Lotfi Mansouri has lived a full life in opera: triumphs and near disasters, divas and divos, moneymen and true artists, he has known them all. In this entertaining and engaging memoir, Mansouri lifts the curtain and invites the reader to see how magic is created on stage. He has lived a storied life: early years in Iran, move to America, long stays in Europe and Canada, directing tasks on several continents, and a brilliant final act as the general director of the San Francisco Opera, all the while continuing to mount productions worldwide. He has known virtually everybody in the opera world over the past fifty years, and has collaborated with some of the greatest. Mansouri was also a central figure in the recent rejuvenation of opera through innovations such as supertitles and, perhaps more important, the staging and commissioning of new works that would appeal to a contemporary audience, such as SFO's production of The Death of Klinghoffer, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Dead Man Walking. Mansouri isn't shy about dropping names and bruising some egos (even his own). Anyone who wants to know what the opera world is really like can now find out in the company of a charming and expert guide.

Music's inclusivity--its potential to unite cultures, disciplines, and individuals--defined the life and career of Lou Harrison (1917-2003). Beyond studying with leading composers of the avant-garde such as Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, conducting Charles Ives's Pulitzer Prize-winning Third Symphony, and staging high-profile percussion concerts with John Cage, Harrison has achieved fame for his distinctive blending of cultures--from the Chinese opera, Indonesian gamelan, and the music of Native Americans to modernist dissonant counterpoint. Miller and Lieberman also pull readers into Harrison's rich world of cross-fertilization through an exploration of his outspoken stance on pacifism, gay rights, ecology, and respect for minorities--all of which directly impacted his musical works. Though Harrison was sometimes accused by contemporaries of "cultural appropriation," Miller and Lieberman's brisk study makes it clear why he is now lauded as an imaginative pioneer for his integration of Asian and Western musics, as well as for his work in the development of the percussion ensemble, his use of found and invented instruments, and his explorations of alternative tuning systems. Harrison's compositions are examined in detail through reference to an accompanying CD of representative recordings.

This is the first full-length introduction to the life and works of significant American composer Marga Richter (born 1926), who has written more than one hundred works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance, opera, voice, chorus, piano, organ, and harpsichord. Still actively composing in her eighties, Richter is particularly known for her large-scale works performed by ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and for other pieces performed by prominent artists including pianist Menahem Pressler, conductor Izler Solomon, and violinist Daniel Heifetz. _x000B__x000B_Interspersing consideration of Richter's musical works with discussion of her life, her musical style, and the origins and performances of her works, Sharon Mirchandani documents a successful composer's professional and private life throughout the twentieth century. Mirchandani covers Richter's formative years, her influences, and the phases of her career from the 1950s to the present. Drawing extensively on interviews with the composer, Mirchandani also provides detailed descriptions of Richter's scores and uses reviews and other secondary sources to provide contexts for her works, including their relationship to modern dance, to other musical styles, and to 1970s feminism._x000B_

Described by New York Times critic John Rockwell as "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer," Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from neoclassicism and serialism to jazz and southern hymnody--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This collection of Johnston's writings spans his whole career and shows him to be a truly literate composer who writes about music, his own and that of others, with eloquence and charm. _x000B__x000B_"Maximum Clarity" and Other Writings on Music spans forty years and brings together forty-one of Johnston's most important writings, including many rare and several previously unpublished selections. They include position papers, theoretical treatises, program notes, historical reflections, lectures, excerpts from interviews, and letters, and they cover a broad spectrum of concerns--from the technical exegesis of microtonality to the personal and the broadly humanistic. The volume concludes with a discography of all commercially available recordings of Johnston's music.

Exploring many aspects of Felix Mendelssohn's multi-faceted career as musician and how it intersects with his work as composer, contributors discuss practical issues of music making such as performance space, instruments, tempo markings, dynamics, phrasings, articulations, fingerings, and instrument techniques. They present the conceptual and ideological underpinnings of Mendelssohn's approach to performance, interpretation, and composing through the contextualization of specific performance events and through the theoretic actualization of performances of specific works. Contributors rely on manuscripts, marked or edited scores, and performance parts to convey a deeper understanding of musical expression in 19th-century Germany. This study of Mendelssohn's work as conductor, pianist, organist, violist, accompanist, music director, and editor of old and new music offers valuable perspectives on 19th-century performance practice issues.

