Handful of Keys: Conversations With 30 Jazz Pianists
Author: Alyn Shipton File Type: pdf p abstractJazz pianists occupy a unique place in the story of jazz, and the development of the solo piano tradition can be traced independently from that of instrumental ensemble jazz. Above all, piano jazz is about the individuals who have made their own individual contributions to the style, and in this collection, Alyn Shipton draws together conversations with many of the key practitioners. Spanning the period from the birth of bebop to the present, their collective experience is a major part of jazz piano history. Sir Charles Thompson and Gerald Wiggins recall the days of Harlem clubs when bebop was being forged there. Their personal memories of bebop giants such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie bring the era vividly to life as do the 52nd Street experiences of Dr. Billy Taylor. Horace Silver and Junior Mance were both part of the hard bop and soul jazz revolution, recalling such colleagues as Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderley and Lou Donaldson, while Dave Brubeck was more identified with the cooler West Coast School.British-born Marian McPartland has become synonymous with piano jazz in the United States through her long, running radio show, but here she tells her own story. As she was establishing herself in the United States, Mal Waldron was Billie Holidays accompanist, and in one of the last interviews he gave before his death, he reflects on his time with Lady Day was well as his subsequent move to Europe, before looking back on his hectic early career as house pianist for Prestige records. There are memories of Art Blakey from JoAnne Brackeen, tales of Coltrane from Tommy Flanagan, and many memories from Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett. Meanwhile more recent trends are reflected by Diana Krall, Uri Caine and iconoclastic bandleader Carla Bley.
Author: Therese Boos Dykeman
File Type: pdf
Rhetoric at the Non-Substantialistic Turn The East-West Coin presents a unique theory of rhetoric that encompasses both Eastern and Western approaches. Based on the Field-Being philosophy founded by Lik Kuen Tong, this theory gives an account of the ontological foundations of both kinds of rhetoric. Beginning with an exposition of the nature of Field-Being rhetoric as Eastern and Western, this book presents chapters on Eastern and Western rhetoric over history as power, ethics, art, creativity, politics, and communication. It acknowledges the thinking of many philosophers and rhetoricians who have contributed to East-West comparative studies in both fields and argues that both understandings of rhetoric are necessary for global communication.**ReviewThis book carefully explores and effectively shows how cross-tradition engagement in philosophy, methodologically speaking, and relevant resources in comparative Chinese-Western philosophy, specifically speaking, can fruitfully bear on the contemporary development of rhetoric as a discipline in the global context. (Bo Mou, Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University and author of Substantive Perspectivism) About the Author Therese Boos Dykeman is independent scholar.
Author: Andrew Cowell
File Type: pdf
The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focusing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the literary persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a supplement to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two.ReviewA bold and stimulating study ... this is a highly rewarding and, in the end, surprisingly accessible book of wide relevance to medievalists. --OenachA stimulating and thought-provoking study. (It) leads to a more complex understanding of alterity in a medieval context (and) challenges the reader to consider whether other texts might be illuminated by a similar approach. --Medium Aevum About the AuthorANDREW COWELL is Associate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.
Author: A. Asa Eger
File Type: pdf
The retreat of the Byzantine army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-mans land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future clash of civilizations that often envisions a polarised world. A. Asa Eger examines the two aspects of this frontier its physical and ideological ones. By highlighting the archaeological study of the real and material frontier, as well as acknowledging its ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.**ReviewThis is a long-awaited and much-needed contribution to the study of the Byzantine-Islamic frontier that will force a step-change in approaches to the study of the region as well as to the study of medieval frontier societies and their archaeology. The author is to be congratulated on a clear, concise and well-argued analysis of complex textual and archaeological data. John Haldon, Shelby Cullom Davis 30 Professor of European History, and Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies, Princeton University. The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier is a well-constructed, original, and convincing book that challenges conventional opinions on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier, and in doing so raises important theoretical and methodological questions on understanding the dynamics of frontier zones in general. His study further weakens the conventional view of frontiers as sparsely populated, marginal, and disconnected peripheries. The core and periphery model for explaining the geopolitical patterning of settlements has never seemed so outdated, given the compelling argumentation presented in Dr Egers ground-breaking study. Alan Walmsley, Professor of Islamic Archaeology and Art, University of Copenhagen Eger is to be credited with questioning previous assumptions - Unnamed reviewer, Todays Zaman About the Author A. Asa Eger is Associate Professor inthe Department of History at The University of North Carolina,Greensboro, USA. He holds a PhD in Islamic Archaeology from the University ofChicago.
