others to tell their own stories, providing an entire generation with a sense of tradition and pride belonging distinctly to them. With a new look and a new introduction by Hamill, this is a rich and touching portrait that lingers like a beautiful song.
The first book in nearly a century dedicated to a close examination of the musical works of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, first son of Johann Sebastian Bach. The first-born of the four composer sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann was often considered the most brilliant. Yet he left relatively few works and died in obscurity. This monograph, the first on the composer in nearly a century, identifies the unique features of Friedemann's music that make it worth studying and performing. It considers how Friedemann's training and upbringing differed from those of his brothers, leading to a style that diverged from that of his contemporaries. Central to the book are detailed discussions of all Friedemann's extant works: the virtuoso sonatas and concertos for keyboard instruments, the extraordinary chamber compositions (especially for flute), and the hitherto-neglected vocal music, including sacred cantatas and a remarkable work in honor of King Frederick the Great of Prussia. Special sections consider performance questions unique to Friedemann's music and provide a handy list of his works and their sources. Numerous musical examples provide glimpses of many little-known compositions, including a concerto ignored by previous students of Friedemann's music, here restored to hislist of works. David Schulenberg, Professor of Music at Wagner College in New York City, has performed much of W. F. Bach's output on harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano. His previous writings include The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach and The Instrumental Music of C. P. E. Bach.
The international Number One bestseller. Over a million copies sold in the English language. Published in 23 foreign languages. ‘A heartfelt memoir . . . there is a fearlessness to his prose, a willingness to engage with his past, that chimes with his songwriter’s desire to give voice to the people around him’ Sunday Times “Writing about yourself is a funny business…But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind. In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.” —Bruce Springsteen, from the pages of Born to Run In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized. Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The River,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “The Rising,” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.
Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical
composition, Terry Riley's In C (1964) challenges the standards of
imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which "classical"
music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains
neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three
motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident
form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And
he assigned the work a title that's laconic in the extreme. At the
same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his
Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece.
Having almost completed Laborinthus II, Luciano Berio would soon
start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished
Momente. In context of these other works, and of the myriad of
compositional styles and trends which preceded them, In C stands
the whole idea of musical "progress" on its head.
Born into poverty--the entire family slept in a single room--Ozzy Osbourne endured a challenging childhood. It was a struggle from which he sought shelter in music, and his time as a member of Black Sabbath revolutionized heavy metal and catapulted him to worldwide fame. With the acclaim, however, came the excesses and heartbreaks; and in this engaging and revealing autobiography, Osbourne writes as candidly about his struggles with addictive substances and the loss of close friends as he does about his legendary stage performances and tours, and also discusses his more recent reinvention as a reality TV star. This is the definitive insider's account of the heavy metal scene from the 1970s through the 1990s and a more general cultural history of that same period. Heavy metal, rock and roll, and pop culture fans alike will find this essential reading. "Nacido en la pobreza--su familia entera dormia en una sola habitacion--Ozzy Osbourne tuvo una ninez dificil. Fue una lucha de la cual consiguio un refugio en la musica, y su tiempo como un miembro de Black Sabbath sirvio tanto para revolucionar al heavy metal como para catapultarlo a la fama. Con la aclamacion, sin embargo, vinieron tambien los excesos y desenganos; y en esta autobiografia simpatica y reveladora, Osbourne escribe tan francamente sobre su lucha con las substancias adictivas y la perdida de amigos cercanos asi como sobre sus interpretaciones y giras legendarias, y discute tambien su reinvencion reciente como una estrella de la telerrealidad. Este es el relato definitivo del mundo del heavy metal desde los 70 hasta los 90 y una historia cultural general del mismo periodo. Los fanaticos del heavy metal, el rock y la cultura popular consideraran esto lectura imprescindible."
Celebrated musician and entertainer Lizzo wowed audiences and left many "feeling good as hell." Notwithstanding her collective-fat, Black female- identity she catapulted into mainstream success while redefining the social script for body size, race, and gender. This book explores a tale of two narratives: Lizzo's self-curated, fat-positive identity and the media's reaction to an unabashedly proud fat, Black woman. This critical analysis examines how Lizzo challenges fatphobia and reconstitutes fat stigmatization into self-empowerment through her strategic use of hyper-embodiment via social media, and the rhetorical distinctions between Lizzo's self-curated narrative via social media and those offered about her in print media. In part, Lizzo's bodily flaunting is argued as a significant rhetorical act that emancipates her identity of fatness and reframes the negative tropes of (fat) Black women typically curated in American culture.
