The life of jazz trumpeter Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan (1908-1942) resembles nothing less than an ancient Greek tragedy: a heroic figure who rises from obscurity to dizzying heights, touches greatness, becomes ensnared by circumstances, and comes to a disastrous early end. Berigan was intimately involved in the commercial music business of the 1930s and 1940s in New York City. Berigan was a charismatic performer, one of the few musicians in the history of jazz to advance the art. His trumpet artistry made a deep and lasting impression on almost everyone who heard him play, while the body of recorded work he left continues to evoke a wide range of emotions in those who hear it. Too often writings about the Swing Era skip over the interrelationship between the music business and the music that the giants of jazz created. In Mr. Trumpet: The Trials, Tribulations, and Triumph of Bunny Berigan, Michael Zirpolo takes on this difficult task, exploring connections between the business of music and contemporary music makers and the culture of social dancing that drove it all. Through detailed research and insightful analysis, Zirpolo rectifies many heretofore misunderstood events in Berigan's life and in the Swing Era more generally. In this panoramic examination of Berigan's personal and professional lives, Mr. Trumpet maps the great musician's role in what was a truly golden age of American popular music and jazz, offering close looks at some of his greatest performances and film work, comprehensive listings of all known broadcast recordings made by Berigan and his bands, as well as numerous previously unpublished photos of the great jazz artist.

After exhaustive research into the D'Oyly Carte collection of documents, Ainger offers the most detailed account to date of Gilbert and Sullivan's starkly different backgrounds and long working partnership. "A Gilbert is of no use without a Sullivan," W.S. Gilbert once summed his reasons for persisting in his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan despite the combative nature of their relationship. Indeed, Michael Ainger suggests, it is the clash between these two strong personalities that accounts for the success of their work together, as each partner challenged the other to produce his best work.

From Mozart's fabulous legato that "flowed like oil" to Beethoven's oceanlike surge, from Clara Schumann's touch "sharp as a pencil sketch" to Rubinstein's volcanic and sensual playing, The Great Pianists brings to life the brilliant, stylish, and sometimes eccentric personalities, methods, and technical peculiarities of history's greatest pianists.Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author Harold C. Schonberg presents vivid accounts of the artists' performances, styles, and even their personal lives and quirky characteristics-- such as Mozart's intense competition with Clementi, Lizst's magnetic effect on women (when he played, ladies flung their jewels on stage), and Gottschalk's persistent nailbiting, which left the keys covered with blood. Including profiles of Horowitz and Van Cliburn, among others, and chapters detailing the playing and careers of such modern pianists as de Larrocha, Ashkenazy, Gilels, Gould, Brendel, Bolet, Gutierrez, and Watts, The Great Pianists is a comprehensive and fascinating look at legendary performers past and present.

I'm just a cosmic yob, I suppose.

I change every day. I'm not outrageous. I'm David Bowie.

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

Genre-hopping, gender-bending: Bowie has never been afraid to push the boundaries. Whether masquerading as an alien, a spaceman or a goblin king, this rock 'n' roll hero was a true visionary. The death of the Man Who Fell to Earth shook fans around the world, but his influence lives on.

Pocket Bowie Wisdom is full of insights into music, identity, fame, love and creativity from one of the most pioneering musicians of all time.

This collection of quotes makes a perfect gift for the Bowie fan in your life.

Elvis passed away in 1977 but his spirit lives on. His records still sell, his movies are still hugely popular and his concerts are still discussed by new generations of fans. The Elvis Presley estate has tens of thousands of photographs and miles of video footage from all eras of Elvis' career and fans' hunger for new imagery and information on the King remains unsated. This publication is a beautiful, desirable package, ideal for any Elvis fan. This book tells the personal story of Elvis and his relationships with those near and dear to him and contains more than 150 colour and black and white photographs from the Graceland archives, accompanied by insightful text from an author with a proven Elvis track record. To take you closer than ever before to the King, 30 items of rare memorabilia are carefully reproduced on the page, including personal letters, receipts, telegrams, publicity material and other fascinating items which provide new insight into the life of a legend. There are photographs of Elvis himself, Elvis with friends and family, and all manner of personal artifacts, including guitars, jewelry, clothing, vehicles and more.