Author: Miriam Michelson
File Type: pdf
The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson is the first collection of newspaper articles and fiction written by Miriam Michelson (1870-1942), best-selling novelist, revolutionary journalist, and early feminist activist. Editor Lori Harrison-Kahan introduces readers to a writer who broke gender barriers in journalism, covering crime and politics for San Franciscos top dailies throughout the 1890s, an era that consigned most female reporters to writing about fashion and society events. In the books foreword, Joan Michelson-Miriam Michelsons great-great niece, herself a reporter and advocate for womens equality and advancement-explains that in these trying political times, we need the reminder of how a girl reporter leveraged her fame and notoriety to keep the suffrage movement on the front page of the news.In her introduction, Harrison-Kahan draws on a variety of archival sources to tell the remarkable story of a brazen, single woman who grew up as the daughter of Jewish immigrants in a Nevada mining town during the Gold Rush. The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson offers a cross-section of Michelsons eclectic career as a reporter by showcasing a variety of topics she covered, including the treatment of Native Americans, profiles of suffrage leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and police corruption. The book also traces Michelsons evolution from reporter to fiction writer, reprinting stories such as In the Bishops Carriage (1904), a scandalous picaresque about a female pickpocket excerpts from the Saturday Evening Post series, A Yellow Journalist (1905), based on Michelsons own experiences as a reporter in the era of Hearst and Pulitzer and the title novella, The Superwoman, a trailblazing work of feminist utopian fiction that has been unavailable since its publication in The Smart Set in 1912. Readers will see how Michelsons newspaper work fueled her imagination as a fiction writer and how she adapted narrative techniques from fiction to create a body of journalism that informs, provokes, and entertains, even a century after it was written.
Author: Hannah Velten
File Type: pdf
MilkIt does a body good. Its difficult to deny the truth of the American Dairy Councils former advertising campaign. From birth milk is the sustaining and essential food of all mammals. It is the first food we ever taste. And yet, despite that natural relationship to milk, the majority of the worlds population cannot digest it in the form most often available to adultscows milk. In Milk, Hannah Velten explores the myths and misconceptions surrounding the ubiquitous drink. Modern milk processing produces a safe, clean beverage that is very different from pure milk straight from the cow. Nonetheless, there are many advocates of raw milk that long for the days before pasteurization, homogenization, and standardization. Yet milk in the time before these scientific processes was even less natural than todayknown then as the white poison, it was bacteria-ridden, mixed with additives to make it look like milk after the cream was removed, filled with chemicals to promote its shelf life, and extremely watered down. Now that milk is considered a staple of a healthy and balanced diet, Velten investigates how and why conceptions of milk have shifted in the public consciousness, from the science of nutrition to the dairy industrys advertising campaigns. This highly illustrated exploration of one of the most fundamental foods and drinks also includes recipes for ice-cream, milkshakes, and even milk paint. Milk will surprise and entertain in equal measure.
Author: Ice-T
File Type: mobi
From Publishers WeeklyIn this intriguing memoir, groundbreaking rapper and actor Ice-T chronicles his rise from nomadic criminal to hip-hop star. After losing both parents by the age of 12, Tracy Marrow was shipped to relatives in Los Angeles where he navigated the growing gang culture of the city and became a father at 18. A four-year tour in the army was followed by a lucrative interlude robbing jewelry and clothing stores. As his fellow thieves began to file off to prison, Ice-T turned to the nascent rap scene and scored immediate success. Continuing to reinvent himself, Ice-T went on to front a rock band and also was one of the first rap figures to work in film and television. Theres little focus on the music itself, but rather on his careers and his observations on the various subcultures he passes through. What lifts the book above the general run of entertainer memoirs is the quality of these observationsIce-T is a canny businessman, and he charts clearly the decisions that brought him up each step of a very treacherous ladder. (Mar.) br (c) PWxyz, LLC. FromStarred Review Famous first as a rapper, and then as an actor in numerous movies and as a regular on Law & Order SVU, Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow in New Jersey, then moved to Los Angeles when both of his parents died prematurely of heart attacks. Raised by inattentive relatives, he became embroiled in gang life. After four years in the army, he found himself on the street and back in the criminal world. He had been writing his own rhymes since high school, then released several groundbreaking West Coast rap recordings and became lead vocalist for the influential thrash-metal band Body Count, which, in 1992, released its notorious single, Cop Killer. The subsequent controversy led to Ice-Ts first experience with censorship and even a dressing-down from the Bush-Quayle administration. In this no-holds-barred memoir, Ice-T writes with refreshing, if profane, down-to-earth candor, recalling his first memories of racism, his increasingly dangerous street life, and his experiences on tour, including a funny and wild anecdote about a show in Milan. A fascinating and inspiring story about an African American orphan who beat the odds to become successful, this memoir will appeal to fans of hip-hop and popular culture. --June Sawyers
Author: Rick Bragg
File Type: mobi
