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Composers like Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich created works that indelibly commemorated American places. Denise Von Glahn analyzes the soundscapes of fourteen figures whose "place pieces" tell us much about the nation's search for its own voice and about its ever-changing sense of self. She connects each composer's feelings about the United States and their reasons for creating a piece to the music, while analyzing their compositional techniques, tunes, and styles. Approaching the compositions in chronological order, Von Glahn reveals how works that celebrated the wilderness gave way to music engaged with humanity's influence--benign and otherwise--on the landscape, before environmentalism inspired a return to nature themes in the late twentieth century. Wide-ranging and astute, The Sounds of Place explores high art music's role in the making of national myth and memory.

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward¿s Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I¿m With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the twenty-first century. Essential and engaging, Americanaland chronicles the evolution and resonance of this ever-changing amalgam of American music. Margie Greve¿s hand-embroidered color portraits offer a portfolio of the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of Americana.

Most famous for his military marches, John Philip Sousa led a group of devoted musicians around the world and shaped a new cultural landscape. This book documents almost every aspect of the "March King's" band: its history, its star performers, its appearances on recordings, and the problems the group faced on their 1911 trip around the world.

A ground-breaking history of the American folk music revival

For nearly a century, Juilliard has trained the artists who compose the elite corps of the performing arts community in the United States. This title affirms the school's artistic legacy of great performances as the one constant amid decades of upheaval and change. It takes us behind the scenes and into its practice rooms, studios, and offices.

Examines the regional and national history that shaped Cline's career and the popular culture that she so profoundly influenced with her music.

The life and music of a bluegrass pioneer, in his own words

Surveys the jazz trumpeter's career from the formative years of jazz in New Orleans, through his club successes in Chicago after 1930, to his last European tour in 1954.

      Meet Aunt Molly Jackson (1880-1960), one of American folklore''s most         fascinating characters.       A coal miner''s daughter, she grew up in eastern Kentucky, married a miner,         and became a midwife, labor activist, and songwriter. Fusing hard experience         with rich Appalachian musical tradition, her songs became weapons of struggle.       In 1931, at age fifty, she was "discovered" and brought north,         sponsored and befriended by an illustrious circle of left-wing intellectuals         and musicians, including Theodore Dreiser, Alan Lomax, and Charles Seeger         and his son Pete. Along with Sarah Ogan Gunning, Jim Garland (two of Aunt         Molly''s half-siblings), Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and other folk musicians,         she served as a cultural broker, linking the rural working poor to big-city         left-wing activism.       Shelly Romalis draws upon interviews and archival materials to construct         this portrait of an Appalachian woman who remained radical, raucous, proud,         poetic, offensive, self-involved, and in spirit the "real" pistol         packin'' mama of the song.       "Mr. Coal operator call me anything you please, blue, green, or         red, I aim to see to it that these Kentucky coalminers will not dig your         coal while their little children are crying and dying for milk and bread."                 -- Aunt Molly Jackson         

An engaging new portrait of the seminal American composer

'A landmark in American musical historiography.... Indispensable for music teachers and scholars; moreover, it is accessible to the layman.... An exhaustive bibliography, excellent discography, and rarely seen illustrations and photographs add to its attractiveness.'

Twentieth-century composers created thousands of original works for solo percussion and percussion ensemble. In this concise book, percussionist Thomas Siwe offers an essential and much-needed survey of groundbreaking musical literature.

Offers a comprehensive history of King Records, one of the most influential independent record companies in the history of American music. This book tells the story of a small outsider record company in Cincinnati, Ohio, that attracted an extremely diverse roster of artists, including the Stanley Brothers, Grandpa Jones, Redd Foxx and Earl Bostic.