From Transforming Cultures, a special issue on Music and the Production of Place. From Open Letters Monthly, a special section on music. Silence is golden: How a pause can be the most devastating effect in music. A review of George Gershwin by Walter Rimler. A review of Some Liked It Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959 by Kristin A. McGee. A review of A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Emigres and Exiles in Southern California by Dorothy Lamb Crawford. More and more on Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician by Barry Seldes. A review of Sound Commitments: Avant-Garde Music and the Sixties. P.J. O'Rourke reviews books on Woodstock. A review of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley. More on Greg Kot’s Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music. Jay Diamond on the realization that there is indeed a new world order in music. Rock music and novel-writing are both forms of storytelling; songs are snapshots compared to the grand panorama of a novel but in the hands of the best lyricists they can be little narrative jewels. A review of Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel between Literature and Music by Peter Kivy. Behold the Man: Friedrich Nietzsche, composer. A review of books on Joseph Haydn. Opera’s coolest soprano: Danielle de Niese isn’t above flexing her voice to the beat of Beyonce. Is the opera house the last safe place to practice the pursuit of style?