Amazon.com ReviewThe same fierce pride and love that animated All Over but the Shoutin glow in Rick Braggs new book. In fact, he informs us in the prologue that it was the readers of his bestselling 1997 memoir about his mothers struggle to raise three sons out of dire poverty who told him what he had to write about next. People asked me where I believed my own mommas heart and backbone came from ... they said I short-shrifted them in the first book. Bragg sets out to make amends in this heartfelt biography of his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, who with wife Ava nurtured seven children through hard times that never seemed to ease in rural Alabama and Georgia. He was a tall, bone-thin man who worked with nails in his teeth and a roofing hatchet in a fist as hard as Augusta brick, writes Bragg, who inspired backwoods legend and the kind of loyalty that still makes old men dip their heads respectfully when they say his name. Charlies children adored him so much that 40 years after his premature death in 1958 at age 51, Braggs elderly aunts and mother began to cry when asked about him. Chronicling Charlies hardscrabble life in the flinty, expressive cadences of working-class Southern speech, Bragg depicts a rugged individual who would find no place in the homogenized New South. The marvelous stories collected from various relatives--Charlie facing down a truckload of mean drunks with a hammer, hatchet, and 12-gauge shotgun, or brewing illegal white whiskey in the woods (He never sold a sip that he did not test with his own liver)--are not just snapshots of a colorful character. Theyre also the authors tribute to an oral culture with tenacious roots and powerful significance in the American South. --Wendy SmithFrom Publishers WeeklyIn less capable hands, this biography could have been mawkish and mundane. Instead, Braggs telling of his maternal grandfathers life is eloquent and touching, and his spare prose is alive with fresh metaphors and memorable sentences. Bragg never knew Charlie Bundrum, who died prematurely at age 51 in 1958 the story of this proud, flawed, loving and much-loved hero of Depression-era Appalachia is derived from family and community oral history. Interestingly, this book emerged because readers of Braggs bestselling book about his mother, Ava (All Over but the Shoutin), wanted to understand the force that drove her to be such a strong figure. Few actors could have read this work as well as the author has. Braggs Appalachian accent, slightly polished by Northern living, adds authenticity to the fine, funny and painful anecdotes that made up his grandfathers life and to the feelings each story encompasses. His smooth reading enhances the rhythms and sounds of his prose, rendering with genuine sincerity his deep admiration for his people and for the vanishing culture they represent. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 6). (Aug.)n 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Author: Steven Callahan
File Type: epub
On the night of January 29, 1982, Steven Callahan set sail in his small sloop from the Canary Islands bound for the Caribbean. Thus began one of the most remarkable sea adventures of all time. Six days out, the sloop sank, and Callahan found himself adrift in the Atlantic in a five-and-a-half-foot inflatable raft with only three pounds of food and eight pints of water. He would drift for seventy-six days over eighteen hundred miles of ocean before he reached land and rescue. Introduction by Edward E. Leslie, Epilogue by Steven Callahan, drawings and photosFrom School Library JournalYA Sailing Napoleon Solo in a single-handed Mini-Transat race from Spain to Antigua, Callahan was west of the Canary Islands when he realized that his sailboat was sinking. He managed to grab the life raft, a knife, his emergency duffel bag, a piece of mainsl, and a sleeping bag. These items became his home and sole possessions for 76 days. Loneliness, hunger, thirst, pain, and weakness dogged Callahan, yet his ingenuity and knowledge of the sea enabled him to survive. The illustrations and diagrams of life aboard Rubber Ducky III enable readers to visualize the hardshipsthe cramped living space of the raft, the hundreds of salt water sores that covered his body, the foreboding appearance of an approaching storm, or the primitive method used to collect fresh water. Harassed by sharks and dorados at the mercy of storms sore, cold, and miserable, Callahan shows fortitude and perseverance. An excellent book for all YAs, whether sailors or landlubbers. Pam Spencer, Mount Vernon High School Library, Fairfax, Va. 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalCallahan, a marine architect, lost his boat in a storm off the Canary Islands while engaged in a singlehanded race across the Atlantic in 1981. Luckily, he carried far more than the basic emergency equipment required, e.g., a six-person raft. Before sinking he was able to recover his emergency equipment bag and his life raft. Callahan admits to having read the survival accounts of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey ( Staying Alive , 1974) and Dougal Robertson ( Survive the Savage Sea , 1973) and even had the latters manual Sea Survival (1975) with him in the raft. What makes his story different was his lack of a companion. Through his own ingenuity he learned how to spear fish, fix his solar still, and even repair his holed raft. This is a real human drama that delves deeply into a mans survival instincts. It should be read by anyone venturing offshore in a small boat. John Kenny, San Francisco P.L. 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Author: Heather Cleary
File Type: pdf
The great ideological cliche of our time, Cesar Rendueles argues in Sociophobia, is the idea that communication technologies can support positive social dynamics and improve economic and political conditions. We would like to believe that the Internet has given us the tools to overcome modernitys practical dilemmas and bring us into closer relation, but recent events show how technology has in fact driven us farther apart. Named one of the ten best books of the year by Babelia El Pais, Sociophobia looks at the root causes of neoliberal utopias modern collapse. It begins by questioning the cyber-fetishist dogma that lulls us into thinking our passive relationship with technology plays a positive role in resolving longstanding differences. Rendueles claims that the World Wide Web has produced a diminished rather than augmented social reality. In other words, it has lowered our expectations with respect to political interventions and personal relations. In an effort to correct this trend, Rendueles embarks on an ambitious reassessment of our antagonistic political traditions to prove that post-capitalism is not only a feasible, intimate, and friendly system to strive for but also essential for moving past consumerism and political malaise. **