Alphonse Mucha Biografía en español + 590 imágenes en jpg

Renate. Ulmer (Author)

The Words and Music of Paul Simon

 

Paul Simon is commonly acknowledged to be one of the most successful singer-songwriters of the pop-rock era. His work has flourished in the context of Simon and Garfunkel as well as in his own solo career. Starting with the folk-rock style that marked his earliest significant success, he has drawn on a wide variety of influences, including many American traditions and, later, many international ones as well. He has won multiple Grammy awards in both the duo and the solo phases of his career. His songwriting has also provided the impetus for brief forays into film and musical theatre. After providing a brief biographical overview, this work examines Simon's songwriting work in depth, providing a critical discussion of each song as a fusion of text and music so as to help the reader to identify elements that enhance appreciation.

A particularly valuable contribution in this context is the discussion of the wide variety of musical elements that contribute significantly to the value of Simon's work. These include such easily-understandable issues as verse-chorus structure, melodic variation, selection of particular instruments and even performers, variation of musical style within a song, general harmonic characteristics, relationships among keys, rhythm and pacing of text, etc. While the book proceeds chronologically through Simon's recorded output, specific threads are developed throughout, and the discussion of individual songs takes place in the context of these threads, both drawing on them and developing them further. The diversity of Paul Simon's work reflects his very American background, and no discussion of American music is complete without accounting for his influence.

 

Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke

 

 

Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes -- the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own business destiny.

No biography has previously been written that fully captures Sam Cooke's accomplishments, the importance of his contribution to American music, the drama that accompanied his rise in the early days of the civil rights movement, and the mystery that surrounds his death. Bestselling author Peter Guralnick tells this moving and significant story, from Cooke's childhood as a choirboy to an adulthood when he was anything but.

With appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Aretha Franklin, Fidel Castro, The Beatles, Sonny and Cher, Bob Dylan, and other central figures of this explosive era, Dream Boogie is a compelling depiction of one man striving to achieve his vision despite all obstacles -- and an epic portrait of America during the turbulent and hopeful 1950s and 1960s. The triumph of the book is the vividness with which Peter Guralnick conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era -- the drama, force, and feeling of the story.

 

Peter Guralnick (Autor)  

Lennie Tristano His Life in Music

 

Lennie Tristano occupies a rare position in jazz history. Emerging from an era when modernism was the guiding principle in jazz, Tristano explored musical avenues that were avant-garde even by modernism's experimental standards. In so doing, he tested and transcended the boundaries of jazz. In 1949, years before musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor took credit for the movement, Tristano made the first recordings of "free jazz," a new kind of group improvisation based on spontaneous interaction among band members without any regard for predetermined form, harmony, or rhythm. Then, in the 1950s, Tristano broke new ground by his use of multitracking. Tristano was a musical purist as well as an innovator, vehemently opposing any commercial element in music and abhorring the music industry, which he perceived as pernicious to the spirit of jazz. However, like many purists, Tristano's independence prevented his music from receiving wide exposure. With its blend of oral history, archival research, and musical analysis, "Lennie Tristano" sheds new light on the important role Tristano played in the jazz world, and introduces this often-overlooked musician to a new generation of jazz aficionados.

 

Eunmi Shim (Autor) 

 

Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed: The Biography

  

Iggy Pop's life has been one of extraordinary highs and terrifying lows. Infamous for his wild ways, he is also a towering figure of the rock scene - hugely influential, charismatic and provocative. Every 'mad, bad, dangerous to know' rock star owes a debt to him, and the stories of his shocking behaviour are legendary. But Iggy Pop is also, to a large extent, a construct, the alter ego of the quietly spoken and intriguing Jim Osterberg: the kid voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' by his classmates. So what turned this charming, well-mannered, straight-A student into a poster child for rock 'n' roll debauchery?

Iggy Pop: Open up and Bleed reveals the truth behind the myths. Former MOJO editor Paul Trynka tracked down the star's friends, family, lovers and fellow musicians, conducting over two hundred and fifty interviews, unearthing countless new stories about Iggy's rollercoaster life, his music and his often misunderstood friendship with David Bowie. From this impeccable research he creates a fascinating portrait of a man at war with the world and with himself. The book also features dozens of never-before seen photos.

