This lively history immerses the reader in San Francisco’s musical life during the first half of the twentieth century, showing how a fractious community overcame virulent partisanship to establish cultural monuments such as the San Francisco Symphony (1911) and Opera (1923). Leta E. Miller draws on primary source material and first-hand knowledge of the music to argue that a utopian vision counterbalanced partisan interests and inspired cultural endeavors, including the San Francisco Cons...

An in-depth account of the Black locals within the American Federation of MusiciansIn the 1910s and 1920s, Black musicians organized more than fifty independent locals within the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in an attempt to control audition criteria, set competitive wages, and secure a voice in national decision-making. Leta Miller follows the AFM’s history of Black locals, which competed directly with white locals in the same territories, from their ori...

Winner of the Leila Webster Memorial Music Award for the International Alliance for Women in Music of the 2022 Pauline Alderman Awards for Outstanding Scholarship on Women in MusicChen Yi is the most prominent woman among the renowned group of new wave composers who came to the US from mainland China in the early 1980s. Known for her creative output and a distinctive merging of Chinese and ...