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Popular Opera in Eighteenth-Century France: Music and Entertainment before the Revolution
by David CharltonThis is the first book for a century to explore the development of French opera with spoken dialogue from its beginnings. Musical comedy in this form came in different styles and formed a distinct genre of opera, whose history has been obscured by neglect. Its songs were performed in private homes, where operas themselves were also given. The subject-matter was far wider in scope than is normally thought, with news stories and political themes finding their way onto the popular stage. In this book, David Charlton describes the comedic and musical nature of eighteenth-century popular French opera, considering topics such as Gherardi's theatre, Fair Theatre and the 'musico-dramatic art' created in the mid-eighteenth century. Performance practices, singers, audience experiences and theatre staging are included, as well as a pioneering account of the formation of a core of 'canonical' popular works.
Popular Polish Electronic Music, 1970–2020: A Cultural History (Routledge Russian and East European Music and Culture)
by Ewa MazierskaPopular Polish Electronic Music, 1970–2020 offers a cultural history of popular Polish electronic music, from its beginning in the late 1960s/early 1970s up to the present day, in the context of Polish economic, social and political history, and the history of popular music in this country. From the perspective of production, scene, industry and consumption, the volume considers the issue of access to electronic instruments in the 1970s and 1980s, and the variety of inspirations, such as progressive rock and folk music, that have contributed to the development of Polish electronic music as it is known today. The widespread contribution of Polish electronic music to film is also considered. This is a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of electronic music, popular music and (Eastern) European music and culture.
Popular Song in the First World War: An International Perspective (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)
by John MullenWhat did popular song mean to people across the world during the First World War? For the first time, song repertoires and musical industries from countries on both sides in the Great War as well as from neutral countries are analysed in one exciting volume. Experts from around the world, and with very different approaches, bring to life the entertainment of a century ago, to show the role it played in the lives of our ancestors. The reader will meet the penniless lyricist, the theatre chain owner, the cross-dressing singer, fado composer, stage Scotsman or rhyming soldier, whether they come from Serbia, Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Portugal or elsewhere, in this fascinating exploration of showbiz before the generalization of the gramophone. Singing was a vector for patriotic support for the war, and sometimes for anti-war activism, but it was much more than that, and expressed and constructed debates, anxieties, social identities and changes in gender roles. This work, accompanied by many links to online recordings, will allow the reader to glimpse the complex role of popular song in people’s lives in a period of total war.
Popular Viennese Electronic Music, 1990–2015: A Cultural History
by Ewa MazierskaThe author presents a cultural history of popular Viennese electronic music from 1990 to 2015, from the perspectives of production, scene and national and international reception. To illustrate this history in depth, a number of case studies of the most successful and distinguished musicians are explored, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, Patrick Pulsinger, Tosca, Electric Indigo and Sofa Surfers. The author draws on research about electronic music, the relationship between music and the urban environment, the history of Austria and Vienna, music scenes and fandom, the digital shift , stardom in popular music (especially electronic music), as well as theories of postmodernism. Chapters 4 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Popular World Music
by Andrew ShahriariExploring Popular World Music is the first introductory level text written to introduce students to popular music styles from around the world. Focusing on styles that all students will know -- from Reggae to Klezmer, from Afro-Pop to Kodo drums--the book offers a comprehensive, listening-oriented introduction to the world's popular musical cultures. Each chapter will focus on a specific music style and its associated geographic locale. The salient musical and cultural features associated with each example are discussed in detail to increase our appreciation of the music. Relevant artists will be highlighted and suggestions for further reading and listening will be offered. By the end of the book, the student should be able to 1) recognize a variety of world music styles, 2) articulate musical and cultural knowledge associated with each style, and 3) identify important artists related to the genre. Supplementing the text will be a web site fcreated by the author) featuring the author's world music map, enabling students to explore pop music cultures as they relate to each other; as well as an iTunes playlist for all the highlighted selections in the book. This book should strongly appeal to Intro to World Music Courses for non-majors who wish to study popular rather than traditional musics of the world, which would encompass a large majority of students enrolled in these courses.