 

Paul Trynka (Autor) 

 

Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye

 

 

In this intimate biography of the Prince of Soul, David Ritz provides a candid look at a star and a friend. Ritz had been collaborating with Gaye on his story for several years before the singer's tragic death, and had conducted a series of extraordinary interviews in which Gaye discussed his deepest secrets. Drawing from these interviews, Gaye's life is recounted in his own words and the words of those who knew him best: his family, friends, and colleagues. What emerges is a full-scale portrait of a charming but tortured artist, a brilliant singer with a divided soul.

Here is Marvin's story from his early years in the slums of Washington, D.C., to is rise to the top of the Motown industry, his fall from grace, his comeback, and finally his sudden, shocking end at the hands of his own father. But it is also the story of his glorious music, and the music of black America over the past fifty years, from gospel to doo-wop to soul to funk. The result is an epic tale whose cast of characters includes Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder, among others.
The definitive biography of an enormously gifted and sensitive man, Divided Soul takes us deep into the life and music of one of America's most passionate--and most troubled--composers and singers.

 

Soundscapes of Liberation African American Music in Postwar France

 

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.

 

 

 

Celeste Day Moore (Author) 

 

 

Sound Pictures The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, The Later Years, 1966–2016

 

More than anyone besides the bandmates themselves, George Martin was the man who created the unique sound of the Beatles. Sound Pictures offers a powerful and intimate account of how he did so.
    The second and final volume of the definitive biography of the man, Sound Pictures traces the story of the Beatles’ breathtaking artistic trajectory after reaching the creative heights of Rubber Soul. As the bandmates engage in brash experimentation both inside and outside the studio, Martin toils along with manager Brian Epstein to consolidate the Beatles’
fame in the face of growing sociocultural pressures, including the crisis associated with the “Beatles are more popular than Jesus” scandal.
Meanwhile, he also struggles to make his way as an independent producer in the highly competitive world of mid-1960s rock ’n’ roll. As Martin and the Beatles create one landmark album after another, including such masterworks as Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (The White Album), and Abbey Road, the internal stakes and interpersonal challenges become ever greater.
   During his post-Beatles years, Martin attempts to discover new vistas of sound recording with a host of acts, including Jeff Beck, America, Cheap Trick, Paul McCartney, and Elton John, his creative breakthroughs followed by unprecedented commercial success. Eventually, though, all roads bring Martin back to the Beatles, as the group seeks out new ways to memorialize their achievement under the supervision of the man who has come to be known as Sir George. Now, more than fifty years after the Beatles’ revolutionary triumphs, Martin’s singular stamp on popular music has become more vital than ever, as successive generations discover the magic of the Beatles and their groundbreaking sound.

 

Kenneth Womack (Autor)  

 

Workout: The Music of Hank Mobley

 

Among the great American modern jazz saxophonists, Hank Mobley has been the most unjustly neglected - the truly forgotten man. Yet he played and recorderd prolifically with the greatest legends of his era such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gilespie, Lee Morgan, Johnny Griffin and Art Blakey, helping to create some of their finest work. His best recordings are classics, characterized by an instantly identifiable sound and style, and constant musical inventiveness. But his loner personality made him his own worst enemy, many of his records remained unissued in his lifetime, and he died forgotten and destitute. Now, at last, most of his recorded legacy is available on CD and he is increasingly recognized as one of the major figures of modern jazz. In this book, the first to be published about Hank Mobley, Derek Ansell provides a detailed critical introduction to his music and a timely reassessment of his contribution to the jazz art.

 

Derek Ansell (Autor)  

 

Las muchas vidas de John Lennon

 

 

 

El 8 de diciembre se cumplen treinta años de un hecho que conmocionó al mundo entero: el asesinato de John Lennon. En esta conmemoración no podía faltar la controvertida biografía de Albert Goldman.

En su día, Las muchas vidas de John Lennon fue criticada por desmitificar a Lennon al hablar de sus problemas con las drogas o sus tendencias sexuales. Con el tiempo, Harold Seider, el abogado de Lennon, acabó confirmando muchos de los episodios que Goldman relataba en la biografía. Sin duda, una oportunidad única de conocer el lado más oscuro del gran John Lennon.