Alice Coltrane was a composer, improviser, guru, and widow of John Coltrane. Over the course of her musical life, she synthesized a wide range of musical genres including gospel, rhythm-and-blues, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. Her childhood experiences playing for African-American congregations in Detroit, the ecstatic and avant-garde improvisations she performed on the bandstand with her husband John Coltrane, and her religious pilgrimages to India reveal themselves on more than twenty albums of original music for the Impulse and Warner Brothers labels.

In the late 1970s Alice Coltrane became a swami, directing an alternative spiritual community in Southern California. Exploring her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church pianist and bebopper, to guru Swami Turiya Sangitananda, Monument Eternal illuminates her music and, in turn, reveals the exceptional fluidity of American religious practices in the second half of the twentieth century. Most of all, this book celebrates the hybrid music of an exceptional, boundary-crossing African-American artist.

Ebook Edition Note: All images in center photo section have been redacted.

As a pianist, Rosenthal was unparalleled: his legato touch came from Chopin through his pupil Mikuli; his awareness of composition was developed by Liszt; his Brahms interpretation shaped by the composer himself; and his ingeniously crafted piano-paraphrases memorialized his friendship with Johann Strauss II. Yet Rosenthal's pianistic abilities were married to a rare intellectual erudition -- a knowledge of literature, history, philology, science, philosophy, and society that few pianists have ever matched, let alone surpassed.

In these striking pieces, we see every facet of Rosenthal: memoirist, social critic, pedagogue, and virtuoso. He could write with gravity and pathos, yet his famous and sometimes devastating wit is legendary. This volume combines Rosenthal's writings with critical assessments of the pianist by such contemporaries as Eduard Hanslick, Edward Prime-Stevenson, and Hugo Wolf. It is rounded out with an illuminating preface by Charles Rosen, perhaps Rosenthal's most renowned pupil; a discography and concertography; and a CD featuring never-before-released Rosenthal recordings.

With warmth and humor, tuba virtuoso Harvey Phillips tells the story of his amazing life and career from his Missouri childhood through his days as a performer with the King Brothers and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses, his training at the Juilliard School, a stint with the US Army Field Band, and his freelance days with the New York City Opera and Ballet. A founder of the New York Brass Quintet, Phillips served as director of the New England Conservatory of Music and became Professor of Music at Indiana University. The creator of an industry of TubaChristmases, Octubafests, and TubaSantas, he crusaded for recognition of the tuba as a serious musical instrument, commissioning more than 200 works. Enhanced by an extensive gallery of photographs, Mr. Tuba conveys Phillips's playful zest for life while documenting his important musical legacy.

For Denise Von Glahn, listening is that special quality afforded women who have been fettered for generations by the maxim "be seen and not heard." In Skillful Listeners, Von Glahn explores the relationship between listening and musical composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by the sounds of the natural world:Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Louise Talma, Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, and Emily Doolittle. Von Glahn situates "nature composing" among the larger tradition of nature writing and argues that, like their literary sisters, works of these women express deeply held spiritual and aesthetic beliefs about nature. Drawing on a wealth of archival and original source material, Von Glahn skillfully employs literary and gender studies, ecocriticism and ecomusicology, and the larger world of contemporary musicological thought to tell the stories of nine women composers who seek to understand nature through music.

Malone’s biographical work covers the life and musical contributions of folk artist Mike Seeger, the brother of folk singer Pete Seeger. One of the founding members of influential folk group the New Lost City Ramblers, Mike Seeger spent more than fifty years preserving, performing, and commemorating the culture and folk music of white and black Southerners, which he called “music from the true vine.” Malone argues that Seeger, while not as well known as his brother, may be more important in his work to identify and give a voice to the people from whom the Folk Revival borrowed its songs. Malone calls Seeger a musician, documentarian, and scholar, saying that his interest in folk music began during--and was shaped by--the post-Depression era. Malone believes Seeger (who died in 2009) made great contributions to the emerging field of American Roots Music, which has become a topic of increasing importance for scholars and an enduring area of interest for the listening public. This manuscript shows why generations of traditional musicians and fans of traditional music count Seeger as a mentor and an inspiration, and presents Seeger as a gatekeeper of American roots music and culture.