Popular World Music
by Andrew ShahriariPopular World Music, Second Edition introduces students to popular music genres and artists from around the world. Andrew Shahriari discusses international music styles familiar to most students—Reggae, Salsa, K-Pop, and more—with a comprehensive listening-oriented introduction to mainstream musical culture. Each chapter focuses on specific music styles and their associated geographic origin, as well as best-known representative artists, such as Bob Marley, Carmen Miranda, ABBA, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The text assumes no prior musical knowledge and emphasizes listening as a pathway to learning about music and culture. The subject matter fulfills core, general education requirements found today in the university curriculum. The salient musical and cultural features associated with each example are discussed in detail to increase appreciation of the music, its history, and meaning to its primary audience. NEW to this edition Updates to content to reflect recent developments in resources and popular music trends. Contributing authors in additional areas, including Folk Metal, Chinese Ethnic Minority Rock, and Trinidadian Steel Drum and Soca. "Artist Spotlight" sections highlighting important artists, such as Mary J. Blige, Bob Marley, Tito Puente, Enya, Umm Kulthum and more. "Ad-lib Afterthought" sections and "Questions to Consider" to prompt further discussion of each chapter. Lots of new photos! Updated and additional website materials for students and instructors.
Popularität – Lied und Lyrik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Studien zu Musik und Gender)
by Hannah Berner Frédérique Renno Sarah RuppeWas bedeutet Popularität in Bezug auf Lied und Lyrik? Welche Rolle spielen dafür deren Produktion, Medialität und Rezeption? Der vorliegende Band legt den Schwerpunkt auf Musik, Poesie und ihr Zusammenspiel in dem epochenübergreifenden Zeitraum vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Illustriert werden die entsprechenden produktionsästhetischen Voraussetzungen, medialen Aspekte und rezeptionsgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge, um der Frage nachzugehen, welche Komponenten ein Lied oder ein Gedicht haben muss, damit es als populär charakterisiert werden kann. Zwölf Beiträge untersuchen und definieren das Phänomen Popularität aus literatur-, sprach-, musikwissenschaftlicher und theologischer Perspektive und dienen als Diskussionsgrundlage für eine kulturwissenschaftliche Erforschung von Popularität.
Populärkultur und sozialökologische Transformation: Potenziale einer reflexiven Nachhaltigkeitskultur auf Musikfestivals (Musik und Gesellschaft)
by Ina KahleMusikfestivals gelten in der Regel nicht als Orte gelebter ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit. Ein anscheinend unbedachter Umgang mit benötigten Ressourcen sowie der oftmals unverhältnismäßige Konsum von Alkohol sprechen zunächst nicht dafür, dass gerade hier eine Chance für einen im nachhaltigen Sinne erforderlichen Wertewandel der Gesellschaft liegt.Dieses Buch widmet sich einem in diesem Kontext bisher weitgehend unbeachteten Aspekt von Musikfestivals: In einer umfangreichen empirischen Studie werden auf verschiedenen Musikfestivals beobachtete drastische Veränderungen von Verhaltensmustern der Besucher und die Gründe hierfür untersucht. Unter den Festivalgästen wird ein habitueller Grundmodus ausgemacht, der sich relevant von dem in deren Alltag unterscheidet. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, welches Potenzial für die sozialökologische Transformation von Gesellschaften der Beibehaltung dieses Grundmodus über die Grenzen der Festivals hinaus innewohnt.
Porcelain: A Memoir
by MobyFrom one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor, and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s.There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene. This was the New York of Palladium; of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo; of unchecked, drug-fueled hedonism in pumping clubs where dance music was still largely underground, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby--not just a poor, skinny white kid from Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play. At once bighearted and remorseless in its excavation of a lost world, Porcelain is both a chronicle of a city and a time and a deeply intimate exploration of finding one's place during the most gloriously anxious period in life, when you're on your own, betting on yourself, but have no idea how the story ends, and so you live with the honest dread that you're one false step from being thrown out on your face. Moby's voice resonates with honesty, wit, and, above all, an unshakable passion for his music that steered him through some very rough seas. Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it, and hating it. It's about finding your people, your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, somehow, when you think it's over, from a place of well-earned despair, creating a masterpiece. As a portrait of the young artist, Porcelain is a masterpiece in its own right, fit for the short shelf of musicians' memoirs that capture not just a scene but an age, and something timeless about the human condition. Push play.