Después de entrevistar a más de mil personas y tras seis años de trabajo, Goldman consiguió un retrato de cuerpo entero de un hombre que con sus letras y su música fue el símbolo de una generación que aún se veía capaz de convertir los sueños en realidad.

 

Albert Goldman (Autor)  

 

Prince: The Man and His Music

 

 

Famously reticent and perennially controversial, Prince was one of the few music superstars who remained, largely, an enigma—even up to his premature death on April 21, 2016. A fixture of the pop canon, Prince is widely held to be the greatest musician of his generation and will undoubtedly remain an inspiring and singular talent.

This meticulously researched biography is the most comprehensive work on Prince yet published. Unlike other Prince books, this one eschews speculation into the artist's highly guarded private life and instead focuses deep and sustained attention exactly where it should be: on his work. Acclaimed British novelist and critic Matt Thorne draws on years of research and dozens of interviews with Prince's intimate associates (many of whom have never spoken on record before) to examine every phase of the musician's 35-year career, including nearly every song—released and unreleased—that Prince has recorded. Originally released in the UK in 2012, this first US publication of Prince includes updated content detailing the artist's two 2014 albums, tour, 2015 Tidal release, and other career events.

This astonishingly rich, almost encyclopedic biography is a must-have for any serious fan of Prince.

Blues: The Basics - Dick Weissman

 

Blues: The Basics offers a concise introduction to a century of the blues. Organized chronologically, it focuses on the major eras in the growth and development of this popular musical style. Material includes:

• a definition of the blues and the major genres within it

• key artists such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson
  
  
  
  Dick Weissman (Autor)
  
  
  

Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop

 

When they were creating and releasing their most influential albums in the mid to late 1970s, Kraftwerk were far from the musical mainstream - and yet it is impossible now to imagine the history of popular music without them. Today, Kraftwerk are considered to be an essential part of pop's DNA, alongside artists like the Beatles, the Velvet Underground, and Little Richard.

Kraftwerk's immediate influence might have been on a generation of synth-based bands (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Human League, Depeche Mode, Yello, et al), but their influence on the emerging dance culture in urban America has proved longer lasting and more decisive.

This collection of original essays looks at Kraftwerk - their legacy and influence - from a variety of angles, and demonstrates persuasively and coherently that however you choose to define their art, it's impossible to underestimate the ways in which it predicted and shaped the future.

 

www.amazon.com ... 

 

Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz

  

Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella Fitzgerald is considered a classic in jazz literature. Drawing on original documents, interviews, and new information, Nicholson draws a complete picture of Fitzgerald's professional and personal life. Fitzgerald rose from being a pop singer with chart-novelty hits in the late '30s to become a bandleader and then one of the greatest interpreters of American popular song. Along with Billie Holiday, she virtually defined the female voice in jazz, and countless others followed in her wake and acknowledged her enormous influence. 

 

Stuart Nicholson (Autor) 

 

Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin' Hopkins

 

 

In a career that took him from the cotton fields of East Texas to the concert stage at Carnegie Hall and beyond, Lightnin’ Hopkins became one of America’s greatest bluesmen, renowned for songs whose topics effortlessly ranged from his African American roots to space exploration, the Vietnam War, and lesbianism, performed in a unique, eccentric, and spontaneous style of guitar playing that inspired a whole generation of rock guitarists. Hopkins’s music directly and indirectly influenced an amazing range of artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan, as well as bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and ZZ Top, with whom Hopkins performed.

Mojo Hand follows Lightin’ Hopkins’s life and music from the acoustic country blues that he began performing in childhood, through the rise of 1950s rock ’n’ roll, which nearly derailed his career, to his reinvention and international success as a pioneer of electric folk blues from the 1960s to the 1980s. The authors draw on 130 vivid oral histories, as well as extensive archival and secondary sources, to provide the fullest account available of the development of Hopkins’s music; his idiosyncratic business practices, such as shunning professional bookers, managers, and publicists; and his durable and indelible influence on modern roots, blues, rock ’n’ roll, singer-songwriter, and folk music. Mojo Hand celebrates the spirit and style, intelligence and wit, and confounding musical mystique of a bluesman who shaped modern American music like no one else.

