“The profiles gathered here display the breadth of the folk tradition in pre-World War II America, as if a song were on every lip or fingertip, the way cellphones or iPads are today. . . . The Beautiful Music All Around Us is a treasure trove of scrupulous research and on-the-road reportage.”
Previous WSJ review of The Beautiful Music All Around Ushere.
Annually since 2007 we have posted our favorites of the year. The University of Illinois PressBest of 2012 list is in alphabetical order by staff member’s last name. Feel free to post your list in the Comments section.
Kathleen Anderson, Rights & Permissions/Awards Manager
Favorite Book:The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg Books I wish I had read in 2012:The Twelve by Justin Cronin and May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes Favorite CDs: Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats, Celebration Rock by Japandroids Favorite movies: Moonrise Kingdom, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Dark Knight Rises Favorite TV Show:Girls Best breakfast sandwich:http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Ham-Cheese-Egg-Lemon-Sandwich Best website: http://animalstalkinginallcaps.tumblr.com/ Favorite Live Performance: Metric live at The Pageant in St. Louis
(see live Metric footage in the new video for ”Breathing Underwater”)
Margo Chaney, Exhibits Manager
Favorite Book:The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer Favorite CD: Stephen Wade - Banjo Diary Favorite Movie:Lincoln Favorite TV Show(s): it’s a 3-way tie for me— Call the Midwife, Parenthood, Scandal Favorite Live Performance: Crosby, Stills, & Nash at Ravinia Website: don’t go to any one website everyday (apart from work)
Lisa Connery, Desktop Publisher/Coordinator Favorite Book: Locke & Key (Graphic novel by Joe Hill) Favorite CD: fun. Some Nights Favorite Movie:Wreck It Ralph Favorite TV Show:Game of Thrones, New Girl Favorite live performance: Carnivale Debauche or Polkaholics @ Porkapalooza Website I visit every day:cuteoverload.com, http://www.abominable.cc/ (weekly web comic)
Dawn Durante, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Veronica Roth – Insurgent (the second book in the Divergent Trilogy)Favorite CD: Gary Clark Jr. – Black and Blu Favorite Movie:The Hunger Games Favorite TV Show: The Mindy Project Website I visit every day:weather.com (boring but true)
Heather Munson, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Book: Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson Favorite CDs: From the Ground Up by John Fullbright, The Carpenter by the Avett Brothers Favorite TV Shows:Call the Midwife, Parks and Recreation, Up All Night Favorite live music performances: John Hiatt at the Castle Theater in Bloomington, Peter Cooper and Eric Brace at Sandwich Life House Concerts, Bottle Rockets at Sandwich Life House Concerts Favorite web comic: Lunar Baboon
Joe Peeples, Catalog and Copywriting Coordinator
Favorite book: Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs (actually from 2011; I’m always a year or two behind) Favorite albums: Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror Favorite movies: Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Moonrise Kingdom, and The
Hobbit (which as of this writing hasn’t opened yet but of course it will be
awesome) Favorite Ebertfest movie:Take Shelter — beautiful and deeply unsettling Favorite TV shows:New Girl, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad Favorite live performances: Metric at the Pageant in St. Louis; The Lemonheads at the Bijou in Knoxville, TN (playing It’s A Shame About Ray in its entirety, plus much more) Favorite anticipated live performance that was cancelled because the guitarist broke his hand in a skateboarding accident, for crying out loud: Sleigh Bells at the Canopy Club, Pygmalion Festival Website I visit every day:The A.V. Club Favorite way to take an arrow in the knee:The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Favorite donut: Glazed Old Fashioned at Carmella’s Creme Donuts in Champaign Favorite cocktail: The Godfather at Big Grove Tavern (or, as I make it at home, The War-Time Consigliere)
Jim R. Proefrock, Desktop Publisher
Favorite Book: Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding Favorite Long-Playing Vinyl Record Album: Police Teeth – Awesomer than the Devil Favorite Movie:Wreck It Ralph Favorite TV Show:The Regular Show Favorite Live Performance: Police Teeth – Hexagon Bar, Minneapolis Website I Visit Every Day:Electrical Audio Forums
Willis Regier, Director Favorite Book: I’ve spent much of the year reading through volumes in the Collected
Works of Erasmus, preferring (as many do) the volumes of his correspondence. For a refreshing detour, I was steered to Lucius Shepherd’s A Handbook of American Prayer by Professor Jad Smith, a trusted source for recommendations for science fiction. For graphic novels, nothing surpassed Chris Ware’s Building Stories. The title applies to a box and its assorted contents that a reader can build into a book, or not, as if it were both a construction and a demolition site. Ware’s irony is like that. As always, his drawings are meticulous. Favorite CD: Once again I’m debt to Michael Roux for his recommendations, including Marina and the Diamonds’ Electra Heart. I replayed it more often than anything else I