Porcelain: A Memoir
by MobyFrom one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor, and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s.There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene. This was the New York of Palladium; of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo; of unchecked, drug-fueled hedonism in pumping clubs where dance music was still largely underground, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby--not just a poor, skinny white kid from Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play. At once bighearted and remorseless in its excavation of a lost world, Porcelain is both a chronicle of a city and a time and a deeply intimate exploration of finding one's place during the most gloriously anxious period in life, when you're on your own, betting on yourself, but have no idea how the story ends, and so you live with the honest dread that you're one false step from being thrown out on your face. Moby's voice resonates with honesty, wit, and, above all, an unshakable passion for his music that steered him through some very rough seas. Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it, and hating it. It's about finding your people, your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, somehow, when you think it's over, from a place of well-earned despair, creating a masterpiece. As a portrait of the young artist, Porcelain is a masterpiece in its own right, fit for the short shelf of musicians' memoirs that capture not just a scene but an age, and something timeless about the human condition. Push play.
Portraits in Jazz: 80 Profiles Of Jazz Legends, Renegades And Revolutionaries
by Howard Reich Chicago TribuneA collection of articles on and interviews with jazz greats Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, and others.Howard Reich has reported on jazz for the Chicago Tribune for almost four decades, and in this time, he has met musicians both celebrated and obscure. From his exclusive interviews with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald, to profiles of the early masters like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, this book illustrates Reich’s deep understanding of the performances, recordings, and cultural legacies of these jazz masters.This book, comprising Reich’s award-winning Chicago Tribune articles, shows readers his unmatched critical insight and unrivaled access to the diverse range of jazz musicians the world over, including the little-known artists who, while never in the national spotlight, were nonetheless instrumental to the evolution of jazz. Divided thematically, Portraits in Jazz is a journey from the time of jazz music’s originators, great singers, and early masters through to its courageous standouts, game changers, and regional influencers from Chicago to Cuba and across the globe.Reich, himself a piano performance major at Northwestern University, says in the introduction that studying theory and history are essential to understanding jazz’s inner-workings. But these portraits weren’t created as academic theses or history-book lessons. They are on-the-spot, in the heat of the moment questions of its greatest practitioners, articles and essays in the here and now, taking readers one step closer to the meaning of sound.
Portraits of Everyday Practice in Music Therapy
by Noah Potvin Kate Myers-CoffmanPortraits of Everyday Practice in Music Therapy is an edited volume of case studies providing music therapy students and new professionals with critical reflections on everyday clinical practice across a variety of treatment settings, theories, approaches, and cultural contexts. These case studies articulate the important foundational work occurring around clinical breakthroughs to illustrate less of what music therapy could be given extraordinary circumstances and more of what music therapy frequently is given realistic circumstances. Additionally, each author explores the impacts of cultural values, expectations, and roles on clinical contexts through examinations of their sociocultural identities and how they intersected with those with whom they worked. Discussion prompts at the end of chapters help readers engage in similar reflective practices and sustain engagement with introduced concepts and ideas. By providing ecological real-world contexts for practice and culturally reflexive lenses through which to understand how therapeutic processes evolved, music therapy students and professionals can be better prepared for the authenticity and complexity of everyday clinical work.
Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the '90s
by Marc SpitzMarc Spitz assumed that if he lived like his literary and rock 'n' roll heroes, he would become a great artist, too. He conveniently overlooked the fact that many of them died young, broke, and miserable. In his candid, wistful, touching, and hilarious memoir, Poseur, the music journalist, playwright, author, and blogger recounts his misspent years as a suburban kid searching for authenticity, dangerous fun, and druggy, downtown glory: first during New York's last era of risk and edge, the pre-gentrification '90s, and finally as a flamboyant and notorious rock writer, partying and posing during the music industry's heady, decadent last gasp.Part profane, confidential tell-all and part sweetly frank coming-of-age tale, this dirty, witty memoir finds Spitz careening through the scene, meeting and sometimes clashing with cultural icons like Courtney Love, Jeff Buckley, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, Chloë Sevigny, Kim Deal, The Dandy Warhols, Guns N' Roses, Ryan Adams, Paul Rudd, Coldplay, Pavement, Peter Dinklage, Julie Bowen, The Strokes, Trent Reznor, Chuck Klosterman, Interpol, and Franz Ferdinand, as well as meeting heroes like Allen Ginsberg, Shirley Clarke, Joe Strummer, and Morrissey. Along the way he finds literary guru Gordon Lish is a long-lost relative, and erstwhile pal and sensation JT LeRoy is an even bigger poseur.Spitz refuses to give up the romantic ghost until a post-9/11 breakdown and an improbable new love (fellow music writer Lizzy Goodman) finally help him strike the hardest pose of all: his true self.
Positionen.Entwicklungen.Erfahrungen – 10 Jahre Junge Opern Rhein-Ruhr: Dokumentation der Konferenz zum Festival „Auf die Ohren, fertig, los!“
by Christiane Plank-Baldauf Merle FahrholzHören, Sehen, Staunen – in den deutschsprachigen Opernhäusern kann junges Publikum seit über zehn Jahren viel entdecken! Die vorliegende Dokumentation fasst die Ergebnisse der Konferenz „Auf die Ohren, fertig los!“ der Jungen Opern Rhein-Ruhr zusammen und gibt Einblicke in künstlerische Produktionsbedingungen, ästhetische Handschriften, Vermittlungsarbeit, institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen und fokussiert aktuelle Uraufführungen des Kooperationsverbunds. Die Ergebnisse der Konferenz werden zudem in einen übergreifenden Kontext gesellschafts- und kulturpolitischer Entwicklungen im Musiktheater für junges Publikum im deutschsprachigen Raum gestellt.
Post-Punk Then and Now
by Mark Fisher Kodwo Eshun Gavin Butt Green Gartside Sue ClaytonWhat were the conditions of possibility for art and music-making before the era of neoliberal capitalism? What role did punk play in turning artists to experiment with popular music in the late 1970s and early 1980s? And why does the art and music of these times seem so newly pertinent to our political present, despite the seeming remoteness of its historical moment? Focusing upon the production of post-punk art, film, music, and publishing, this book offers new perspectives on an overlooked period of cultural activity, and probes the lessons that might be learnt from history for artists and musicians working under 21st century conditions of austerity. Contemporary reflections by those who shaped avant-garde and contestatory culture in the UK, US, Brazil and Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. Alongside these are contributions by contemporary artists, curators and scholars that provide critical perspectives on post-punk then, and its generative relation to the aesthetics and politics of cultural production today.
Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain
by David WilkinsonAs the Sex Pistols were breaking up, Britain was entering a new era. Punk's filth and fury had burned brightly and briefly; soon a new underground offered a more sustained and constructive challenge. As future-focused, independently released singles appeared in the wake of the Sex Pistols, there were high hopes in magazines like NME and the DIY fanzine media spawned by punk. Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain explores how post-punk's politics developed into the 1980s. Illustrating that the movement's monochrome gloom was illuminated by residual flickers of countercultural utopianism, it situates post-punk in the ideological crossfire of a key political struggle of the era: a battle over pleasure and freedom between emerging Thatcherism and libertarian, feminist and countercultural movements dating back to the post-war New Left. Case studies on bands including Gang of Four, The Fall and the Slits and labels like Rough Trade move sensitively between close reading, historical context and analysis of who made post-punk and how it was produced and mediated. The book examines, too, how the struggles of post-punk resonate down to the present.