In this thorough research guide to the career and music of Bill Dixon the author has documented how Dixon refined a sonically unique pan-tonal language of trumpet playing. As a trumpeter, composer, educator, and theoretician, Bill Dixon has politically and musically influenced many phases of the development of Black music in the second half of the 20th century. This authoritative guide details information about the life and music of Bill Dixon. Bill Dixon comments throughout the text on the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of his career as it unfolds between performances and recordings. The recollections of those who have collaborated with Bill Dixon over the years supplement the thorough research here presented on the life and career of Bill Dixon and, additionally, the New York avant garde artistic sphere in which he worked. Bill Dixon has refined a sonically unique pan-tonal language of trumpet playing. As a trumpeter, composer, educator, and theoretician, Bill Dixon has politically and musically influenced many phases of the development of Black music in the second half of the 20th century. This authoritative guide details information about the life and music of Bill Dixon. Bill Dixon comments throughout the text on the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of his career as it unfolds between performances and recordings. The recollections of those who have collaborated with Bill Dixon over the years supplement the thorough research here presented on the life and career of Bill Dixon and subsequently, on the New York avant garde artistic sphere in which he worked. Music and music history scholars, especially those interested in jazz and Black music, will be attracted to the wealth of information provided, often from primary sources, on Bill Dixon and Black music through the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The discography included encompasses issued and non-issued recordings as well as listings for every known Bill Dixon performance. Collaborations with dancers, directors, filmmakers and painters, among others, are also documented.

Karel Husa is a Czechoslovakian-American composer and educator who has made important contributions to modern musical literature. Especially well known for his compositions for wind band, Husa is also in constant demand as a guest conductor and lecturer throughout the musical world. This volume provides a complete guide to his compositions and to recordings of his work, together with a full bibliography. Following a brief biography is a list of Husa's compositions, arranged by genre. Each entry includes the date of composition, duration of the work, and the performance medium, as well as details relating to the commission, premiere, and publication. The discography of commercially produced recordings of Husa's music is arranged alphabetically and supplies information on label and label number, date of issue, contents, and performers. The bibliography is comprehensive, listing writings by and about Husa and annotating each work cited. Systematic cross-referencing is used throughout the book. A convenient resource for musicians and musicologists, this bio-bibliography is an appropriate choice for music and academic libraries.

Originally published in 1978 as The Beach Boys and the California Myth, this groundbreaking study was both the first full-length book on the band and the first to recognize Brian Wilson as one of the most significant and influential artists of the 20th century. Covering the turbulent family strife and internal conflicts as well as giving proper attention to the remarkable music, the book was an instant classic. An intimate look at Brian's rollercoaster of a life and career, it's told through the eyes of those who were there during Wilson's most legendary productions including Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations. Revised and updated, God Only Knows covers the decades since the 1985 edition, including Brian's first acclaimed solo album, his startling return to live performing, the landmark Pet Sounds tour, the "All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson" (which Leaf wrote and produced) and the triumphant and miraculous Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE world premiere in London. Filled with surprising revelations, insight and behind-the-scenes detail, this indispensable book written by renowned Brian Wilson expert David Leaf also features forewords by Jimmy Webb, the Bee Gees' Barry Gibb and Melinda Wilson, Brian's wife.