bought this year. Favorite Movie: Spielberg’s Lincoln. Favorite TV Show: Carol Baxter was astonished I hadn’t seen Big Bang Theory. Now I know why. Its characters are charming and funny and weird. Still, I again have to rank Justified #1, and will have to bow to friends’ recommendations next year and try Homeland. Favorite live performance: Thanks to Carol, I saw The Book of Mormon at the Bank of America Theatre in Chicago. I was surprised to see the the Church of Latter Day Saints had purchased multiple advertisements in the program. That surprise deepened as the show proceeded, though surprise was submerged by admiration for the creative energy of the performance. A great cast, great production, and superb satire. Website I visit every day:Huffington Post, DailyKos, TalkingPointsMemo
Tad Ringo, Senior Editor Favorite CD:California 37 – Train Favorite Movies:Lincoln, Argo Favorite TV Show:Elementary Favorite live performance, sports: Game 3, NBA Playoffs, 2nd round (May 17, 2012): Pacers 94, Heat 75 Best restaurant: Maury’s Tiny Cove, Cincinnati, OH Best beach: Pass-A-Grille, St. Petersburg, FL
Michael Roux, Marketing Manager Favorite Books: Kurt Andersen – True Believers (Every year I take home a handful of forthcoming books from Book Expo. True Believers was my favorite from this year’s crop. For some reason I picked up and then put back down Kevin Powers’s Yellow Birds, which has appeared on many end of the year best of lists. Oops.), John Taylor – In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran (Admit it. You want to read about the making of the Hungry Like the Wolf video in Sri Lanka.) Favorite CD: Electric Guest – Mondo (I first heard Electric Guest when the band performed on Jimmy Fallon. The vocals had a Smokey Robinson vibe and I played that DVRd clip over and over. Danger Mouse produced the album. Check out This Head I Hold.
Favorite Movie:Argo Favorite TV Shows:Homeland, The Hunted Favorite live performance: Buddy Mondlock at Music Folk in St. Louis - The older kid next door who used to play acoustic guitar in his front yard grew up to write songs with and for Janis Ian, Art Garfunkel, Garth Brooks, and others. I hadn’t seen him for 30+ years. Website I visit every day: Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, ProFootballTalk.com (during fantasy football season)
Vijay Shah, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Tom McCarthy-C Favorite CD: The Head and the Heart-self titled album Favorite Movie:A Separation Favorite TV Show:The Big C, Enlightened Favorite live performance: Impromptu jamboree by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello at a peace rally in Chicago Website I visit every day: Common Dreams/Glenn Greenwald
The challenge to libraries is not insignificant. Four of the six publishers are not providing eBooks to libraries at any price. The other two – Random House and HarperCollins lead the industry with two different models. Random House adjusted eBook pricing in 2012. While the prices on some books were lowered, the most popular titles increased in price – some dramatically. Author Justin Cronin’s post-apocalyptic bestseller “The Twelve” whose print edition costs the Douglas County Libraries $15.51 from Baker & Taylor and whose eBook is priced at $9.99 on Amazon was priced at $84 to Douglas County on October 31st.
John Caps’s musical biography of Henry Mancini, the creator of “Moon River” and the score to The Pink Panther, along with hundreds of other familiar works. Get it for $17.97 (regularly $29.95).
We’ve recently added our Spring 2013 titles to our website, so even if the book is not yet available, you can pre-order it at the Anniversary Sale discount:
Murphy Hicks Henry’s Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass, that traces the progress of women in bluegrass from Sally Ann Forrester, who played accordion and sang with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys from 1943 to 1946, to present artists such as Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, and the Dixie Chicks. Pre-order now for $17.97 (regularly $29.95).
David Whiteis’s Southern Soul-Blues highlights some of southern soul’s most popular and important entertainers including classic artists such as Denise LaSalle, the late J. Blackfoot, Latimore, and Bobby Rush–as well as contemporary artists T. K. Soul, Ms. Jody, Sweet Angel, Willie Clayton, and Sir Charles Jones. Pre-order now for $14.97 (regularly $24.95).
If you like American music, we have over 120 other carefully selected and edited titles in-print and on sale until January 31, 2012.
Was Beethoven the creator of masterpieces defined by a strict text or musical blueprint? New research into his creativity shows that Beethoven explored a range of artistic options, and as a tireless improviser he was hardly ever completely satisfied by a finished work. The evidence of Beethoven’s creative process is preserved in nearly 8,000 pages of sketchbooks. More than a century ago, the pioneering researcher Gustav Nottebohm surveyed these manuscripts, making striking individual observations. Only relatively recently, however, has research pushed well beyond Nottebohm’s tentative efforts.
