Arts, Architecture & Design Books

How race and blackness play out in operaBlackness in Opera critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha)...

As one of Currier & Ives's leading artists, Frances (""Fanny"") Bond Palmer (1812-1876) was a major lithographer whose prints found their way into homes, schools, barns, taverns, business offices, yacht clubs, and elsewhere, reaching a mass audience...

Early in his career, critics and collectors widely recognized that Harold Weston (1894-1972), was capturing and saying something unusual in his paintings. ""There is a young American painter,"" wrote Duncan Phillips, ""who stirs in me the hope for a...

In a world inundated by an endless proliferation of texts, images, and data, the tension between the human desire to preserve and the economic incentive to retain collides with the finite nature of storage and its attendant costs. The impulse to keep...

The premier guide to the lives and work of bluegrass iconsThe Music of the Stanley Brothers brings together forty years of passionate research by scholar and record label owner Gary B. Reid. A leading authority on Carter and Ralph Stanley, Reid augments...

This volume builds on the work of Kevin Lynch, whose key 1960 work The Image of the City transformed the way design professionals and social scientists deal with urban form and design. The author explores further the role of human evaluations of the...

What is involved in ''making art''? In what ways have Americans introduced art making to students? In Art Making and Education, a practicing artist and a historian of art education discuss from their particular perspectives the production of studio and...

Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts presents a compelling argument that the creative and cultural inquiry undertaken by artists is a form of research. The text explores themes, practices, and contexts of artistic inquiry and positions...

Joseph Beuys's work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organizational learning, direct democracy and new money forms to new art pedagogies and ecological art practices. Here, in dialogue with...

Engagingly written by a professional historian, Come Together recreates two decades of rock and rebellion, from the formation of the Beatles in 1960 to the assassination of John Lennon in 1980.

''A fine account of the development of jazz in New Orleans and Chicago from 1900 to 1960. . . . It should be in every jazz collection.'' - Choice

''A must for every individual who has an interest in the West and its people.'' -- American West ''The most pleasant, interesting, and utterly charming book I've read all year.'' -- Bluegrass Unlimited ''An excellent volume for folk music collections.''...

This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most...

Bean Blossom, Indiana - near Brown County State Park and the artist-colony town of Nashville, Indiana - is home to the annual Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival, founded in 1967 by Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass. Widely recognized as the oldest...

How to interpret identity, culture, and history in soundSonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age critically analyzes a range of sounds on vocal and musical recordings, on the radio, in film, and in cartoons to show how sounds are used to...

As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. Volume 8 of Bach Perspectives emphasizes the place of Bach's...

Providing new insight into the Wesley family, the fundamental importance of music in the development of Methodism, and the history of art music in Britain, Music and the Wesleys examines more than 150 years of a rich music-making tradition in England...

A comprehensive guide to the texts and tunes of an American musical traditionThis authoritative reference work investigates the roots of the Sacred Harp, the central collection of the deeply influential and long-lived southern tradition of shape-note...

A preeminent Orwell scholar's lifetime of work on the icon of modern literature.This remarkable volume collects, for the first time, essays representing more than four decades of scholarship by one of the world's leading authorities on George Orwell. In...

Gone to the Country chronicles the life and music of the New Lost City Ramblers, a trio of city-bred musicians who helped pioneer the resurgence of southern roots music during the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Formed in 1958 by Mike...

In this book, Robert L. Stone follows the sound of steel guitar into the music-driven Pentecostal worship of two related churches: the House of God and the Church of the Living God. A rare outsider who has gained the trust of members and musicians inside...

x

Both a beguiling portrait of the artist and an idiosyncratic self-portrait of the author, Mysterious Mozart is Philippe Sollers's alternately oblique and searingly direct interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre and lasting mystique,...

The paintings, murals, and graphics of Ben Shahn (1898-1969) have made him one of the most heralded American artists of the twentieth century, but during the 1930s he was also among the America's premier photographers. Much of his photographic work was...

Showcasing American music and music making during the Great Depression, Hard Luck Blues presents more than two hundred photographs created by the New Deal's Farm Security Administration photography program. With an appreciation for the amateur and the...

Lincoln Hall at the University of Illinois, named to commemorate the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, has long been a familiar landmark on the Urbana-Champaign campus and the home for undergraduate and graduate work in the liberal arts and...