Post-War French Popular Music: Cultural Identity and the Brel-Brassens-Ferré Myth (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)
by Adeline CordierJacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Léo Ferré are three emblematic figures of post-war French popular music who have been constantly associated with each other by the public and the media. They have been described as the epitome of chanson, and of 'Frenchness'. But there is more to the trio than a musical trinity: this new study examines the factors of cultural and national identity that have held together the myth of the trio since its creation. This book identifies the combination of cultural and historical circumstances from which the works of these three singers emerged. It presents an innovative analysis of the correlation between this iconic trio and the evolution of national myths that nurtured the cultural aspirations of post-war French society. It explores the ways in which Brel, Brassens and Ferré embody the myth of the left-wing intellectual and of the authentic 'Gaul' spirit, and it discusses the ambiguous attitude of post-war French society towards gender relations. The book takes an original look at the trio by demonstrating how it illustrates the popular representation of a key issue of French national identity: the paradoxical aspiration to both revolution and the maintenance of the status quo.
Postcolonial Readings of Music in World Literature (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Cameron Fae BushnellThis book reads representations of Western music in literary texts to reveal the ways in which artifacts of imperial culture function within contemporary world literature. Bushnell argues that Western music’s conventions for performance, composition, and listening, established during the colonial period, persist in postcolonial thought and practice. Music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods (Bach through Brahms) coincides with the rise of colonialism, and Western music contains imperial attitudes and values embedded within its conventions, standards, and rules. The book focuses on the culture of classical music as reflected in the worlds of characters and texts and contends that its effects outlast the historical significance of the real composers, pieces, styles, and forms. Through examples by authors such as McEwan, Vikram Seth, Bernard MacLaverty, Chang-rae Lee, and J.M. Coetzee, the book demonstrates how Western music enters narrative as both acts of history and as structures of analogy that suggest subject positions, human relations, and political activity that, in turn, describes a postcolonial condition. The uses to which Western music is put in each literary text reveals how European art music of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries is read and misread by postcolonial generations, exposing mostly hidden cultural structures that influence our contemporary understandings of social relations and hierarchies, norms for resolution and for assigning significance, and standards of propriety. The book presents strategies for thinking anew about the persistence of cultural imperialism, reading Western music simultaneously as representative of imperial, cultural dominance and as suggestive of resistant structures, forms, and practices that challenge the imperial hegemony.
Poster Girl
by Beccy ColeBeccy Cole's inspirational memoir from the heart of Australian country music.Beccy Cole has country music in her blood. Daughter of a country music star, Carole Sturtzel, she is one of the most popular country singer-songwriters in Australia today. This is the story of her life - in her own words.At fourteen, Beccy was performing in her mother's group, Wild Oats. By her late teens, Beccy had teamed up with the Dead Ringer Band - Kasey Chambers' family band - and had attracted the attention of the country music world by winning the Star Maker quest: the same award that started the careers of Keith Urban, Lee Kernaghan, James Blundell and Gina Jeffreys. It was just the first of many awards and accolades for this multitalented woman with a big heart.With refreshing candour, Beccy shares her story: leaving everything she knew to pursue her dream, making a name for herself with her own band; her marriage and motherhood; her subsequent divorce, becoming a single mother and maintaining the nurturing love of family. Performing for the Australian troops in Afghanistan. Coming out, and what it has meant for her and her fans. Taking control of her own life - and finding love.Heartfelt and honest, Poster Girl is the inspirational memoir of a strong woman who epitomises the authentic spirit of country music, and of Australia.
Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought (Studies In Contemporary Music And Culture Ser. #Vol. 4)
by Joseph Auner Judy LochheadWhat is postmodern music and how does it differ from earlier styles, including modernist music? What roles have electronic technologies and sound production played in defining postmodern music? Has postmodern music blurred the lines between high and popular music? Addressing these and other questions, this ground-breaking collection gathers together for the first time essays on postmodernism and music written primarily by musicologists, covering a wide range of musical styles including concert music, jazz, film music, and popular music. Topics include: the importance of technology and marketing in postmodern music; the appropriation and reworking of Western music by non-Western bands; postmodern characteristics in the music of Górecki, Rochberg, Zorn, and Bolcom, as well as Björk and Wu Tang Clan; issues of music and race in such films as The Bridges of Madison County, Batman, Bullworth, and He Got Game; and comparisons of postmodern architecture to postmodern music. Also includes 20 musical examples.
