Humans Are a Musical Species

Sacks, Oliver
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain
New York: Random House Inc. 2007
Do you find it peculiar to see an entire species spend much of their time listening to, playing with, or experiencing those “meaningless tonal patterns” (ix) which we call music? Have you ever wondered why music can have such a profound and powerful [...]

Trans-Atlantic Music

Wynn, Neil A., ed.
Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe
Mississippi: The University Press, 2007
A unique collection of essays, Cross the Water Blues is a volume of conference proceedings that examine the influence of African American music on European audiences from the late 19th century to the present. Although the contributors range vastly across [...]

Bebop: Evolution or Revolution?

DeVeaux, Scott
The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History
Berkely, CA. University of California Press, 1997
Is bebop a result of stylistic evolution in music, or a rebellion against social and political constructs? According to jazz historian, musician, and scholar Scott DeVeaux, Bebop is not only a movement in jazz, but is the backbone of jazz [...]

Music From the Inside Out: An Intimate Portrait

Anker, Daniel.
Music From the Inside Out
New York: Docurama, 2007
As a musician and teacher, I am constantly searching for resources that capture the essence of music and art-making in an accessible manner. Of the music-related documentaries that I have seen, only Music From the Inside Out manages to carefully reveal what it means to create, perform, [...]

Recent Acquisitions to the Heckscher Foundation Resource Center @ Lincoln Center Institute

More than 10,000 and growing! Click here to see a list of resources added to our collection during June.
June Highlight
O’Brien, Lucy
She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul
London: Continuum, 2002
Women have always been making and consuming music. But how have women negotiated the genres and sub-genres of the music industry [...]

I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

Simone, Nina.
I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
New York: Da Capo Press. 1991
While there have been countless celebrated and extroadinary divas, something about the style, sound, and mere presence of Nina Simone remains unique. Perhaps a result of her turbulent life, her uncompromising personality, her distinctive voice and musical genius, or [...]

“The Music. The Music, this is our history”

Jones, LeRoi
Blues People: Negro Music in White America
New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1963
As a saxophonist who has spent the last 15 years devoted to the history, practice, tradition, and evolution of jazz and blues music, I began reading this book with the assumption that its content would be familiar, perhaps like that of a jazz [...]

The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible

Booth, Eric.
The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Are you an educator searching for a means to revitalize the minds of your students, while providing them with the tools to be fully engaged, creative, reflective, and aware in their own lived lives? Are you a musician who craves a [...]

Baddest of the Bad

Jackson, Buzzy
A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2005.
It was Ma Rainey’s piano player, Thomas Dorsey, who said, “The blues is a good woman feeling bad” (xiii). Author Buzzy Jackson, however, explores the blues through an entirely different lens, one which sheds light [...]

Fast Forward–The Art of the Italian Futurists

Apollonio, Umbro
Futurist Manifestos
Boston, Mass. : MFA Publications, 2001
On January 20th I heard our new president, in his inaugural address, speak about achieving our goals “when imagination is joined to common purpose.” I interpret this as meaning that in order to make the choices that the changing world presents to us, in order to move together [...]