In Le Jazz, Matthew F. Jordan deftly blends textual analysis, critical theory, and cultural history in a wide-ranging and highly readable account of how jazz progressed from a foreign cultural innovation met with resistance by French traditionalists to a...

An analysis of black women's involvement in the ''women's music'' scene from the 1970s to todayDrawing on fieldwork conducted at eight women's music festivals, Eileen M. Hayes shows how studying these festivals--attended by predominately white...

An in-depth look at the career of Jean Aberbach, legendary founder of Hill and Range SongsRestless Giant is a fascinating account of the life and times of Jean Aberbach, the elusive music publishing legend who, with his brother Julian, built one of music...

The life of a masterful conductor who directed from the heartServing Genius tells the life story of Carlo Maria Giulini, one of the most renowned and beloved conductors of the twentieth century. Detailing Giulini's extraordinary professional career,...

Opening Chicagoscapes places the reader amid the breathtaking grandeur and warm humanity of one of the world's great cities, a metropolis both lavish with its pleasures and as hard as weathered steel, a prairie-bound Oz that demands commitment from those...

As either observer or participant, radio deejay and political activist Richard E. Stamz witnessed every significant period in the history of blues and jazz in the last century. From performing first-hand as a minstrel in the 1920s to broadcasting Negro...

Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of ''Crazy Blues'' is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In...

Attracting passionate fans primarily among African American listeners in the South, Southern Soul draws on such diverse influences as the blues, 1960s-era Deep Soul, contemporary R & B, neosoul, rap, hip-hop, and gospel. Aggressively danceable, lyrically...

During the final years of Bill Monroe's life, bluegrass fiddler Gene Lowinger took a series of on- and off-stage photographs of Monroe on the road--preparing for shows, performing, interacting with fans and audiences--and in informal settings with...

Framing timely and pressing questions concerning music and cultural rights, this collection illustrates the ways in which music--as a cultural practice, a commercial product, and an aesthetic form--has become enmeshed in debates about human rights,...

King of the Queen City is the first comprehensive history of King Records, one of the most influential independent record companies in the history of American music. Jon Hartley Fox tells the story of a small outsider record company in Cincinnati, Ohio,...

This first biography of Jimmy McHugh captures a lively and significant contributor to American songwriting. Creator of favorite tunes such as ''I'm in the Mood for Love'' and ''On the Sunny Side of the Street,'' McHugh was a one-man history of...

A musical practice used for centuries the world over, improvisation too often has been dismissed as either technically undissectible or inexplicably mysterious. Approaching musical improvisation from the fields of ethnomusicology, education, performance,...

The Calumet Region: An American Place presents a series of black and white images by an insightful observer of Northwest Indiana's industrial/residential landscape. A professional architectural photographer, established fine artist, educator, and...

Life Flows on in Endless Song explores American folk songs as a frame for the American experience. Robert V. Wells discusses how folk songs emerged from particular historical circumstances and evolved as they migrated from one region to another. Crafting...

In this eloquent and passionate volume, Bob Ostertag explores the common ground and points of friction among music, creativity, politics, culture, and technology. In terrain ranging from the guerrilla underground in El Salvador's civil war to the drag...

This book analyzes the broad range of Supreme Court cases that concern the protection of art and free speech under the First Amendment. Finding that debates about free expression (whether in speech or art) swirl around sex and cultural blasphemy, Randall...

Few narratives in pop encompass Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Madonna, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, Johnny Mathis and Led Zeppelin. This story is one of them. Chic, led by former Black Panther activist Nile Rodgers and down-home family man Bernard...

Vinyl was supposed to be dead - and we were all set to be curating our own Spotify playlists. But, as is clear from creaking-at-seams record-pressing plants in the Czech Republic to purveyors of beach-glass vinyl in Big Sur; things haven't quite panned...

Finished just weeks before his death, George Rochberg's eloquent memoir offers a detailed look at his fruitful life as a composer, publisher, and teacher of music. The volume traces a life immersed in music, with early study under George Szell and Gian...

Here is the story of how the Sex Pistols shocked and shamed EMI – the UK’s most revered and profitable record company – and ended up GBP40,000 the richer thanks to manager Malcolm McLaren’s cunning business strategy. Author Brian Southall is the former...

The Beatles. The Beach Boys. Blur, Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Kate Bush and Coldplay. EMI was one of the big four record companies, with some of the biggest names in the history of recorded music on its roster. Dominating the music industry for over 100...