Funeral Games in Honor of Arthur Vincent Lourie explores the varied aesthetic impulses and ever-evolving personal motivations of Russian composer Arthur Lourie. A St. Petersburg native allied with the Futurist movement and profoundly sympathetic to Silver Age decadence, Lourie was swept away by the Revolution; he surfaced as a Communist commissar of music before landing in Europe and America, where his career foundered. Making his way by serving others, he became Stravinsky's right-hand man, Serge Koussevitsky's ghostwriter, and philosopher Jacques Maritain's muse. Lourie left his mark on the poems of Anna Akhmatova, on the neoclassical aesthetics of Stravinsky, on Eurasianism, and on Maritain's NeoThomist musings about music. Lourie serves as a flawless lens through which aspects of Silver Age Russia, early Bolshevik rule, and the cultural space of exile come into sharper focus. But this interdisciplinary collection of essays, edited by musicologists Klara Moricz and Simon Morrison, also looks at Lourie himself as an artist and intellectual in his own right. Much of the aesthetic and technical discussion concerns his grandly eulogistic opera The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, understood as both a belated Symbolist work and as a NeoThomist exercise. Despite the importance Lourie attached to the opera as his masterwork, Blackamoor has never been performed, its fate thus serving as an emblem of Lourie's own. Yet even if Lourie seems to have been destined to be but a footnote in the pages of music history, he looms large in studies of emigration and cultural memory. Here Lourie's life, like his last opera, is presented as a meditation on the circumstances and psychology of exile. Ultimately, these essays recover a lost realm of musical and aesthetic possibilities-a Russia that Lourie, and the world, saw disappear.

Smith explores Pete Townshend's artistic struggle between his own creative impulses and those of the commercial public. Faced with a modern version of the minstrel's dilemma, Townshend, early in his career, ignored his creative instincts to satisfy commercial agendas. After his success, he slowly withdrew to resolve his conflict between creativity and commercialism. Townshend's creative vision unfolds against the conflicts and compromises battled with the entertainment industry. A common theme, that of the seeker, weaves throughout the various phases of Townshend's career and highlights his own quest for complete artistic expression free from compromise.

In "The Minstrel's Dilemma," Townshend is shown as a musician confronting the same battles begun by early minstrels and later fought by composers such as Beethoven and Mozart. He is referred to as a rock auteur, creating music that reflects his personal experiences and creative views. He is called a seeker, in search of artistic freedom toward personal expression. And at the end of his thirty-year struggle he is a true artist, able to live up to audience expectation while attending to his own artistic impulses.

Every recorded performance of Mahler shymphonies--and Das Lied--from 1924 until press time! What a labor and how sorely needed! Music Journal In the past 25 years a revival of interest in the music of Gustav Mahler has resulted in nearly 300 new recordings of his symphonies. The breadth and complexity of these works, together with the plethora of recent releases, signals the need for a guide that will be useful both to novice and the experienced collector. Lewis M. Smoley's book fills this need, providing critical analysis and specific recording information for all known recordings of Mahler's symphonies as well as indexes by conductor, orchestra, and label. The result of extensive research, this volume includes many recordings that have not appeared in previous listings. Recording made around the world from 1924 through 1986 are treated in chapters devoted to each of the 11 symphonies--including Das Lied von der Erde and the unfinished 10th. Listings are arranged alphabetically under the name of the conductor and analyzed in terms of quality of performance, specific interpretation and interpretive styles, and sonics. Recordings of special merit are noted. Entries supply information about reissues as well as original pressings, type of recording, and alternative versions of some of the scores. Cross-referenced indexes list conductor, orchestra, vocal soloists, chorus, and record label for the recordings discussed. The foreword and preface place Mahler's recorded symphonies in perspective and discuss some of the interpretive and textual issues that continue to be debated. This single-volume guide is appropriate for both the average listener and the serious enthusiast, and will also be a valuable addition to the collections of music schools and conservatories.

