Bøger udgivet af Powerhouse Publishing (AUS)

"Playing the Changes is a dual memoir by husband-and-wife team Darius and Catherine Brubeck, focused around their cofounding in 1983 of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music on the Durban campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Demonstrating how jazz functioned as a transformative force, the book documents the role played by the Centre, the Brubecks, and their students and colleagues in mounting cultural opposition to apartheid and anticipating the "new" South Africa. The Centre was a venue where students, regardless of race, could rehearse, perform, and gain exposure to a wide range of jazz-related styles, including fusion with African musical styles, and where visiting international musicians could play and teach. The Centre offered the first university degree in jazz on the African continent, with Darius focused on teaching and Cathy on organizing and managing numerous bands, concerts, and tours. The program was open to everyone. The book traces the challenges and opportunities Darius and Cathy encountered in getting the Centre off the ground, ranging from physical infrastructure and funding to admissions and curricula, as well as their constant efforts to surmount politicized racial barriers that obstructed both student and faculty participation. The book offers insider outsider perspectives on the jazz life, its fullness, and its limitations, alternating chapters from Darius, an American-born jazz musician who came of age amid racial segregation and Cold War political tension in the U.S., and from Cathy, a white South African. Each reflects on how they applied their respective experiences to living and teaching under the shadow of apartheid"--

"Cycling emerged as a sport in the late 1870s, and from the beginning, Black Americans rode alongside and raced against white competitors. Robert J. Turpin sheds light on the contributions of Black cyclists from the sport's early days through the cementing of Jim Crow laws during the Progressive Era. As Turpin shows, Black cyclists used the bicycle not only as a vehicle but as a means of social mobility--a mobility that attracted white ire. Prominent Black cyclists like Marshall "Major" Taylor and Kitty Knox fought for equality amidst racist and increasingly pervasive restrictions. But Turpin also tells the stories of lesser-known athletes like Melvin Dove, whose actions spoke volumes about his opposition to the color line, and Hardy Jackson, a skilled racer forced to turn to stunt riding in vaudeville after Taylor became the only non-white permitted to race professionally in the United States. Eye-opening and long overdue, Black Cyclists uses race, technology, and mobility to explore a forgotten chapter in cycling history"--

Includes a new foreword by musician Dom Flemons, forty-five illustrations, and a complete session discography. A founding member of the Grand Ole Opry and the program’s first Black star, DeFord Bailey (1899–1982) was among the Opry’s most popular early performers. Known as the “Harmonica Wizard” for his virtuosity on the instrument, he was also a singer, guitarist, banjoist, and composer.  For decades following his departure from the Opry, Bailey’s story was shrouded in mystery. This meticulously researched biography, long out of print, tells the story of a pioneering Black star in early country music in rich and fascinating detail. The book’s original publication in 1991 helped pave the way for Bailey’s election to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

"A pivotal twentieth-century composer, Samuel Barber earned a long list of honors and accolades that included two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and the public support of figures like Serge Koussevitzky and Marian Anderson. Barber's works have since became standard in concert repertoire and continue to flourish across high art and popular culture. Acclaimed biographer Howard Pollack (George Gershwin, Aaron Copland) offers a multifaceted account of Barber's life and music while placing the artist in his social and cultural milieu. Born into a musical extended family, Barber pursued his ambitions from childhood. Pollack follows Barber's path from his precocious youth and training through a career where, from the start, the composer consistently received prizes, fellowships, and other recognition. Stylistic analyses of works like Adagio for Strings, the Second Symphony, the opera Vanessa, and Piano Concerto No. 1 stand alongside revealing accounts of the music's commissioning, performance, reception, and legacy. Throughout, Pollack weaves in accounts of Barber's encounters with musical contemporaries like Leonard Bernstein and Dmitri Mitropoulos, performers from Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price to Vladimir Horowitz, patrons, admirers, and a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in and out of the arts. He also provides an eloquent portrait of the composer's decades-long relationship with, and break from, Gian Carlo Menotti. Informed by new interviews and immense archival research, Samuel Barber is the long-awaited critical and personal biography of a monumental figure in twentieth-century American music"--