Postopera: Reinventing The Voice-body (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera)
by Jelena NovakBoth in opera studies and in most operatic works, the singing body is often taken for granted. In Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body, Jelena Novak reintroduces an awareness of the physicality of the singing body to opera studies. Arguing that the voice-body relationship itself is a producer of meaning, she furthermore posits this relationship as one of the major driving forces in recent opera. She takes as her focus six contemporary operas - La Belle et la Bête (Philip Glass), Writing to Vermeer (Louis Andriessen, Peter Greenaway), Three Tales (Steve Reich, Beryl Korot), One (Michel van der Aa), Homeland (Laurie Anderson), and La Commedia (Louis Andriessen, Hal Hartley) - which she terms 'postoperas'. These pieces are sites for creative exploration, where the boundaries of the opera world are stretched. Central to this is the impact of new media, a de-synchronization between image and sound, or a redefinition of body-voice-gender relationships. Novak dissects the singing body as a set of rules, protocols, effects, and strategies. That dissection shows how the singing body acts within the world of opera, what interventions it makes, and how it constitutes opera’s meanings.
Poulenc: A Biography
by Roger NicholsAn authoritative account of the life and work of Francis Poulenc, one of the most prolific and striking figures in twentieth-century classical music Francis Poulenc is a key figure in twentieth-century classical music, as well as an unorthodox and striking individual. Roger Nichols draws upon Poulenc's music and other primary sources to write an authoritative life of this great artist. Although associated with five other French composers in what came to be called “Les Six”, Poulenc was very much sui generis in personality and in his music, where he excelled over a wide repertoire—opera, songs, ballet scores, chamber works, piano pieces, sacred and secular choral works, orchestral works and concertos. This book fully covers this wide range, while also describing the vicissitudes of Poulenc's life and the many important relationships he had with major figures such as Satie, Ravel, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Cocteau and others.
Poulenc: The Life In The Songs
by Graham JohnsonOne of the greatest modernist composers comes alive in this illuminating biography, a must-have for musicians and music-lovers alike. Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most significant masters of vocal music —solo, choral, and operatic— quite apart from his achievements in instrumental spheres. But what it cost him, and the determined bravery it took for his unusual talent to thrive, has always been underestimated. In this seminal biography, which will serve as the definitive guide to the songs, acclaimed collaborative pianist Graham Johnson shows that it is in Poulenc’s extraordinary songs, and seeing how they fit into his life —which included crippling guilt on account of his sexuality— that we discover Poulenc heart and soul. With Jeremy Sams’s vibrant new song translations, the first in over forty years, and the insight that comes from a lifetime of performing this music, Johnson provides an essential volume for singers, pianists, listeners, and readers interested in the artistic milieu of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Power Chord: (power Chord) (Orca Currents)
by Ted StauntonAt a Battle of the Bands event, Ace and his best friend Denny notice that girls like musicians, no matter how dorky the dudes might be. Having, so far, been severely challenged when it comes to meeting girls, they decide to start a band. Ace discovers that he loves playing guitar and electric bass. While Denny tweets their every move and their clean-freak drummer, Pig, polishes everything in sight, Ace tries to write a song that will win at the next local teen songwriting contest. It's more difficult than he thought it would be. When Denny brings a great tune to rehearsal, Ace is devastated that Denny, who rarely practices, is a better songwriter than he is. The contest is only days away when Ace discovers that Denny stole the song, and Ace has to decide if winning is worth the lie. Also available in French.
Power Chord: One Man's Ear-Splitting Quest to Find His Guitar Heroes
by Thomas Scott McKenziePower Chord is the story of one man’s epic pilgrimage to gain rock enlightenment from the gods and guitar heroes of the Golden Age of heavy metal. Author Scott McKenzie set off to make contact with the legendary metal superstars he worshipped in his rural Kentucky youth—men like George Lynch of Dokken, Glen Tipton of Judas Priest, and Ace Frehley of KISS—hoping to gain wisdom and a better understanding of the electric guitar mystique. The result is a veritable treasure trove of enthralling behind-the-scenes stories and “where are they now” revelations that will delight anyone who has ever felt a Mötley Crüe, Guns ’N’ Roses, or Black Sabbath song reach out from the speakers and grab them by the ears.