The displacement of European musics and musicians is a defining feature of twentieth-century music history. The displacement of European musics and musicians is a defining feature of twentieth-century music history. Musical Journeys uses vignettes of migratory moments in the works of Hanns Eisler in Paris, Matyas Seiber in London, and Istvan Anhalt in Montreal to investigate concepts of identity construction and musical aesthetics in the light of migratory experiences. Moving between the Austro-Hungarian Empire, proto-fascist Hungary, fascist Germany, war-time Britain, post-war Canada, and socialist East Germany, the book explores aspects of musical migrant culture including creative responses to nationalist ideas and politics, the role of cultural institutions in promoting (or censoring) the works of immigrant composers, and the complex interaction between Jewish identity and memory. It contends that an approach to music through the lens of migration can challenge and enrich socio-cultural understandings of music as well as conceptions of music historiography. Drawing on exile, diaspora, migration and mobilities studies, critical theory, and post-colonial and cultural studies, Musical Journeys weaves detailed biographical and contextual historical knowledge and analytical insights into music into an intricate fabric that does justice to the complexity of the musical migratory experience. FLORIAN SCHEDING is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol.
Lukas Foss's career encompasses the worlds of composition, conducting, performing, teaching, and the organization of major music festivals. His compositional style defies classification; he has used every form of twentieth century style, from neo-classicism to avant-garde, in his works. Karen Perone's bio-bibliography covers Lukas Foss as composer, author, conductor, and performer. This single comprehensive source includes biographical information; bibliographical citations to reviews of compositions, performances, and recordings; general bibliographical citations; discographical citations to compositions by Foss as well as to works conducted and performed by him; and a listing of the numerous awards and honors he has received. It is fully indexed to make it a useful reference tool for scholars and librarians alike.
Giovanni Battista Viotti was unquestionably the most influential violinist of his time, and his style continues to pervade to the present day. The last great representative of the Italian tradition that Corelli began, Viotti is often considered the founder of the modern or 19th-century French school of violin playing. In Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti, author Warwick Lister provides the first complete biography in English of this continuously significant violinist. Much of the documentary material Lister cites is previously unknown or not translated. Lister's biography takes the reader on a fascinating journey over the European continent and into the musical culture of the late 18th century. Born one year prior to Mozart and dying three years before Beethoven's death, Viotti rose from the humble origins of a blacksmith's son in a village near Turin, Italy, to international fame. His multifarious career as a concert performer, composer, teacher, opera theater director, and impresario was played out against the backdrop of a dramatically changing world - he served as a court musician for no less a figure than Marie Antoinette before founding an opera house in Paris. Viotti also knew tragedy as well as success: he was forced to flee the French Revolution, he was exiled from England for an extended period based on suspicions of certain Jacobin tendencies, his attempt to establish himself in business met with failure, and he died heavily in debt. Lister concludes Amico by coming to grips with the very things that account for Viotti's greatness and influence: the technical aspects of his violin playing and compositions. With its extensive documentary research and the inclusion of translations of various archival documents, this is the essential English-language biography of Viotti, a significant addition to the libraries of students and scholars of 18th and early 19th century music, as well as violin performers, students, and instructors.
When Leonard Cohen passed away in late 2016, he left behind many who cared for and admired him, but perhaps few knew him better than longtime friend Eric Lerner. Lerner, a screenwriter and novelist, first met Cohen at a zen retreat where the two quickly bonded. The pair lost touch for a time but, ten years later, they picked up right where they left off and became practically inseparable. A powerful commitment to zen practices flowed through their friendship and allowed it to become ever deeper over time. Over the years the two shared a house and helped each other through the pains of divorce, the joys of raising children, and the ups and downs of the writing life. These two friends helped guide one another through life's myriad obstacles, and now that journey will be told from a new perspective for the first time. Well-written, funny, revealing, self-aware, and grounded, Matters of Vital Interest is a charming memoir about Lerner's relationship with his lifelong friend. His views of Cohen are unique, warm, and often funny, and in recounting these tales he reveals a touching portrait of what a deep bond between two men can truly be. Offering further insight into Cohen's idiosyncratic style, his dignified life, the way he was deeply informed by his spiritual practices, and his sensibility as a poet first, musician second, Lerner allows readers to understand a new facet of this fascinating man through the eyes of his closest friend, and in so doing continue his legacy as a captivating persona the likes of which we may never see again.
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