Charles Ives, perhaps the quintessential American composer of the twentieth century, drew on his childhood experiences in a small New England town in his music. Through his close relationship with his father, George, a Civil War bandmaster, Ives developed a powerful feeling for nineteenth-century rural America. This book--the first full-scale psychoanalytic biography of a major composer--examines the lives of the two men and shows how a knowledge of their relationship as father and son, teacher and pupil, is central to an understanding of Ives's work. Stuart Feder, a psychoanalyst with training in musicology, demonstrates that George exerted so pervasive an influence on Charles's creative life that Ives's music may be seen as the result of an unconscious fantasy of posthumous collaboration between father and son. The music bears George's mark, not only in its incorporation of hymn tunes, parlor ballads, Civil War marches, and other homely sources that derived from his youth, but also in its use of technical musical devices attributed to George. Moreover, the span of Ives's creative life reveals another connection to his father: Charles's musical productivity began to wane in his forties, as he approached the age at which his father died. Dr. Feder examines the influence of George's teaching and storytelling on Charles's years as a composer. Ives's later decline is traced psychologically and medically. Using Ives's music as an essential part of his data, Dr. Feder demonstrates how music can illuminate and be expressive of the inner life of its creator.

Dual natures comprised Chopin's personality. On one hand, he was a highly creative romantic idealist and on the other, a realist trying to cope with the world at large. Documentary evidence illustrates the disparities in his personality as a reflection of these two diverse aspects of his psyche. Of special interest are five previously unpublished letters in English and the unfolding of Chopin's controversial relationships with Tytus Woyciechowski, Julian Fontana, George Sand, and Solange Sand. This critical portrayal of Chopin's personality traces his journeys and experiences from Warsaw to Paris and reveals, among other characteristics and traits, Chopin's developmental problems during his adolescence, his unattractive behavior in his relationship with Julian Fontana, and George Sand's unrequited love for Chopin. The culture of the time and the atmosphere surrounding Chopin's relationships emerge in the detailed evidence presented.

The book is divided into two parts. The first is relevant to Chopin's youth in Warsaw. His relationship with Tytus Woyciechowski during the formative years in Warsaw significantly impacted Chopin's emotional development. The second part of the book focuses on Chopin's adult years in Paris including his liaison with George Sand, which is considered through her daughter, Solange, and four friends and acquaintances common to both Sand and Chopin. The text is extensively annotated and this research of Chopin's life and personality will appeal to both the Chopin scholar and enthusiast. It will also be of interest to students of French Romantic literature, Romantic music, and Polish music of the nineteenth century.

Esteemed by many of his most distinguished contemporaries, including Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) was a protege of Brahms and Mahler. Despite this, he was overshadowed by the composers of the second Viennese school, and for many years after his death was remembered merely as the brother-in-law of Schoenberg. But with centenary celebrations of Zemlinsky's birth, scholars began a careful examination of his works and realized they had discovered a forgotten master. Zemlinsky's wonderful melodic gift was manifested in operas, choral works, chamber music, and symphonic pieces, but was realized most fully in his more than one hundred songs.

In this important new study--the first such work in English--Lorraine Gorrell focuses on these songs, revealing the ways in which they represented a bridge between the 19th-century romantic lied and the 20th-century avant-garde. Of interest to scholars studying both the German art song and the development of the second Viennese school, Gorrell's work uses Zemlinsky's songs as a lens through which to examine an important, highly influential musical figure.

The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London, it is one of the strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering array of artists and orchestras. Whether you're a first-time visitor or an experienced Prommer, watching at home or listening on radio or online, the BBC Proms Guide will be an excellent companion to a remarkable summer of music, which you can treasure and return to in years to come. Filled with the latest programme details and illuminating articles by leading experts, journalists and writers, the BBC Proms Guide gives a wide-ranging insight into the performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion pieces about audiences, music and music-making. The contents for 2021 include a specially commissioned short story by award-winning author Chibundu Onuzo; an exploration of music and silence by author, commentator and broadcaster Will Self; a celebration of the history and influence of the iconic Royal Albert Hall 150 years after its opening by historian, author, curator and television presenter Lucy Worsley; a tribute to anniversary composer Igor Stravinsky; and an article spotlighting the remarkable Kanneh-Mason siblings (spearheaded by royal-wedding cellist Sheku).

