New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 5th February 2024
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including the history of two operas by Janáček, a limited-edition celebration of British jazz on record from 1960 to 1975, a biography of jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, paperback editions of books by Julia Hollander and Norman Lebrecht, a discussion of women and music in the age of Jane Austen, an analysis of two works by JS Bach, an exploration of the importance of improvisation in life and art, a study of the voice of Paul Robeson, and a resource for crafting a vision and plan for a career in music.
Fate & The Excursions of Mr Brouček: Janáček's operas of hope and disappointment
Jiří Zahrádka; Moravian Museum, Brno; Hardback
This book looks at two remarkable yet neglected operas - Janáček’s Osud and The Excursions of Mr Brouček. It describes their difficult compositional process using a wealth of sources revealing the composer’s inspirations, the themes he considered for operas, his often fraught dealings with writers, the encounters with music which opened Janáček’s eyes, and also his coming to terms with the loss of his beloved daughter, Olga.
Available Format: Book
Printed on high-quality art paper, this limited-edition book celebrates over three hundred albums, offering detailed background info about each, excerpts from original reviews, and masses of high-quality images that reproduce their fabulous artwork and labels at near-full size. Covering abstract jazz, avant-garde jazz, serial jazz, free jazz, Indo-jazz, jazz-rock and more, it tells a story Britain should be proud of.
Available Format: Book
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
Judith Tick; WW Norton & Co; Hardback
This first major biography since Ella Fitzgerald's death draws on archival research, family interviews and newly-available recordings and footage to show how she fused a Black vocal aesthetic with mainstream repertoire to revolutionise American music. From Fitzgerald’s first audition at the Apollo Theatre to swing-era success at the Savoy, it shows how this “girl singer” broke new ground: as a female bandleader, a groundbreaking improviser, and the arbiter of the American canon with her Song Book recordings.
Available Format: Book
As a singing therapist, teacher, and performer, Julia Hollander is in an unique position to consider singing's importance to our well-being, charting its extraordinary influence on all aspects of our emotional and physical lives. In so many walks of life, people of all ages and backgrounds are waking up to the joys of singing and its power to give hope and connection in a fragmented world. Now available in paperback, this book offers inspiration to anyone who loves to sing.
Available Format: Book
Women and Music in the Age of Austen
Linda Zionkowski & Miriam F. Hart; Rutgers University Press; Paperback
This book highlights the central role women played in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation. Contesting the distinctions between professional and amateur musicians, public and domestic sites of musical production, and performers and composers of music, it reveals how women’s widespread involvement in the Georgian musical scene allowed for self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended boundaries of gender, class, and nationality.
Available Format: Book
Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. Who was this titan of world culture? Through 100 recordings, this book, now available in paperback, brings to life the composer as we've never seen him before. Unruly, offensive and hopeless in so much of his life, yes, but driven to a fault and devoted to his art, conquering deafness to compose some of the towering works of our culture. Along the way, we encounter the great musicians who have taken on the challenge of Beethoven.
Available Format: Book
This initial volume in a series of American Bach Society Guides is a comprehensive study of two masterworks of the late Baroque fugal style. It summarises a considerable body of knowledge about these famously cerebral collections in an engaging and accessible style, offering commentary on individual movements and groups of pieces and on the historical reception of this music, including its impact on other disciplines.
Available Format: Book
This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn while doing so. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. Directed toward people who want to honour and strengthen their own creative powers, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked or obscured by unavoidable facts of life, and how it can finally be liberated to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice.
Available Format: Book
This book is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Combining deep archival research with musicological theory, it is a study of voice as central to Robeson's sense of self and his politics, charting charts the dialectal process of Robeson's vocal and self-discovery, and documenting some of the ways Robeson's practice revised the traditions of concert singing in the first half of the twentieth century and how his voice manifested as resistance.
Available Format: Book
The Musician's Journey: Crafting your Career Vision and Plan
Jill Timmons; Oxford University Press; Paperback
Offering a vast array of resources to guide them from envisioning the process to achieving the practical details. this book provides key tools throughout the journey, from sources as diverse as the world of myth to current brain research, which illuminate compelling real-world examples of music entrepreneurs who forged their own paths to success. This new edition also offers a collection of diverse and inspiring stories taken from interviews with a range of successful musicians, along with personal narrative from the author's work as a professional musician and consultant.
Available Format: Book
James Longstaffe - Head of Retail
