Other books that might interest you

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  Max Beckmann: On My Painting

  Max Beckmann

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  Max Beckmann is widely acknowledged as one of Germany's leading twentieth-century artists. A figurative painter throughout his career, Beckmann depicted the world around him with an unparalleled intensity. His art emerges directly from his experiences of the First and Second World Wars, the political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of Nazism, exile in Amsterdam and his final emigration to the United States. By capturing the objects and events that surrounded him, Beckmann hoped to grasp the deeper mysteries underlying human existence. He perceived and painted the world as a vast stage, at once real and magical, upon which his own life and the traumas of contemporary history were closely intertwined. "On My Painting" can give a valuable insight into understanding his work. It was composed in 1938 at a crucial juncture in Beckmann's life, just a year after he was included the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Nazi Germany. It was read by him at the opening of the "Twentieth Century German Art" exhibition. With an introduction by Mayen Beckmann, the artist's granddaughter, and an afterword by Sean Rainbird.

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  The Biography of a Grizzly

  Ernest Thompson Seton

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  An astonishing tale of the wildlife from a bear's perspective! The listener gets a real insight into the challenges and delights of the everyday life of a grizzly named Wahb, having been orphaned from his mother and sibling to a hunter, our hero has to survive alone in the rugged but beautiful mountains of Wyoming...

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  Songs of the Cat

  Garrison Keillor, Frederica von...

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  Garrison Keillor joins German opera superstar Frederica Von Stade and noted conductor Philip Brunelle   for this studio recording. These sixteen songs in praise of felines include "My   Grandmother's Cat," "The In and Out Song," "Cat O Cat Come Home" as well as   tunes from the more cat-loving classical composers. An enchanting recording on a   very popular subject. Tracks:  The Cat Came Back; The Hallelujah Patrol; The Mystery; The Cats of Cash; Dance To My Cats; Eine Kleine Kat; In Memory of Our Cat, Ralph; Alaska Cats; Beethoven Chased by Rossini; Near Death: Or, The Search Rewarded; Oy, Chuck and Katie; Forty Miles; The Rescue Cat; My Grandmother's Cat; As I Walked Out; Cats May Safely Sleep; Guilt and Shame; Out in the Catskill Mountains; Cat, You Better Come Home; The In and Out Song.

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  Music in the Shadows - Noir...

  Sheri Chinen Biesen

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  An analysis of Hollywood films that blend elements of musicals and film noir, from the author of Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir. 
   
  Welcome to the world of “noir musical” films, where tormented antiheroes and hard-boiled musicians battle obsession and struggle with their music and ill-fated love triangles. Sultry divas dance and sing the blues in shrouded nightclubs. Romantic intrigue clashes with backstage careers. 
   
  In her pioneering study, Music in the Shadows, film noir expert Sheri Chinen Biesen explores musical films that use film noir style and jazz to inhabit a disturbing underworld and reveal the dark side of fame and the American Dream. While noir musical films like A Star Is Born (1954) include musical performances, their bleak tone and expressionistic aesthetic more closely resemble the visual style of film noir. Their narratives unfold behind a stark noir lens: distorted, erratic angles and imbalanced hand-held shots allow the audience to experience a tortured, disillusioned perspective. 
   
  While many musicals glamorize the quest for the Hollywood spotlight, brooding noir musical films such as Blues in the Night, Gilda, The Red Shoes, West Side Story, and Round Midnight stretch the boundaries of film noir and the musical as film genres collide. Deep shadows, dim lighting, and visual composition evoke moodiness, cynicism, pessimism, and subjective psychological points of view. 
   
  Biesen draws on extensive primary research in studio archives to situate her examination within a historical, industrial, and cultural context. 
   
  “Biesen builds a fascinating and quite convincing case for a genre hybrid, the noir musical, that took root in the 1940s but has continued to evolve ever since.” —Thomas Schatz, The University of Texas at Austin

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  New Orleans - Creolization and...

  Berndt Ostendorf

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  Ralph Ellison once wrote that the rules of performance in American culture are jazz-shaped. This book explores the Afro-creole core culture of New Orleans as the mainspring of this energizing music. Much of the cultural capital of the city is buried in a complex, tripartite racial history, which threatens the binary logic of North American racism with all sorts of sensual transgressions.
  
  Its jazz-derived culture combines elements of African, French, Spanish and Anglo-American cultural practices which in their fusion have created a unique propulsive energy: Second line parades, jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indians, Cajun and creole foodways, minstrelsy, dance, ragtime and jazz will be interpreted as the result of a set of historical circumstances unique to this Caribbean metropolis of the senses.
  
  Including a preface by Günter Bischof and pictures by Michael P. Smith

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  Don't Stop the Carnival - Black...

  Kevin Le Gendre

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  Black British Music and the people who made it, from Tudor times to the mid '60s.
  
  This is a story of empire, colonialism and then the new energies released by the movements for freedom and independence of the post second-world-war years; of the movements of peoples across borders; of the flow of music around the triangle that takes in Africa, the Caribbean, the USA and Great Britain; of temporary but highly influential visitors like Paul Robeson; and of the settlement of ex-colonial peoples who brought their music to Britain, and changed its forms and concerns in the new context. It is the story of institutions like the military that provided spaces for black musicians, but it is also the story of individuals like John Blanke, the black trumpeter in the court of Henry VIII, Ignatius Sancho the composer and friend of Laurence Sterne in the 18th century, early nineteenth century street performers such as Joseph Johnson and Billy Waters, child prodigies such as George Bridgewater and composers such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the later 19th whose music is still played today. Above all, it is the story of those individuals who changed the face of British music in the post-war period, who collectively fertilized British jazz, popular music and street theatre in ways that continue to evolve in the present.
  
  This is the story of the Windrush generation who brought calypso and steelband to Britain's streets, Caribbean jazz musicians such as Joe Harriot and Shake Keane, or escapees from apartheid South Africa, such as Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana who brought modernity and the sounds of Soweto to British jazz, and a later generation who gave ska and reggae distinctive British accents. Based on extensive research and many first-hand interviews, one of the great virtues of Kevin Le Gendre's book is lack of London-centricity, its recognition that much important development took place in cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Bristol. As a noted reviewer of black music for the BBC, the Independent, Echoes and other journals, Le Gendre brings together both a sense of historical purpose and the ability to actually describe music in vivid and meaningful ways.

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