The first performance of Handel’s 'Messiah' in Dublin in 1742 is now legendary. Gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and ladies to come without hoops in their skirts in order to fit more people into the audience. Why then, did this now famous and much-loved oratorio receive a somewhat cool reception in London less than a year later? Placing Handel’s best-known work in the context of its times, this vivid account charts the composer’s working relationship with his librettist, the gifted but demanding Charles Jennens, and looks at Handel’s varied and evolving company of singers together with his royal patronage. Through examination of the composition manuscript and Handel’s own conducting score, held in the Bodleian, it explores the complex issues around the performance of sacred texts in a non-sacred context, particularly Handel’s collaboration with the men and boys of the Chapel Royal. The later reception and performance history of what is one of the most successful pieces of choral music of all time is also reviewed, including the festival performance attended by Haydn, the massed-choir tradition of the Victorian period and today’s ‘come-and-sing’ events.

Elinor Remick Warren's distinguished career as a composer, concert pianist, and accompanist for renowned singers spanned seventy-five years of American musical history. She began writing music in 1904 at age four. Her first published composition, a song, was accepted by G. Schirmer in 1916. Thereafter, her compositions appeared regularly through 1990. Her full oeuvre is cataloged here along with performance information, discography, and review and critical commentary, all of which is carefully documented, cross-referenced, and indexed. A biographical sketch is supplemented by a long interview conducted by the author with Warren four years before the composer's death in 1991. Among the useful appendixes are textual sources for Warren's many vocal compositions.

In this book, follow the career of Carrie Underwood as she goes from the American Idol competition to worldwide celebrity. Carrie Underwood: A Biography follows the singer from a small town in Oklahoma to the stages of the most prestigious concert halls in the world. Along the way, fans will read about this girl-next-door's decision to compete on American Idol and her subsequent triumph there, about her first recordings in Nashville and her platinum albums, and about her sold-out concert tours with superstars like Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, and Keith Urban. But the book isn't only about Underwood as a celebrity. It is also about how she uses that celebrity to do good works, including speaking out for the Humane Society of the United States, participating in a song that benefited Stand Up For Cancer, doing public service announcements for the Do Something youth organization, and touring for the USO.

The extraordinary story of African American composer Edmond Dede, raised in antebellum New Orleans, and his remarkable career in France In 1855, Edmond Dede, a free black composer from New Orleans, emigrated to Paris. There he trained with France's best classical musicians and went on to spend thirty-six years in Bordeaux leading the city's most popular orchestras. How did this African American, raised in the biggest slave market in the United States, come to compose ballets for one of the best theaters outside of Paris and gain recognition as one of Bordeaux's most popular orchestra leaders? Beginning with his birth in antebellum New Orleans in 1827 and ending with his death in Paris in 1901, Sally McKee vividly recounts the life of this extraordinary man. From the Crescent City to the City of Light and on to the raucous music halls of Bordeaux, this intimate narrative history brings to life the lost world of exiles and travelers in a rapidly modernizing world that threatened to leave the most vulnerable behind.

Designed for general readers and scholars, this study explores the Lutheran commentary in Bach's St. John Passion and suggests that fostering hostility to Jews is not its subject or purpose. Also included are a literal, annotated translation of the libretto and an appendix discussing anti-Judaism and Bach's other works.

The Grateful Dead, one of the most meticulously documented rock bands, significantly influenced American music and popular culture. Its popularity has endured for three decades despite mixed critical reception. Jerry Garcia, thought of among many as a musical icon and spokesperson for more than one generation of fans, was often equally scorned by various critics. This collection of scholarly essays attests to the varied fields of interest the band and its followers, known as Deadheads, have affected, including psychology, law, and ethnomusicology. The contributions explore the diversity of the culture of fans, empirically analyze the music, apply literary criticism to the lyrics, and explore Dead-related philosophical and theological concepts -- in other words, they are as eclectic as the myriad Grateful Dead fans themselves.

Appealing to Grateful Dead scholars, fans, and collectors alike, these twenty-two essays are grouped by subject, and each essay includes a bibliography of resources for further research.