 

Bill Evansː How My Heart Sings

 

 

 

This enthralling book is the first biography in English of Bill Evans, one of the most influential of all jazz pianists. Peter Pettinger, himself a concert pianist, describes Evans’s life (the personal tragedies and commercial successes), his musicmaking (technique, compositional methods, and approach to group playing), and his legacy. The book also includes a full discography and dozens of photographs.

 

www.amazon.com ...

 

Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon

 

To have been alive during the last sixty years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his work helped define the youth movement of the '60s. On his own in the '70s, Simon made radio-dominating hits. He kicked off the '80s by reuniting with Garfunkel to perform for half a million New Yorkers in Central Park. Five years later, Simon’s album “Graceland” sold millions and spurred an international political controversy. And it doesn’t stop there.

The grandchild of Jewish emigrants from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the 75-year-old singer-songwriter has not only sold more than 100 million records, won 15 Grammy awards and been installed into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame twice, but has also animated the meaning―and flexibility―of personal and cultural identity in a rapidly shrinking world.

Simon has also lived one of the most vibrant lives of modern times; a story replete with tales of Carrie Fisher, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Shelley Duvall, Nelson Mandela, drugs, depression, marriage, divorce, and more. A life story with the scope and power of an epic novel, Carlin’s Homeward Bound is the first major biography of one of the most influential popular artists in American history.

Peter Ames Carlin (Author)

Miles Davis • Brian Morton

 

A compelling few hours' reading for anyone with an interest in 20th-century music.' Kenneth Clarke, The Daily Mail Miles Davis (1926-91) was one of the great jazz musicians, bandleaders and composers. His recordings include several of the most acclaimed and popular jazz album, from the relaxed style of Birth of the Cool to the orchestral Sketches of Spain and the iconic Kind of Blue. And he never ceased to innovate. As the 1960s moved into the 1970s, he developed a darker, more complex sound and began increasingly to use electric instruments. The crowning achievement of his experiments, Bitches Brew (1969), became the bestselling jazz album of all time. In this biography, noted jazz critic Brian Morton takes us through the musical history of this remarkable and influential artist and illuminates the personality behind the sound.

 

 

Brian Morton (Autor)  

The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal

 

 

The Supremes is a sprawling tale of unforgettable music, cutthroat ambition, and heartbreaking betrayal. Mark Ribowsky explodes Dreamgirl fantasies by taking the reader behind the closed doors of Motown to witness the rise of group leader Diana Ross, the creation of timeless classics like “Where Did Our Love Go?,” and the dramatic power struggles within Detroit's fabled music factory. Drawing on firsthand, intimate recollections from knowledgeable sources such as the Temptations's Otis Williams and other Motown contemporaries—many never before interviewed—The Supremes is “a comprehensive look at the tumultuous relationships within the Supremes as well as among others at the Motown label” (Library Journal).

 

 

Mark Ribowsky (Autor)  

 

 

The Sound of Stevie Wonder: His Words and Music

 

Since his professional debut in 1962, Stevie Wonder has recorded sixty-four singles that have made the Billboard top 100, including ten that reached number one. Wonder was one of the first Motown artists to have complete control over the writing, arranging, and recording of his songs, and achieved that stature before he was 20 years old. He has won 17 Grammy awards, was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and earned the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Equally important, his work as a producer, arranger, and instrumentalist on other artists' recordings has put him in the highest rank of musical collaborators. This is the first work of criticism on this important documentarian of American life, as well as the introductory volume in The Praeger Singer-Songwriter Collection. Through a combination of biography and critical analysis, James Perone's groundbreaking new book reveals the many ways in which Stevie Wonder's body of work emerged, developed, reflected its time, and influenced myriad other artists.

After revealing the social, cultural, and political context of Wonder's work, the book provides detailed analysis of his compositions and recordings, with a focus on both his well-known songs and those known only to his hardcore fans. The volume also contains discussions of cover versions of Wonder's compositions, a discography of his recordings, a song title index, an annotated bibliography, and a general index.

 

James E. Perone (Author)