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"How did a bunch of young people from the inner city create a genre of music that became a global phenomenon? From its humble origins at house parties in the Bronx, where DJs mixed old records to create new sounds, charismatic MCs let their clever lyrics flow, and B-boys and B-girls pioneered inventive dance moves, hip-hop quickly became a musical and cultural revolution." --
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Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, and magnificent production values. If you've decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover for yourself what it is about opera that sends your normally reserved friends into states of ecstatic abandon, this is the book for you.Opera 101 is recognized as the standard...
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A "radiantly accomplished" music scholar presents an accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz (Wall Street Journal)
In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for in a performance and includes a guide to today's leading jazz musicians. From Louis Armstrong's innovative...
In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for in a performance and includes a guide to today's leading jazz musicians. From Louis Armstrong's innovative...
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Stephen Sondheim is widely regarded as the most important composer and lyricist of musical theater in the second half of the 20th century. Celebrating his 80th birthday, this new edition of Sondheim on Music finds him in these guided interviews expounding in great depth and detail on his craft. As a natural teacher, thoughtful and opinionated, Sondheim discusses the art of musical composition, lyric writing, the collaborative process of musical theater,...
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"Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical? In [this book], Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate...
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This comprehensive guide tells the story of more than 250 key jazz songs and includes a listening guide to more than 2,000 recordings. The author draws on his deep personal experience with jazz music to outline the history and significance of the compositions and tell how they have been performed by different generations of jazz artists.
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'Switched on Pop' illuminates the essential musical concepts behind two decades of chart-topping songs. The text moves through close studies of 16 modern pop classics by artists from Beyoncé to Zedd, each chapter bringing out key aspects of a particular song as well as introducing core concepts such as rhythm, melody, harmony, form, and timbre. As the work progresses, more complex concepts such as syncopation, counterpoint, rhyme, and modulation...
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Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors. His lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and here Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions. Along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981--including West Side Story,...
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After his acclaimed and best-selling Finishing the Hat (named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2010), Stephen Sondheim returns with the second volume of his collected lyrics, Look, I Made a Hat, giving us another remarkable glimpse into the brilliant mind of this living legend, and his life's work. Picking up where he left off in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim gives us all the lyrics, along with excluded songs and early drafts, of the Pulitzer...