The publications of the Beethoven Sketchbook Series from the University of Illinois Press have advanced into this unknown territory. Each of these editions of major sketchbooks contains a color facsimile of the original source reproduced at full size, together with an interpretative transcription and extensive commentary. Since the facsimiles provide access to the visually fascinating but cluttered and highly revised manuscripts, the transcriptions can inquire into the meaning and not just the letter of Beethoven’s inspiring brainstorms of activity. The accompanying commentaries place this new material into the context of parallel sources and biographical issues, recreating for the reader the composer’s creative struggles.
These new editions can be compared to the first probes of Venus or Mars, since instead of isolated glimpses, the entire surface of the object of investigation is revealed for the first time. The first such edition targeted Beethoven’s major sketchbook of 1820, Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109. The editor, transcriber, and author of the commentary is William Kinderman, general editor of the Beethoven Sketchbook Series.
The second edition of the Beethoven Sketchbook Series makes available the most famous of the composer’s sketchbooks, the “Eroica” Sketchbook used by Beethoven between 1802 and 1804. Startling new insights are revealed in this edition, which was completed jointly by Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman. Fresh insight is offered into the genesis of not only the “Eroica” Symphony, but the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the composer’s sole opera Fidelio, and various fascinating unknown and fragmentary projects. Lockwood and Gosman’s edition, Beethoven’s “Eroica” Sketchbook: A Critical Edition, will be published in early 2013.
Recent research has moved beyond Beethoven and beyond music. Kinderman’s new book from the University of Illinois Press, The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtág, explores the creativity of major composers from the eighteenth century to the present. He shows that a view of the arts confined to isolated canonic masterpieces is seriously impoverished. At the same time, many secrets about and fresh perspectives on deceptively familiar canonic works can be gained through research that sees cultural products as a struggle emerging out of history. This approach, dubbed “genetic criticism” in France, is a fruitful alternative to the rigid structuralism that so easily blinds commentators to the important spontaneous aspects of artistic activity. A recent interdisciplinary exploration of this approach is Kinderman’s edited book with Joseph E. Jones, Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process: Essays from Music, Literature, and Theater from the University of Rochester Press.
Kinderman has recorded as pianist Beethoven’s major keyboard works from the period of the Artaria 195 sketchbook: the final trilogy of Sonatas in E major, A-flat major, and C minor, opp. 109-111 (available on Arietta Records). For the second movement of the Sonata in E major, op. 109, an innovative website allows the user to explore all stages in Beethoven’s creation of the music, tracing the process from initial sketch to finished work, acorn to oak. The facsimiles of the sketches, transcriptions of their content, and realization in sound of the music are coordinated, drawing on the material from the three-volume edition of Artaria 195.
Another much-praised recording by Kinderman of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations is also available on Arietta Records. Kinderman’s book Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations from Oxford University Press and his CD recording of this work were a major influence on Moises Kaufman’s much-performed play, 33 Variations.
The University of Illinois News Bureau reports that UI Press author and U of I Professor Emeritus of Music and Anthropology, Bruno Nettl, has been awarded the 2014 Charles Homer Haskins Prize, presented annually to a distinguished humanist by the American Council of Learned Societies.
Greg Adams: Stephen, you are certainly no stranger to Banjo Newsletter’s readers. For example, in addition to your own interviews with fellow players, you yourself were featured on the cover of three previous issues of BNL—September 1983, September 1989, and November 1998. You also did cover stories of Tony Ellis, Tom Paley, and your mentor, Fleming Brown. Then, in November 2005, BNL included an interview for your Smithsonian Folkways release “Hobart Smith, In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes.” Today I’d like to speak with you about your two recent milestones—“Banjo Diary,” and your new book, “The Beautiful Music All Around Us”What were your motives for doing these two projects?
Stephen Wade: Well, maybe the first question should be, “Why did it take you so long to finish these projects?” Well, it’s interesting. For “Banjo Diary,” because I was dealing with great guys—my fellow great players on the album—it took two days to record, two days to do some fixes, two days of mixing, and one afternoon of mastering. On the other hand, in the purported solitude of a writer’s garret, “The Beautiful Music All Around Us” took eighteen years to complete, sixteen of it spent in writing and research. In May 2011 the book was finally accepted for publication. But because I was just so energized by then, I couldn’t slow down. So I worked from that May to October trying to figure out what might constitute a new banjo record. Originally, my idea for “Banjo Diary” focused on DC’s banjo history, quite different from what it became. Ultimately, it very much connects to my film, “Catching the Music.” And as you know, that documentary addresses the music that inspired my teachers.
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The December 22, 2012, edition of The Wall Street Journal includes Eddie Dean’s review of Stephen Wade’s recent book The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience.
Robert Lombardo discusses organized Crime in Chicago on PBS
Posted by michaelRobert Lombardo discusses his new book Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight.