From patriotic "God Bless America" to wistful "White Christmas," Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurable influence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most en...

This first volume of Music in Black American Life collects research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and the Black Music Research Journal, and in the University of Illinois Press's acclaimed book series Music in American Life. In these selections, experts from a cross-section of disciplines engage with fundamental issues in ways that changed our perceptions of Black music. The topics includes the culturally and musically comple...

If Benny Goodman was the "King of Swing," then Fletcher Henderson was the power behind the throne. Now Jeffrey Magee offers a fascinating account of Henderson's musical career, throwing new light on the emergence of modern jazz and the world that created it. Drawing on an unprecedented combination of sources, including sound recordings and hundreds of scores that have been available only since Goodman's death, Magee illuminates Henderson's musical output, from his early work as a New York ...

In Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges fro...

Get your entire life on track with an accelerated trajectoryYour Trajectory Code is a guide to understanding why you are where you are, and not where you want to be — and how to change it. Once you understand what the trajectory code is, you can gain an accelerated understanding of yourself and others, including family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and anyone else. You'll be able to recognize how tiny 1% adjustments can significantly ch...

From patriotic "God Bless America" to wistful "White Christmas," Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurable influence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most en...

We all have the opportunity to make decisions and guide what line or path we follow in life. One trajectory takes you toward greater accomplishments and the other moves you in the direction of mediocrity and complacency. Understanding the trajectory code and lines is what separates winners from losers. Once you understand what the trajectory code is, you can gain an accelerated understanding of yourself and others, including family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, politicians anyon...

This is the first book about the theatre career of Fred and Adele Astaire, detailing their years in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in London, their impact culturally, and the essence of their partnership on and off the stage.

“This brave new musical, haunting and electrifying by turns, restores the mystery, the thrill to that shattering transformation that stirs in all our souls.”—Charles Isherwood, The New York Times“The staggering purity of this show will touch all open hearts…In its refined, imaginative simplicity, it daringly reverses all the conventional rules by returning the American musical to an original state of innocence.”—John Heilpern, The New York Observer“An unex...

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit...

New York Times Bestseller: "Both revelatory and entertaining . . . Along the way, Viertel provides some fascinating Broadway history." — The New York Times Book ReviewAmericans invented musicals—and have a longstanding love affair with them. But what, exactly, is a musical? In this book, longtime theatrical producer and writer Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, and occasionally despairs over their more emba...

The life of Nina Simone is one of blocked paths and surprising detours. Some people are born to an obvious destiny, only to find that society, circumstance, and chance steer them onto an entirely different course. Had Nina been born at a different time, she could very well have been a superstar of classical music at an early age. However, the severe oppression of African Americans in the United States during the 1950s forced her to find her fate down a different road. That she did so with ...